Roku’s known for its streaming devices like the Roku Ultra or the Streaming Stick 4K, but the company recently announced its Roku Smart Home product line that includes light strips, bulbs, security cameras and even a video doorbell.
I’ve had the $80 Video Doorbell and Chime SE installed outside my home, putting it through its paces for the last few weeks. Just how good or bad is it? Let’s take a closer look.
If you're looking for an affordable video doorbell — and already own a Roku TV or player — the Roku Video Doorbell is a good budget pick that will let you keep tabs on your front door right from the couch. However, we think everyone else is better off paying a bit more for the $90 Ring Video Doorbell.
What we liked about it
Viewing your security cameras on your TV rocks
Anyone who keeps tabs on the home security camera space will easily recognize that Roku’s smart home products are nothing more than white-label Wyze products with Roku’s name on them. Roku admitted as much. In fact, the company recently told me that the company took this approach to get its smart home product line off the ground, and that we should plan on eventually seeing products that are designed and built by Roku itself (much like its first in-house TV that’s launching this year).
However, just because Roku’s Video Doorbell is simply a repurposed Wyze Video Doorbell doesn’t mean Roku hasn’t added any features of its own.
You set up and control all of Roku’s smart home products using the Roku Smart Home app (indeed, it looks and works just like Wyze’s app — for now). But the most useful feature Roku has added to its security cameras is the ability to get alerts when someone rings your doorbell or view livestream feeds of your cameras directly on your TV that’s either powered by Roku OS or has a Roku streaming device connected to it.
You can ask to view your camera feeds using any of Roku’s voice remotes, which launches the Roku Cameras channel. From there, select the camera you want to watch and it’ll start livestreaming.
The Roku Cameras channel is automatically added to all of the Roku streaming devices linked to the same account you used to set up any Roku cameras. It’s a pretty slick feature.
Furthermore, if you have a video doorbell, you can get alerts directly on your TV’s screen whenever someone presses the doorbell button. Essentially, you see a screenshot of whoever rang your doorbell.
You can’t use the two-way audio feature of the doorbell via the TV and the voice remote, however. That’s a bummer.
Smart alerts are quick and accurate
After installing the Roku Video Doorbell and Chime, you’re given a two-week free trial of Roku’s Smart Home subscription that gives you access to 14-day cloud storage for video clips, removes any delay between recorded events and activates smart alerts. The latter part of that means the doorbell can watch for people, pets, vehicles and packages and then send an alert to your phone, letting you know not only that there’s motion at your door but what’s specifically moving.
With the doorbell installed on my back patio, the most frequent traffic it captures is me walking between my home and my office in a detached building along with my dogs being let in and out multiple times a day. I’ve been impressed with how accurate and timely the smart alerts I’ve received in the Roku app have been.
I’ve even started to rely on the doorbell alerts to let me know when my dogs are near the door wanting to come back inside, thanks to a “pet detected” alert.
Speaking of alerts, there’s currently a bug in the iPhone version of the Roku Smart Home app that causes the thumbnail images in the alert to show up sideways. But once you open the app, the video is shown in its proper orientation. Roku told me it’s aware of the issue and is working on a fix.
Over the last few weeks, I can’t recall an instance of receiving a false motion alert, even with the sensitivity level currently set at 65 (out of 100).
Roku Smart Home is $4 per month or $40 per year for a single camera, or you can pay $10 per month or $100 per year for unlimited cameras.
Without the subscription, the doorbell will save images instead of video to the cloud, so unless you view the livestream, you’re just getting a picture of who or what is at your door. The doorbell will also wait five minutes between events before triggering a second alert or capturing more images.
Video quality is pretty good for the price
There’s little point in installing a video doorbell if the video quality and field of view aren’t good enough to capture footage of whoever’s at your door. And when it comes to affordably priced video doorbells such as this one, the experience can be mixed.
However, the Roku Video Doorbell’s video quality and field of view is surprisingly good for the price. Clips are recorded in 1080p. Actually, a video clip I exported from the app has a resolution of 1296 x 1728, which reflects the taller-than-wide field of view. By using a tall field of view you can see if something’s on the ground, if something’s near the doorbell or a person’s entire body as they’re standing at the door.
