Kasa Smart Video Doorbell Camera Hardwired w/Chime, 2K...

Most Helpful Review

"The Kasa Smart Doorbell camera is adequate given the cost. If you do not need more than basic camera functions and processing software and just want to see who is outside it will do the job. It is easy to install using your conventional door bell (16-24 VAC) wiring. Do not forget to short the conventional bell chime with the provided jumper wire. The included separate chime paired well and works fine. The device is bulky when compared to other doorbell cameras but I do not consider this a significant drawback. The camera is adequate, but the sensitivity adjustments and activity zone do not work well, and even with ‘motion sensitivity’ 2 (min is 1) and ‘record motion that lasts at least’ 4 sec (max is 5 sec) the software records events for people and passing cars that are at least 8 feet outside the active zone. It even records precipitation events once in a while. In addition, I have another major criticism. I guess, that many people, like me, have bought or consider buying this doorbell camera for the advertised feature of micro SD card slot that can be used to record video and audio on a SD card and keep it all private. No less important for probably all these customers is that they do not want to subscribe and pay to Kasa in order to have access to recording of events. However, it looks almost intentional that the developers of the doorbell camera firmware provide very crude and low quality firmware to use for the SD card recording. For one, there is only one option to record continuously 24/7. There is no option to record the events only, if desired. The 720 resolution is very coarse. The 1024 is acceptable for better look at the persons and the scenery, but the 128GB card I put was filled 100% in about 25 days. In addition, when recording, it is almost impossible to see what happens during an event immediately after it takes place - it shows up as an event in the recording later. On top of that, scrolling the recording has a step of 5 minutes, ie ,xx:05:00, xx:10:00, …. There is absolutely no reason not to provide firmware that can do a better job. I am left with the impression that the CD card recording is provided as a teaser to get customers to subscribe for a paid access to recording and viewing events.30 March 2023 UpdateWe have been using the Kasa Smart Doorbell Camera (KD110) for 2 months now. It has been working fine so far, but I have new observations about the use of the SD card. The first time it filled up I reformatted it, which deleted everything on the card and started 24/7 recording again. I also reduced the resolution from 1024 to 720, reduced the sensitivity to 1, increase the min motion time to 5 sec and even reduced the active zone a bit more. All these changes did not make much of a difference from what I reported in my original review including using the complete SD storage space (128 GB or more accurately in computer terms the available113GB) in about 25 days. However, when the card got full again I decided not to reformat to see what will happen. The card kept recording 24/7 and marking events to review but every day it lost the data from the oldest recorded day. In other words, it appears that now I have a rolling window of about the last 25 days of recordings. This is much better and I hope this is what the developers had in mind and provided with their firmware. I still find the 5-min steps in viewing continuous recordings unacceptably large.4 May 2023 2nd UpdateHere is my latest observations about micro SD card recording storage:= 18 to 25 days starting with an empty SD card or after reformatting depending on the selected resolution: Video Quality 720P, 1k(1080P), 2K(2304x1296).= after the SD card is reported full it continues to record and for1k resolution: provides access to the last 12 days of events and the 24/7data2k resolution: last 10 days (this may not be very accurate since I recently switched to 2k)"