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Better than Ring? This video doorbell is $99 on Black Friday with no monthly fees
What's the Black Friday deal?
The Lorex 2K Wi-Fi wired video doorbell is down to only $99 during Black Friday 2023. I've successfully tested the wireless version of this doorbell, which requires recharging periodically. The wired video doorbell, however, is always powered by your home's existing doorbell wiring.
Why this deal is ZDNET-recommended
A video doorbell is one of the best ways to get started with your smart home journey. Video doorbells are easy to use, often easy to install, and are sure to bring you some much-needed surveillance. Though they may seem intimidating to set up for beginners, there's a video doorbell option for just about everyone, whether you're looking for a budget-friendly option or one that's easy to install.
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Having tested several video doorbell options in the past, I've come to enjoy having the latest Lorex 2K Wi-Fi video doorbell. I prefer a battery video doorbell for easy installation, so I got the battery-operated option. But more importantly, Lorex ditches the typical paid subscription model in favor of a flat hardware fee. Is it worth it? Let's find out.
View at AmazonHaving your phone tell you who's at the door in real-time, and being able to talk to them when you can't answer the door, is life-changing, I tell you. The Lorex 2K video doorbell does this and more, as it boasts a 2K video resolution with HDR, no monthly subscription fees, and the battery option features an easy-to-install set of brackets to give you the viewing angle you desire.
Setting up the Lorex 2K video doorbell was straightforward, as I opted for the battery-powered model (there's a wired option, too). All it took was a few-hour charge, pairing it to the Lorex mobile app, and installing the bracket where I wanted the doorbell. I already have a Eufy Battery video doorbell, so I set up the Lorex next to it to be able to compare the images captured by both.
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Once the doorbell is installed, there's not much else for you to worry about. It's one of my favorite things about this video doorbell, the lack of monthly fees. You can store your video recordings in the included 32GB MicroSD card and take the opportunity to offload them whenever you need to bring your doorbell in to charge. If you're using a wired installation, I'd keep an extra MicroSD card to swap out every now and then to keep your video doorbell recording the events that matter to you.
The Lorex app is also easy to use and navigate, from checking your notifications to looking at the live feed to changing your doorbell settings to checking your event history. Lorex is a renowned security camera maker, and the app lets you access other Lorex cameras you may have at home in one place.
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The doorbell also features Person Detection, making it easy to skip false alarms as you won't get notified when a spider crawls over your video camera or the trees in your yard sway in the wind.
The biggest problem I have with this Lorex video doorbell is that the image, though good quality at 2560 x 1920 resolution, looks distorted due to the 164-degree field of view. This wouldn't be a huge deal for more affordable doorbells, but one worth almost $200 should offer a less offset visual experience.
People can look distorted in the images, which isn't a big deal if you're just using the doorbell to see who's at the door, but it does bother me when I rewatch the recordings. As you can see in the comparison above, my Lorex doorbell shows a stretched image compared to the screenshot from the Eufy doorbell, as evidenced by the elongated UPS truck.
It also doesn't include a chime kit, meaning you'd have to buy it separately or forgo the battery feature and use it with your home's existing wiring to use your current chime box. The Lorex Chimebox is available for an extra $50 as a small, plug-in device that works with Wi-Fi.
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That said, the Lorex 2K video doorbell excels at daily use. It's reliably on time with real-time alerts when someone is spotted at the door and it integrates seamlessly with Alexa. Hence, we get notifications from our Echo devices when someone rings the doorbell, and it has a small LED light that comes on in the dark when you approach it.
The small LED at the bottom of the Lorex 2K Wi-Fi Battery Video Doorbell.
The built-in LED is an underrated feature and one of my favorites. This is helpful when you arrive home in the dark and can use some brightness to find your keys, but I also like that it could potentially deter would-be intruders, as the light turns on when the camera detects movement.
ZDNET's buying advice
Even if I'm not a huge fan of the wide-angle image captured by it, there are quite a few things I like about the Lorex 2K Battery Video Doorbell. The battery has outlasted my Eufy Battery Doorbell for the past couple of months, which needs charging about every other month.
The Lorex 2K Battery Doorbell is available for $180 and is the perfect video doorbell for anyone with a Lorex camera system in their home. But it's also a great substitute for a Ring video doorbell, as you can enjoy many of the same benefits without paying for a subscription. The fact that you can also opt for wired installation to use your existing chime and expand the internal storage with a microSD card (up to 256GB) takes it to the next level.