One area where the video quality is lacking is in the frames per second, which leads to sometimes choppy or pixelated-looking video. From looking at the video files, it appears clips are recorded at 20 frames per second. The $90 Ring Video Doorbell Wired with Ring Chime, which is closer in price to the Roku Video Doorbell, records at 15 frames per second and 1080p HD video quality. The slower frame rate will give you the same choppiness as the Roku Video Doorbell, perhaps even more so due to the slightly lower recording speed. However, both video doorbells are going to make it easy to see who or what is at your door.
More expensive options like the Nest Doorbell (our best wireless video doorbell pick) record at up to 30 frames per second, resulting in smoother video, especially if there’s a lot of motion or movement by whatever’s being recorded.
For those who care about specifics, the Roku Video Doorbell has a 120-degree vertical by 88-degree horizontal field of view. I do wish the horizontal view were a tad bigger, but all in all, I have no complaints about how much you can see through the lens of Roku’s video doorbell.
What we didn’t like about it
The spotlight doesn’t do a whole lot
On the front of the doorbell’s housing is a small LED light that helps illuminate whatever’s currently in front of it. It’s somewhat blinding and jarring when it lights up as you get close to the doorbell, but it’s nowhere near bright enough to light up a small patio or porch, which will make it hard to clearly see an object, animal or person that is more than, say, 10 feet away from the doorbell.
Granted, most video doorbells don’t offer any sort of light, and you don’t really want to blind any visitors with a full-on spotlight lighting up as they approach your door, but this light feels like something that was added just because.
The Roku Smart Home app is slow
With a few weeks of video clips stored in my Roku Smart Home account, I’ve been going through and watching various recordings to get an idea of overall quality and the accuracy of smart alerts. At times, scrolling through various clips and alerts has been smooth and seamless.
However, when I start scrolling beyond the dozen or so listed clips when I first select a day to view, the app often shows a loading animation for several seconds. Sometimes upward of a minute would pass before the rest of the day’s clips would load.
It’s frustrating and not something that should happen, especially if someone is trying to go back through old clips to figure out when something disappeared off their porch, or some other event happened.
How it compares
| Power | Wired |
|---|---|
| Video quality | 1080p |
| Field of view | 120 degrees by 88 degrees |
| Smart alert types | Motion, person, package, vehicle, pet |
| Smart home support | Roku, Google Home, Alexa |
| Subscription cost | Single camera: $4 a month, $40 a year. Unlimited cameras: $10 a month, $100 a year |
| Dimensions | 1.5 x 3.3 x 0.3 inches |
| Price | $59 |
| Power | Wired |
|---|---|
| Video quality | 1080p |
| Field of view | 155 degrees by 90 degrees |
| Smart alert types | Motion, person, package |
| Smart home support | Alexa or Google Assistant |
| Subscription cost | Single camera: $4 a month, $40 a year. Unlimited cameras: $10 a month, $100 a year |
| Dimensions | 1.8 x 3.98 x 0.88 inches |
| Price | $90 |
| Power | Wired or 2 AA batteries |
|---|---|
| Video quality | 1080p |
| Field of view | 135 degrees by 80 degrees |
| Smart alert types | Motion |
| Smart home support | Alexa |
| Subscription cost | Optional. Single camera: $3 a month, $30 a year. Unlimited cameras: $10 a month, $100 a year |
| Dimensions | 1.7 x 5.1 x 1 inches |
| Price | $85 |
Bottom line
For those who have a Roku streaming device — or several Roku streaming products — the Roku Video Doorbell’s live alerts and the ability to stream your camera(s) directly on your TV is a convenience that’s worth dealing with occasional hiccups from the Roku Smart Home app. Better yet, it’s currently just $59 at Walmart right now, making this already affordable doorbell an especially great value.
For those who don’t care about alerts on your TV, Ring’s Video Doorbell Wired with Ring Chime costs just a tad more, but means you’ll gain access to Ring’s overall home security ecosystem with more robust camera options, along with an app that’s fast and reliable.