ecobee smart wired video doorbell: hands-on review

There’s one name many of us think about when we think of smart doorbells. But an upstart Canadian thermostat brand wants you to start thinking of them instead. Meet ecobee Smart Doorbell.
In this review, I’m going to try the doorbell out in my home, by spending several weeks with it. I’ll show you what it’s like to install, how the alerts work, and how this doorbell cleverly integrates with another super popular ecobee device. I’ll wrap things up with the pros and the cons and let you know if I think I can recommend this home security device for you.

Why consider ecobee?

ecobee is a brand that needs no introduction if you shopped for a smart thermostat over the past decade. The Canada-based company kickstarted the smart thermostat golden age with their launch of the original ecobee Smart in 2008 and later established their reputation as a thermostat pioneer with feature-rich successors.

But with the recent release of the ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium back in 2022, ecobee has made it clear that the company doesn’t want consumers to just view them as a smart thermostat brand. The smart hub features of the Smart Thermostat Premium serve as a trojan horse of sorts into a broader ecosystem under construction. ecobee’s Smart Security subscription service (previously known as Haven) is also proof of ecobee’s strong ambitions to cover the other areas of the smart home. And this leads to one of the pillars supporting this new ecosystem – ecobee’s very first doorbell product called the ecobee Smart Doorbell.

Why is ecobee entering the smart doorbell ring when there’s so many strong contenders with far more experience? Not only does the company want to expand its ecosystem, but it also wants to use its expertise in product design in hopes of enticing customers to give their ecobee thermostat a bestie. And make no mistake, the ecobee Smart Doorbell is indeed the ecobee Smart Thermostat’s bestie and you’ll notice it from the packaging to the unboxing, to the shared ecobee app.

Watch my full video review of ecobee doorbell

What you get: ecobee Smart Doorbell

This product gives you a slim smart doorbell with camera and an included chime that will mean your doorbell actually rings inside the house and sends an alert to your phone via an app. Amazingly, if you also have an ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium, your doorbell alerts will come in on the thermostat video screen also. Quite futuristic!

You can use the ecobee app to review past events or to answer the doorbell or simply take a look at the camera in real time, since there’s also a two-way microphone. While there is a subscription fee for some of the more advanced features, many users will be happy with what you get for free.

What’s in the Box?

Being the eco-friendly company ecobee’s known for, ecobee packaged their Smart Doorbell in a small box made of recycled material and complete absence of plastic, glue, and dyes. Lifting the tab reveals the doorbell itself and underneath is a wedge mount, a small paper pouch containing the screws and accessories, and a chime adapter… which we’ll get to…

It will also be worth pointing out that you don’t need to pay for a monthly subscription to use the doorbell, but going for the free option does come with some limitations. We’ll get to that also coming up.

Installation & Set up

ecobee thermostats are often praised not only for their ease of installation, but their extensive documentation covering numerous scenarios and the ecobee Smart Doorbell is predictably taking the same approach.

However, the box doesn’t include any form of printed manual or even quick guide. That’s because the ecobee app guides you throughout the installation process and for those who are still on the fence of buying this doorbell, ecobee has an entire site portal filled with installation guides, a friendly installation video, and wiring diagrams.

Yes, wiring is involved with the ecobee Smart Doorbell because the doorbell does not run on a battery. ecobee made this choice to allow the doorbell to reliably operate for a long time and under extreme temperatures. If you’re intimidated by the prospect of hardwiring a doorbell, I’m here to tell you you don’t need to be.

This is most definitely a DIY project, and ecobee gives you great, detailed instructions in the app. With that said it can be a bit confusing the first time you do it, and if you’re just not comfortable with wiring, ecobee offers a “Find a Pro” service to assist you. If you can’t find someone, ecobee also offers live chat support.

I’ve installed probably a dozen video doorbells. Let’s walk through it; I’m going to give you a good idea of what’s involved, but by no means is this a detailed installation ‘how to’ post.

How to install

The first step should always be turning the power off to your doorbell and chime box. While most doorbells use low-voltage wiring, it’s always better safe than sorry.

Next we’ll move to installing the included chime adapter to your chime box, and your chime box is the thing in your house that makes the ding-dong sound. The adapter will work with most digital and mechanical chimes made by over 40 manufacturers, but there are a few exceptions laid out in their chime compatibility page.

