At a glance
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Chime module included
- Subscription free if you record video locally
- Four-month battery life
Cons
- No package detection
- No face recognition
- Not compatible with HomeKit
Our Verdict
It might not be the best looking or the slimmest, but the Ezviz DB2 battery doorbell might well have all the features you’re looking for – for a price that’s better than you were expecting.
Ezviz isn’t the best-known brand when it comes to smart doorbells, but it deserves to be one of them. The company has a long track record in smart home security devices, majoring on security cameras.
The DB2 is the follow-up to Ezviz’s original DB1 smart doorbell that we reviewed back in 2020. It isn’t newly launched: I actually installed the DB2 a year ago so while you could say this review has been rather delayed, I prefer to frame it as a long-term test that gives an even better overview of how the doorbell performs after a lot of real-world use.
Features & design
- DIY install
- Battery powered
- Indoor chime / Wi-Fi extender
The Ezviz DB2 comes in a kit with everything you need to install it. There’s the doorbell itself, as well as a Chime – a 100 × 55 × 35 mm box with two aerials that plug directly into a mains socket, and acts as the doorbell chime, Wi-Fi extender, and video receiver (more on this later).
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
If you have a large home, you can add more of these chimes around the house anywhere you have a power socket, so you don’t miss the doorbell sounding.
You also get three sets of mounting plates for the doorbell, a set of screws with screwdriver, a drilling template, installation guides and USB power cable for charging.
When installing it, you’ll want to be careful as the doorbell has a tamper alarm. And if you set it off accidentally as I did, you’ll discover is extremely loud. Hopefully you’ll hear it if anyone did ever try to remove the DB2 from your doorframe.
Before installation, the first thing to do is charge the battery using the provided USB cable. Ezviz doesn’t include a USB charger but you’re bound to have one lying around.
After charging, it was a simple case of using the provided drill template to drill two holes wherever you’re going to mount the DB2. Then, you secure one of the mounting plates with the screws and plugs provided and simply click the doorbell into the mounting plate which holds it securely.
In an entire year of use I’ve only had to recharge it twice.
The large battery means the device is quite chunky at 150mm x 32mm x 58mm, but as long as space isn’t tight you’ll really appreciate how infrequently you have to remove the doorbell to charge it.
In an entire year of use I’ve only had to recharge it twice. That’s three times in total, including the original charge, meaning it lasted exactly four months. And that’s what Ezviz claims the battery life should be, but it’s still surprising to get this in real-world use. There are a few different modes you can select to either get better image quality or save power and have it last even longer.
You can, if you really wanted, hard-wire the DB2 so you never need to charge it. But that rather defeats the point of buying a bulky, battery-powered doorbell in the first place.
Setting up the DB2 in the Ezviz app is also quite straightforward. The quick-start guide asks you to download the app for Android or iOS, and after creating an account you simply follow the on-screen instructions.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
There’s integration with Amazon Alexa, Google assistant and IFTTT. Unfortunately, though not surprisingly at this price, there’s no HomeKit support, so the DB2 won’t be recognised in the Apple Home App. Of course, if you have other Ezviz devices in your home, such as the BC1C outdoor camera, they can all be controlled and automated using just the Ezviz app.
The app is easy to use and has a good number of features and settings you can customise. There have been frequent firmware updates too, which have introduced new features and improvements since I started using the device. As you’d expect, those are delivered over-the-air, so you don’t need to touch the doorbell or the chime unit to perform the update. It’s all done through the app.
If there’s one annoyance it’s that the app is somewhat buggy. It sometimes freezes when you try and play back footage that was recorded a day or few days earlier, displaying a “loading failed” error message. It’s just not as slick as Ring’s lovely app, or even Google’s Home app.
Performance
The built-in camera records in 2K resolution, which I think is a good balance between good quality video and reasonable file sizes.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
You can zoom in quite a bit on a particular object in the frame to see extra detail. Night mode isn’t as good: the image is quite blurry when a person is moving.
It helps if you have an outdoor light that is on or comes on when motion is detected, because there are no lights built into the DB2: it uses infrared LEDs to see at night. Keep that in mind if the area in front of your door is unlit at night.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
There are two ways you can tell the Ezviz DB2 to record footage. Either use the CloudPlay storage, which is a subscription service, or use a microSD card (up to 256GB), which you insert into the Chime box, not into the doorbell itself, so recordings are protected even if some toe-rag runs off with your DB2, the tamper alarm ringing in their ears.
The best thing about local recording is that you don’t have to pay for the CloudPlay service if you don’t want to
Of course, the best thing about local recording is that you don’t have to pay for the CloudPlay service if you don’t want to, but you still record footage securely with encryption (using a password you choose). Plus, if you do shell out for a 256GB card, that’s an awful lot of footage before it starts getting overwritten.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
There are many settings for things such as Notifications, which can tell you on your phone when a person is detected, when someone rings the bell or tampers with the device.
Audio settings let you can choose between 20 different doorbell tones, as well as allowing you to disable the chime completely. You can even change the tone of your voice when you answer the doorbell through the app, for security preseasons (or just to scare your mother when she comes calling).
Image settings allow you to set day and night modes, or just leave it on Auto as most people will, so the camera chooses the most appropriate mode. Interestingly, there’s a setting for Intelligent Detection, with a choice of PIR (infrared) or ‘human shape detection’ that uses the camera.
I found the PIR would be triggered by humans, animals and cars driving past, while human shape detection was better at just recording people. With the sensitivity set to medium, it didn’t always catch every person, unless they were facing the camera.
If you have an Amazon Echo or Google smart speaker, you can also set it up to be used to communicate when a person rings the bell outside. None of my Sonos speakers have a built-in microphone so unfortunately I wasn’t able to test out this feature.
What I could do, of course, was to speak to and see people using the phone app, regardless of whether I was at home or away.
Price & availability
While some doorbells from those well-known companies I mentioned at the start cost a pretty penny, the Ezviz DB2 is cheaper than you’d expect. It’s only £69.99 in the UK, direct from Ezviz, but that’s discounted from the usual £109.99, which is what it costs from Currys. It’s also available from Amazon for £85.
If you’re in the US, it’s $119 from Amazon. You can’t buy it from Ezviz for some reason.
Of course, this isn’t the only affordable smart doorbell with the option of local recording. You might like to also read our review of the Blink Video Doorbell which can be bought with the Sync Module 2 for around the same sort of price.
It isn’t rechargeable, though, and has a lower 1080p resolution. Plus, the Sync Module doesn’t double as a chime.
You’ll find more alternatives in our roundup of the best video doorbells.
Should I buy the Ezviz DB2?
Overall, the DB2 is good for the price and has a lot of features, and good battery life. Plus the ability to record video locally and not pay a subscription for Cloud storage will be a clincher for some.
Video quality is good in the daytime but struggles a bit at night – just like most rivals at similar prices. The app isn’t the greatest, either, specifically if you want to review old footage. But it’ll tell you when someone’s at the door and let you talk to them remotely, which are two of the key tasks for any smart doorbell.
Yes, you can get more features and better quality if you’re willing to pay more. But if you don’t need the fancy bells and whistles of face recognition and package detection, the DB2 offers superb value and is easy to recommend.
