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The G4 is the first and only wireless smart doorbell to work with Apple Home. Its features are impressive, but it lacks some essentials.
Aqara’s new Video Doorbell G4 ($119.99) has so many features I may run out of room in this review to cover them all. But I’ll start with what it doesn’t have. There’s no native package detection, motion zones, or HDR imaging (so it’s hard to see faces on sunny days). Its 16:9 aspect ratio completely misses my front porch, and I doubt its IPX3 weather rating will make it through a summer in South Carolina.
If you can live without those features in a smart doorbell camera (e.g., you live in a well-lit apartment building), you’ll be happy with the free cloud video storage, free smart alerts, free facial recognition, and free 24/7 recording (when hardwired). Most companies charge monthly fees for those features, if they even have them. The G4 includes them and costs just $120.
The smart doorbell also works with Apple Home, Amazon, Alexa, Google Home, and its own vast smart home ecosystem (which supports Matter). It has entirely local processing of video, and facial recognition can trigger individual smart home routines based on who it sees. It can also play customized ringtones. Yes, your doorbell can sing you your favorite song when you come home.
The G4 is the first battery-powered buzzer to work with Apple Home and one of only three in the US that supports Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video (HSV). This adds smart alerts — for packages, animals, and vehicles — plus motion zones through Apple’s Home app and cloud storage through iCloud. (Although, in my testing, the doorbell never once picked up on any packages because it couldn’t see most of my porch).
The G4 has 1080p video, a 162-degree field of view, and a horizontal 16:9 aspect ratio. These specs are somewhat outdated, with most video doorbells over $100 now offering better video quality and a square aspect ratio for seeing your front door from top to bottom. They almost all have HDR imaging, so you can actually see the faces at your front door — the G4 does not, and it suffers for it.
But no other doorbell under $150 I have tested has free cloud storage, smart alerts, facial recognition, and continuous recording. The G4 is also one of only two doorbells I’ve tested that can either be hardwired with a battery backup or run entirely on battery power (the other is the Blink Video Doorbell). I always recommend hardwiring when you can.
Aqara claims the G4’s six standard AA batteries should last about four months. (I was at 60 percent after two weeks of heavy testing.) The G4, as with almost every other battery-powered doorbell, will miss a few seconds of motion as it “wakes up” before it starts to record. This means it catches the person when they are at your door, not as they approach it. When wired, it began recording as the person walked up to the door.
Free locally processed smart alerts include optional facial recognition and alerts for people, motion, and “loitering” — a person standing at your door but not pressing the doorbell. An indoor chime box / Wi-Fi repeater — a small USB-C-powered box with a speaker grill — is included with the doorbell. It acts as the device’s brains and can house a microSD card (up to 512GB) to enable 24/7 local recording, a rare feature in video doorbells.
Even when connected to your doorbell wiring, the G4 Pro will not ring an existing indoor chime. But the included chime box is very loud, so you won’t miss any visitors. (You can adjust the volume in the app). Compatibility with Alexa, Apple Home, and Google Home means using any smart speaker as an indoor chime. In testing, this only worked with one brand of speaker at a time (it worked in whichever ecosystem I had set up first). I couldn’t get all the Nests, Echoes, and HomePods in my house to chime simultaneously (that’s probably a blessing).
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As mentioned, there are no native smart alerts for animals, vehicles, or packages; you only get those if you add the doorbell to Apple Home (more on that later). The G4 uses PIR motion detection, with 120 degrees horizontal and 80 degrees vertical sensing range. PIR is susceptible to false alerts, and I got several “people” notifications that were actually the shadow of a tree branch. You can adjust the motion sensitivity, which helps with false alerts, but you can’t set up motion zones in the Aqara app (only privacy zones), so you can’t zero in on a smaller area to avoid knowing every time a tree branch blows in the wind.