Essentially you will connect the chime adaptor which is a small rectangular dongle with a bunch of different wires sticking out into the wiring inside your doorbell chime box. The app walks you through which colour wires to connect where and it’s quite easy to figure out. If there is no room inside your chime box to tuck the adapter, you can set it on top.
Next, you’ll need to remove your old doorbell if you have one.

There’s usually just a couple of screws. If your doorbell’s wires are extremely short as mine are, ecobee helpfully includes wire extenders to give you some more length to work with. These attach to the wires with orange marrettes. This might look a little Frankenstein, but it should all come together.

Decide here if you want to use the wedge kit mount. The wedge turns the smart doorbell on a bit of an angle so it can see the approach to your door better. From there, you just attach the backplate to your door frame.

Next, attach the wires to the screw-terminals in the back of the doorbell and tighten them. Finally, hang the doorbell on to the backplate and secure it with a security screw on the bottom using the included Allen key.

In total, installation took me about 20 minutes.

ecobee Smart Doorbell Features

In some aspects, the ecobee Smart Doorbell Camera feels like a first generation product, but it doesn’t show up empty-handed coming out with some big swings.

Design and Build Quality

The doorbell seems well made and sturdy and it’s IP65 certified for weather resistance withstanding a broad temperature spectrum ranging from -13 to 113°F (-25C to 45C). Since we haven’t had any extreme weather over the last several weeks here in Calgary where I’m doing my testing I will have to wait and see what the weather resistance is like.

Doorbell Camera

The doorbell uses a 5-megapixel camera recording at Full HD 1080p resolution with HDR support. That is essentially the same resolution as most other video doorbells on the market today. HDR helps keep the colours more true to life even in low light, and I can say the videos were definitley colourful and easy to view even in bright or low light.

You can always take a live look at your doorbell camera, with or without a plan, but if you don’t opt for ecobee Smart Security Plan, you won’t be able to access recordings of any events. ecobee will instead save what it calls snapshots which are essentially still photos. With a subscription you get 2 minute videos, saved for 30 days in the cloud.

Smart Security Subscription

It’s time to talk about that monthly subscription.

Subscribing to ecobee’s Smart Security Subscription for $5 USD or $7 CAD a month unlocks the full capabilities of the ecobee Smart Doorbell Camera. With one, the doorbell camera will record 2 minute event snippets and store them in the cloud for 30 days. These video snippets can appear as notifications too.

ecobee’s Smart Detection subscription also lets you get package alerts too. Finally, the subscription lets you use the system as a pseudo home alarm, if you also opt to add ecobee door and window sensors. During an armed state, you can let the doorbell play a siren when triggered. ecobee is offering a two-month free trial to all new owners which is a fantastic deal especially since an active subscription gives extra functionality to ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium owners.

I opted to go for the monthly plan and I think the cost is quite reasonable and I always recommend getting a recording subscription, and in most cases you can never go back and buy your older recordings if something ever did happen.

Camera quality

Back to the camera. The camera is reasonably sharp with things that are close to the camera; the lens has a more rectangular aspect ratio that’s taller, which actually allows you to see what’s near the foot of your door so you can see if there are things like packages there.

Helpfully you can use the ecobee app to pause and zoom in on any imagery you want. The camera’s resolution is even good enough to zoom in on license plates about 20 feet away which I found extremely impressive.

ecobee Smart Doorbell Camera can make clever use of its zooming capabilities with the Smart Focus feature. Whenever a person enters the scene, you can enable the camera to lock focus to the individual and pan and zoom ensuring the person stays in the center of the frame without altering the resolution. I found this worked really well. You just need to toggle the setting on in the app.

Detection

ecobee’s Smart Detection technology combines the use of radar motion detection with machine learning to minimize false alerts and promptly respond to people showing up. The cool thing about this is that it works without the subscription.

Like other doorbells, you can designate an Activity Zone so any activity outside the zone won’t trigger any notifications. This works if your camera overlooks your neighbours property or a busy sidewalk and you don’t want alerts every time someone passes by.

My several weeks of testing I found the app was extremely good at only alerting me to people in the frame. Occasionally it would also alert me to things like a car pulling into the driveway but I was quite impressed with how few useless or false alerts I got.

