SwitchBot, the company behind a button robot which turns dumb buttons into smart, has rapidly expanded its catalog of smart home devices in recent years. Those from the super niche—things like a smart candle warmer—in the useful and compelling gimmick of a smart hub with an IR transmitter that allows it to act as a universal Matter-enabled remote. For one of the company’s new products, the SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell, the gimmick is a connected indoor unit that functions as a chime, digital peephole, and video storage device, among other things.

SwitchBot isn’t the only company that offers such a combo, but it’s the cheapest I know of at $149.99. That compares to something like $380 Eufy Smart Display E10 and Video Doorbell E340 combo or match $100 Google Nest Hub with $180 Google Nest Doorbell Cam. And it has many good ideas beyond what I have listed above.

It’s a shame, then, that the Smart Video Doorbell itself is one of the worst smart home cameras I’ve ever used. The big problem with this is that the company glossed over the actual doorbell part of the video. The camera produces muddy, terrible video in the wrong aspect ratio, the onboard speakers on the doorbell and display are terrible, and the whole thing is driven by smartphone software that is unreliable, at best. Despite everything, I still think this camera has its place. But that place is definitely not next to my door.

Good on paper, and nothing else

I have several reasons to check out SwitchBot’s Smart Video Doorbell. Allegedly 2K resolution video recordings are local by default; it is battery-powered but can also be wired up; it’s Matter-compatible (with a big asterisk I get); it has a 165-degree field of view (again, asterisk). If you have a paired SwitchBot smart lock, the Smart Video Doorbell can read the NFC chip on your smartphone or the SwitchBot tracking device to unlock it.

The monitor’s interior is what caught my eye, though. It’s a small, square device with a 4.3-inch display that can be mounted on a wall or placed on a table using a built-in kickstand—close to an electrical outlet, however, since it uses a power cord that’s only about four feet long. Below the display are four buttons, including one to view the camera’s live feed, one to lock or unlock your door (assuming you have a SwitchBot smart lock), and one that pops up a list of generic, robotic responses that ask guests to leave a message or tell them that someone will be at the door soon. One part of the SwitchBot app supports user-recorded responses, so, obviously, I fired up YouTube to get soundbites from “Angels With Impure Souls,” the fake movie inside the Home Alone. Then I had my son ring the doorbell so I could answer them. We laughed and laughed.

The display has a microSD card slot already filled with a 4GB microSD card for local recordings, which I think is enough, but the device officially supports up to 512GB memory cards for those who need more. Having the memorycard live inside an indoor device is nice, and not something that every local-first video doorbell does, so kudos to SwitchBot. This is part of why this doorbell works without an internet connection, another great feature. In fact, you don’t even need to connect the Smart Video Doorbell to an app or the internet, because the monitor is paired with it. However, in my testing, the camera never recorded video when I used it without connecting it to the SwitchBot app.

Beyond the video monitor, the SwitchBot’s camera simply slides on the rail. I’m not a fan of the camera’s design, and I can’t stand its scratchy, tinny speakers or the video monitor. Its video quality is terrible, and the camera doesn’t seem to be able to make recordings anywhere near the 2K resolution that SwitchBot claims it can. The ones I checked on the microSD card were 640 x 360 at most, actually. If there are conditions where the camera can actually capture a 2K video, I haven’t found them. I’ve asked SwitchBot for clarification on this, and I’ll update this review when I get an answer.

After setting up the Smart Video Doorbell, I saw another issue — the 165-degree FOV was good on paper, but the SwitchBot’s choice to use a 16:9 aspect ratio meant that only the edge of my balcony floor was visible, even though the camera was mounted at the lower end of the SwitchBot’s recommended height of 1.2 to 1.5 meters. Compare that to the Google Nest Doorbell, which uses a square aspect ratio and captures about as much lateral area as the SwitchBot camera while capturing more of what’s above and below it.

Not being able to see most of my porch means I can’t check the camera to see if, say, there’s a package – one of the main reasons I wanted a video doorbell on my porch in the first place. That’s not such a big deal if I can rely on the Smart Video Doorbell to always pick it up when someone delivers a package, but it often misses people walking onto my porch, especially if they’re quickly in and out of the way of multiple delivery drivers.

Stingy, slow software

It doesn’t fare much better on the software side of things. The SwitchBot app is easily annoying about promoting a cloud storage service. Fortunately, you can turn off its pesky reminders if you take a closer look at the app’s settings. But there are other strange options, such as motion detection and recording are both turned off by default, or video recordings are set to end after five seconds.

At home and on the same Wi-Fi network, it takes several seconds to load the live feed, sometimes failing. When I left for a few days while reviewing it, I could barely get it to load. And while I can get the live feed to load in the Alexa app, I can’t at all in Google Home after adding the camera there. That’s a stark contrast to the video monitor, which shows the live feed almost instantly when the doorbell button is pressed. It’s also always a struggle to load recordings into the SwitchBot app, either by navigating the camera timeline through the app, or by tapping a motion notification on my phone. Most smart home security cameras have these issues here and there, but for the Smart Video Doorbell, it’s constant.

Third party support is a bit confusing around. The Smart Video Doorbell has a settings menu labeled “Third-party Services,” but it appears to be a way to link your overall SwitchBot ecosystem with others. That is, the doorbell shows up when I link the SwitchBot to Google Home or Amazon Alexa, but not for Samsung SmartThings or Siri Shortcuts. Apple Home is not supported. Also, although this package has Matter support, that only means the ability of the video monitor to connect a Smart lock to SwitchBot in other ecosystems through the universal standard. The thing just got smart home camera support in version 1.5 of the standard, and as of this writing, only Samsung SmartThings has updated to that version.

Finally, the SwitchBot app is a little light on the usual smart camera features. You can set a detection zone by resizing the video feed rectangle, but there is no privacy blackout feature. The app has scheduling and a sensitivity slider, but you can’t turn off, or adjust the brightness of, the blinding LED lights that turn on when someone approaches the camera at night. And human detection is the only specific category of motion detection included in a free plan; you need to pay for one of SwitchBot’s cloud subscriptions for car and pet detection (both things my Netatmo camera has became free since I bought it in 2019). That costs at least $3.99 a month for a camera—which isn’t bad!—and doesn’t include packet detection.

Who is this doorbell for?

All my complaints aside, there are the makings of a great video doorbell here. The local storage, the fact that it works without Wi-Fi, easy setup, and the SwitchBot smart lock integration are all great things. But the problems I listed make it a bad choice if you want all the smart home bells and whistles that come with multiple smart home security cameras.

But there is one type of person that the Smart Video Doorbell can be good for. The content of this video monitor makes it ideal for non-tech-savvy people, especially those with limited mobility, because it means they can see who is at their door without getting up, and they don’t have to futz with an app to do it. And if you don’t care if there are recordings and just want a nice digital peephole and intercom, good for that too. Never mind the poor video quality, inconsistent event sensing, and fancy algorithmic detection features, then.

But everyone should just look elsewhere. There is so much competition from the likes of Euphy, Relinkand others whose cameras also primarily store local video but produce better video quality, offer more features, and can detect, record, and display events more reliably. I’ve never used a smart home security camera that I thought was perfect, doorbell or otherwise, but the SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell misses the mark in several areas, making it a doorbell camera for almost no one.