A Package Thief’s Worst Nightmare – Review Geek

Before installing, you’ll want to decide if you’re going to use your home’s existing doorbell wiring (if it’s available) or opt for the Lindo Pro’s built-in battery instead. The company claims you’ll get up to six months of use on a single charge, and you can easily recharge the cell using the included USB-C cable. For my own testing purposes, I went with battery power.

As far as functionality goes, the Lindo Pro works like a charm. Whenever someone approaches the camera, you’ll receive a notification on whatever device the Lindo Life app is installed on (more on the app below). I personally liked that these pings are also in the form of rich notifications, where you’ll see a preview image of who or what was detected in your phone’s notification blurb, along with descriptive text that describes the trigger (person detection, someone ringed the doorbell, etc.). Tapping one of these notifications will bring you into the event log of the Lindo app, where you’ll be able to play back whatever footage was captured. 

Lindo claims that the Lindo Pro’s response time clocks in at about three seconds, and I can totally stand behind this claim. Considering the ARM processor that the doorbell uses, Wi-Fi stability is the name of the game here. My own router is located about 30 feet from the door where my Lindo Pro was mounted, and at no point did I ever have any dropout issues, even with a door and a few interior walls standing between the doorbell and the router. 

I also had no trouble with using the included Lindo Chime. Whenever the doorbell button was pressed, the Chime reacted almost instantly, sounding out three loud tones to let me know someone was at the door. Two-way chat worked very well, too. The audio was crisp and clear on both ends, and the in-app feature is quick and easy to use.

Now as far as getting into the app goes (and I have more to say about this below), there is a little bit of lag time between tapping a notification and getting into the event log. It’s only about four or five seconds, but in the event that you’re trying to access footage, if there’s an emergency afoot, you’ll need to be prepared for some level of buffering to occur; and this carries over into the initial camera feed/recording, too. Whenever I would first load a video clip or fire up the Lindo Pro’s live view, the picture would sort of “download” as I was looking at it, filling in exposure, color, and contrast details within the first few seconds of image-launch.

I feel like I’m making it sound like things look super blurry at first sight, which isn’t the case. But imagine this little nighttime scenario: An intruder approaches, issuing a notification to your phone. When you first launch the Lindo Pro’s live view, it takes a few solid seconds for the feed to optimize, and in the time it takes to go from low- to high-res, the intruder steals a prized porch plant and takes off into the night. In-camera, you can see how tall they were and what color clothing they were wearing, but some blockiness in the head area makes it nearly impossible to know what their face looked like. 

All I’m saying is, in the world of security cameras, the more readily-accessible detail, the better. 

If you’ve ever used a video doorbell app, or any smart camera app for that matter, the Lindo Life app should look and feel pretty familiar. The “My Home” screen will give you a breakdown of all the Lindo hardware and supported third-party devices currently connected to your network. In the case of the Lindo Pro, you’ll see a thumbnail of the last-viewed vantage, along with options for snoozing, a “Settings” button, and a top menu ribbon with motion detection, Wi-Fi, and battery level indicators.

Tapping the thumbnail will put you into the Lindo Pro’s live view, which is first displayed in portrait orientation, where the top feed is your standard wide-angle lens, and the bottom is the feed from the downward-facing camera. Turning your phone sideways (or tapping the “Landscape” button in the bottom-right corner of the top feed) will give you a much wider top-lens image, while relegating the package camera to more of a picture-in-picture display. 

A ribbon along the bottom of the screen features five different commands. From left to right, these include “Snapshot” (for grabbing a quick photo of the current live view), “Record” (for manually capturing a video clip), “Chat” (for using two-way audio to converse with visitors) “Response” (for delivering system-generated responses when you’re not home or don’t feel like chatting with the person at the door), and a “Sound” on/off toggle.

Tapping the “Settings” button (top-right icon when in live view) will bring you to a dashboard chock-full of customizations and monitoring features. Right toward the top of the screen, you’ll see “Motion Detection,” “Auto Respond,” and “Power Manager” settings. Tapping “Motion Detection” will allow you to toggle motion detection on/off, adjust detection type and sensitivity, and create up to four Activity Zones (motion outside of these areas will be ignored). There’s also a toggle on/off for “Package Detection” (which is currently being beta-tested and doesn’t seem to work). 

Now when navigating between the live view and different settings panels, the Lindo Life app did an awful lot of buffering. And while these little load-ins didn’t take more than a few seconds to get through, it was a little frustrating to have to keep waiting for certain menus to open up. 

Back on the dashboard, tapping “Auto Respond” lets you pre-record a voice response that guests will hear whenever they hit the Chime button, and “Power Manager” will allow you to further adjust motion detection to maximize battery life. You’ll also see options for “Video,” “Audio,” “Privacy Zone,” and “Notification” settings, and I recommend making a few adjustments here. 

For starters, if you’re all about getting the sharpest-looking footage possible, hop into “Video Settings” and toggle HDR on (as mentioned, it’s off by default). You’ll also see some handy customizations for “Night Vision,” the best of which is the ability to keep the built-in spotlights set to their brightest output for optimal nighttime live views and recording.  Back on the Home Screen, tap the “Events” button at the bottom of the page to see a log of all motion-triggered and manually recorded video clips, which can be filtered by event type and day of the week. Tapping a clip will bring you to a playback screen that replays the footage, with options to download and share the video. 

What’s super-nice about the Lindo Pro is that you’ll get three days of free video storage to Lindo’s servers, and while it’s not the 30 or 60 days you’ll get from competitive doorbells, these one- or two-month event logs are usually tethered to a monthly subscription cost. That’s not the case with Lindo, and if you do decide to sign up for the company’s monthly membership, benefits include offline recording and a permanent collection of recordings and snapshots. 

Overall, I found the Lindo Life app to include just about everything a video doorbell app should have, but be prepared for typos galore. For the most part, nothing will be impossible to decipher, but some item descriptions can be difficult to understand. I’m a bit of a stickler for clean copy in control apps, and whenever I see lots of typos, I go on high alert. Why? Because in my opinion, a lack of lingo-driven quality assurance can often be a sign of a lackluster product or service. As far as Lindo goes, though, the tech and features are rock-solid.