Package detection

The doorbell will also detect and alert you to packages placed in view of the camera, for this you will need a Smart Security Subscription. Even though I opted for the subscription, I found that I did not ever get a package alert. The alerts I did get when a package was delivered came in as a ‘person’ alert; possibly because it was being delivered by… a person. But I wasn’t clear on what the package alerts were supposed to do or how they were supposed to work so I reached out to ecobee’s team for clarification.

Smart Home Integration: Alexa

Smart home integration is one area where ecobee breaks a trend. Unlike the ecobee thermostat products, the ecobee Doorbell doesn’t have the tightest integration with Apple’s ecosystem. HomeKit Secure Video is unsupported, but you can still access the Live View in the Home app and use the two-way talk feature. I’m not a huge fan of Apple HomeKit or working with Siri, so I wasn’t worried about this. Instead I moved swiftly to my preferred digital Butler; the Amazon Alexa ecosystem.

I had the Alexa skill linked up in seconds using the ecobee app, and I was able to ask my Echo Show speakers to show me the front door. I will say there is a not-unsubstantial delay in asking for the camera view and it being delivered; it can run from about 6 to 8 seconds which seems a bit longer than other cameras and doorbells I’ve tried. I suppose this may only be an issue if someone is running to drop something on your porch and taking off immediately; if someone rang your doorbell and is waiting for you you’ll definitely still see them.

Most of the video doorbells I have tested and reviewed do have some small delay, so this isn’t uncommon. Back in March 2024, numerous Echo Show owners had trouble viewing the Smart Door Camera Live View and it took more than 2 weeks for ecobee to acknowledge the issue. Then it took several more weeks before fixing the issue and tagging the issue as resolved in late May of this year. This is a reminder that products within their ecosystem work best while others may enjoy some interoperability but won’t enjoy the top priority when it comes to support. So at least as of now, you don’t have to tear down that Nest or Amazon smart thermostat just yet. But the way it integrates with an ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium might just tempt you.

ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium Integration

ecobee is so confident in its integration with their flagship thermostat that the company is selling a bundle including both products and some extra SmartSensor accessories.
That’s beacuse the thermostat’s 4-inch display can turn into a viewfinder for the doorbell on the fly and the quality looks stunning. Seeing a live feed on this display looks surprisingly futuristic especially since that wide viewing angle can cram the entire body of a person without looking so distorted. You can even talk to the person outside like an intercom by simply tapping the “Talk” button on the thermostat. The thermostat also doubles as a speaker for the ringing of the doorbell, since it has a built-in speaker.

Overall Thoughts: ecobee Smart Doorbell Camera

Overall, I have to say I’ve been really impressed with the ecobee Smart Wired Doorbell. So much so, I have decided not to reinstall the other brand of smart doorbell that has lived out here for several years.

Let’s go over the pros and the cons to find out why.

On the pro side, I found the alerts were actually very clever and helpful and I wasn’t getting over-notified. The recordings are easy to look at and I can zoom in on anything I want to see, and they download to my phone in seconds if I need them. The camera’s resolution is standard, but I feel like it is still high-quality. I love that the doorbell integrates with Amazon Alexa so I can view it on any of my Alexa enabled screens, and the fact that I can also take a peek at the camera when someone rings the doorbell by looking at my ecobee thermostat is an extra treat. I actually feel like the monitoring fee is relatively affordable and worth the money for the 30 days of cloud recording and the longer 2 minute video files.

So what are the downsides?

There is no battery back up option with this camera as there are with some other brands. That means if you lose power you also lose your doorbell. I have also long been advocating for higher resolution video doorbells that offer 4K video recordings. This is still a bit out of reach and I’m not aware of any brands offering that yet. Not deducting any points for this since the camera quality is good and it’s not promising to be anything other than an HD video camera. But just a wish for the future.

In short, I’ve really been enjoying my ecobee experience and in addition to keeping the doorbell, I’ve also locked in the ecobee Smart Thermostat as another permanent fixture. And they do work amazingly well together.

The ecobee Smart Doorbell Camera sells for about $160 USD / $220 CAD and you can get it from ecobee, Amazon and other electronics retailers.

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