August’s new video doorbell doesn’t live up to its good looks

If you’ve been looking for a connected video doorbell that is battery operated and doesn’t require hardwiring into your home’s electrical system, your options so far have been limited to Ring’s Video Doorbell and Video Doorbell 2. That changes today with the new August View, which is now available for purchase.

The $229 View is August’s second doorbell and its first battery-operated model. Unlike August’s wired version, the View looks much more like a traditional doorbell, and it mimics Ring’s design of a vertical layout with the button located in the bottom half and the camera positioned above it. Though it is roughly the same height as the Ring Video Doorbell 2, it is considerably narrower and occupies less space on the doorframe. The View is arguably more attractive than the Ring, with its smaller footprint and nicer plastic materials. August is also offering faceplates in different colors and finishes that you can use to personalize the View to your own decor.

August has made one of the best-looking video doorbells you can buy, and its battery-powered operation makes it much more accessible to a broader swath of homeowners. But compared to the competition, the View misses more swings than it hits.

August boasts that the View records the highest-resolution video of any battery-operated connected doorbell, at 1440p resolution. It captures clips in a 4:3 ratio, which can then be zoomed in within the app. I’ve been testing the View for the past few days, and while I didn’t really notice a higher level of detail compared to the 1080p clips from the Ring doorbell, I did appreciate the ability to zoom in on the live feed.

In addition to the high-resolution camera, the View also has infrared sensors for night recording and a motion detector for activity alerts. It supports two-way conversations, so you can remotely answer the door and speak to the person standing there, and if you have an August smart lock, you can unlock the door right from the video feed to let the person in.

Installing the View is simple since it requires no wiring whatsoever. You just have to drill a couple of holes for the mounting plate and snap the doorbell onto it. Unlike Ring’s battery-operated doorbells, August does not offer an option to wire the View in; this is strictly a battery-operated device. Setting up the doorbell and the included chime all happens within August’s app, and it’s very simple.

The company claims the battery lasts three months between charges. To charge the battery, you need to remove it from the doorbell and plug it into a Micro USB charger. August says it should take about 90 minutes to charge with a 10W charger. If you want to make sure there’s no downtime for your doorbell while the battery charges, the company is selling spares that you can have charged up and ready to go when you need to swap.

The August app will display clips from motion alerts and doorbell rings in its activity timeline, which you can review after the fact. It will keep them for 24 hours for free; after that, you’ll need to pay $2.99 per month for 15 days of storage or $4.99 per month for 30 days of storage. The clips are often a low frame rate and can be rather choppy to view, though the audio of the clip plays normally.

Most of the View’s advertised features work well, including the two-way communication, remote door unlocking, and push alerts for motion activity and doorbell rings. But due to the doorbell’s battery-operated nature, it frequently takes a long time to wake up and record the activity, which means that most of the clips I received from the View were of a person walking away, not when they were actually in front of my door.

Similarly, tapping into the View’s live stream takes an onerous 15 to 20 seconds, sometimes even longer, which means I’ve often missed whatever activity or person caused a push alert to hit my phone. The View also had significant connectivity issues during my testing period, which frequently prevented me from viewing a live stream at all. August says this was due to problems with its live-streaming infrastructure provider while I was testing the product.

There are other bugs and half-developed features, such as poor exposure for the first few seconds of a video clip and limited motion detection settings. While I did not experience many false alerts with the motion detection, if your door is close to a busy street, the only recourse you have is to disable it entirely. August does not offer customizable detection zones like Ring does. The company says it is continuing to expand and develop the features on the View and that the poor exposure bug will be fixed in the near future.

The View integrates with both Alexa and Google Assistant, but those features were not fully available during my test period. A doorbell ring would cause my Echo devices to announce that someone was at the door, but I could not tap into the View’s camera feed from an Echo Show, like I can with the Ring Video Doorbell. August says that feature is still in the works. The company also says it is working with Apple to enable HomeKit support for its doorbell cameras, but it would not commit to any time period for when that will be available.

Overall, given how limited the choices are for a battery-operated video doorbell, whether the August View makes sense is going to depend a lot on your needs and existing setup. If you already rely on an August lock, the View doorbell’s integration with that and the August app makes it an attractive option. It’s also just a nicer-looking and feeling product compared to Ring’s Video Doorbell 2.

But if you aren’t already an August customer, the Video Doorbell 2 likely makes more sense because it’s more reliable to use, offers more features and configurability, and costs less to boot. Hopefully, August can iron out the View’s bugs and expand on its features in the future, but right now, I’d wait before purchasing.

Photography by Dan Seifert / The Verge

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