RemoBell Video Doorbell:
Olive and Dove Inc, Inventors of the RemoBell Video Doorbell wanted to bring something different to the market that other doorbells didn’t offer: Remove the requirement for electricity and offer more accurate motion alerts. RemoBell covers these obstacles by making this device 100% battery powered (4 months on one charge) and adding a thermal sensor. Will this be enough to rival popular brands such as the Ring doorbell? My 2 cents are below.
Since RemoBell it’s all battery powered, I decided to set it up leaving it on my kitchen counter. Setup is simple and fast with no wires to hook up. Later that night in my pitch black kitchen at 3am, forgetting that it was set up, the cloud now has some half naked videos of me walking back and forth getting something to drink. All in glorious HD! I know you want to see screen shots of the video quality, but I’ll skip that for now. Here is a promo video from RemoBell:
The thermal sensor adds a nice touch to the device. Leaving my home for several hours, I wanted to see how it would react to my dogs running around the house. I didn’t receive any alerts which tells me the sensor was able to distinguish that the dog was not massive enough to be a human moving around.
Is this the doorbell Replacement? Almost!
With RemoBell being battery powered, this truly can be mounted anywhere in range of wifi, but what about your existing wired doorbell? RemoBell does not offer a way for your existing wired doorbell to chime in your home. If you have children at home alone or guests, they will not know someone is at the door, of course unless the app is installed on their phone.
I don’t see this being a huge problem for many. Depending on where I am in my home, I seem to never hear the doorbell anyway. It’s my dogs that hear it and I have to go figure out what they are freaking out over. Parents may love this feature as they can have a conversation with the person at their door remotely vs the children at home alone. This may be more of an advantage over it being a disadvantage.
The App:
The app is intuitive and easy to use. You can check the status of your RemoBell such as battery life, firmware and of course review any footage recorded within the app. I noticed a couple of annoyances that I’m sure will be resolved with future app updates. UPDATE: I discovered it was user error and my annoyances have been removed from this review.
The app notifications did cross over to my smart watch which makes me very happy. As mentioned before, I don’t always hear the doorbell, but I always feel my watch vibrate when there is a notification. Everyone in my home has a smart watch which will eliminate the need to hear when someone is at the door.
Overall Conclusion:
RemoBell serves as a good rival to its popular competitor the Ring Doorbell. Two-Way communication, real time video, and cloud storage make these devices very similar. If you don’t mind that you can’t wire this into your existing doorbell then I give RemoBell the advantage. RemoBell will charge $3 to have your videos stored in the cloud and the device sells for $199.
I will add an update after using this in my home for a few days.
