Ecobee Smart (wired) Doorbell Review

In a crowded sea of smart doorbells Ecobee has made the jump in with a few stand out features. One stand out feature above most of the market today is the inclusion of Apple HomeKit support, though it does lack HomeKit secure video support. At 159.99$ it comes in a bit higher priced them some of the competition, but it still stands out in the crowd.

Install and Setup

Install is in the form of Wired only, so keep that in mind going in. That aside, installation is really straight forward, and the app walks you through each step.

The flow is basically turn off the power to the doorbell at your breaker, remove old doorbell or previous camera doorbell, mount the mount plate (and or wedge if you are using it for angled setups.), connect wires to Ecobee doorbell, install on backplate, install chime adaptor inside your interior chime unit.

For my particular install I used the wedge/angle place due to where our doorbell wiring is, but it was extremely easy. everything is flush and clean behind the doorbell.

Once installed and powered on, setting up the doorbell is dead simple. You choose your Wi-Fi network in the ecobee app, type your password and the app handles everything else!

App and Usage

If you have an ecobee thermostat you will instantly be at home using the new addition of the doorbell. If this is your first ecobee product the app is still very simple and puts everything important right in front of you.

upon opening the app, you are greeted with a view of the last event or synced image from the camera fan and center. Tapping it will open live few with a few options and settings you can further configure. From Live View you can talk two-way to the person on the other end, manually record a video clip, take a snapshot, or set of the siren to deter unwanted activity.

The doorbell has a few areas you can configure as well.

Chime — set whether your interior chime is mechanical, or digital and if it is triggered at doorbell press. — Note the doorbell can also chime on compatible ecobee thermostats in your home. A great feature for extending your chime!

Detection — allows you to set different detection properties,

Audio — enable or disable microphone and set doorbell speaker volume.

Video — enable or disable night vision and set whether doorbell camera is on or off in the ecobee app when connected to Apple HomeKit.

Detection Settings.

Detection settings is pretty much the meat and potatoes of the camera and what I can do. In here is where you will set up behaviors.

Motion detection — enable or disable.

Person detection — Enable or disable.

Package Detection (note this requires a subscription) — enable or disable.

Activity Zone — Ecobee employe’s a single configurable activity zone that can be sized according to your preference. This is the area in which if activity is detected the app will notify you.

Detection Range — a extension of Activity Zone this will tell the camera how far out to look

Smart Focus — this will “crop” the image in real time to keep objects in frame. In the instances ive seen this work automatically it did a great job keeping the subject in frame as they moved to and from our door.

a few things to note here — Person detection and package detection seem to collide in usage. Package detection when enabled will override person detection.

Activity zone seems to be really accurate in my usage. So far it has not been triggered by anything outside the zone. This is a welcome change from my previous Arlo doorbell, that if a construction truck went by with airbrakes on it would trigger alerts.

HomeKit Support

HomeKit support is fluid and quick. Once setup you just scan a QR code in the pamphlet for setup and it adds almost instantly to your Home. It should be noted here that HomeKit loading of the video is nearly instant, where the ecobee app can take up to 10 seconds.

Everyday use and verdict.

So far since installing the Ecobee Smart Doorbell I have been very satisfied. It was easy to setup, HomeKit support works quickly and as expected. Compared to my previous Arlo doorbell that we constantly got erroneous alert from, Ecobee’s has only notified us of “need to know” events like someone at our door. It should be noted that when opening the ecobee app, video can take up to 10 seconds to load and this may bother some people. I think the ecobee smart doorbell is a great addition to the ecobee system and a great product so far. If you want a HomeKit supported doorbell or are already invested in the ecobee system, it is certainly worth it.