TP-Link Tapo Video Doorbell Camera D235

Verdict

The TP-Link Tapo Video Doorbell Camera D235 might be the perfect smart doorbell. While it’s big, and it could do with better battery life, it’s easy to fit, and comes with a really loud chime.

This doorbell combines good quality video with smart AI-driven notifications that actually work, letting you know about people, pets or packages without plaguing you with false alarms. Best of all, it does all this without the need for either a subscription or a dedicated hub – you’ll just need a Micro SD card on which to store the recordings.

Introduction

If the TP-Link Tapo Video Doorbell Camera D235 looks familiar, that’s because it’s essentially the UK version of the Tapo D225 doorbell.

That’s a great starting point, but the D235 has a slightly better camera with a higher resolution. Just like its US cousin, the Tapo D235 doesn’t require a hub and can be used either with or without doorbell wiring.

The Tapo D235 covers almost everything you could want from a video doorbell. It offers a live view of what’s going on outside your door and onboard AI lets it spot cars, people, pets or packages, sending you a notification about them or any callers, who you can talk to over the built-in speaker. There’s even a deafening wireless chime in the box.

Laudably, as with other Tapo cameras, the D235 doorbell doesn’t need a subscription to get the most from it. The Tapo Care cloud package is truly optional – you’ll only need it if you want to store recordings online.

Design and Features

• Big and chunky
• Wired or battery powered
• Excellent app

It might not be as stylish as the Google Nest Doorbell, but the TP-Link Tapo Video Doorbell Camera D235 looks good enough for its size. It’s a chunky beast, unavoidably so, thanks to its built-in 10,000mAh battery.

TP-Link says this could power it for up to seven months, although the real figure is likely to be much shorter if you live in a busy, built-up area. Alternatively, you could hook the D235 up to a transformer to trickle charge the battery.

TP-Link provides a flexible set of mounts, which include horizontal and vertical shims to let you tilt the picture into exactly the right spot. You’re unlikely to need them, thanks to the camera’s incredible field of view – facing straight forward it could capture almost anything in front of my house. There’s a choice of screws, or two different sticky mounts, making this a quick and easy device to fit.

It’s great that the D235 doesn’t need a special hub: you simply use the app to connect it to your Wi-Fi network. One potential issue is that you’ll need a decent signal outside your front door. I was, however, disappointed to find that this doorbell doesn’t work with channels 12 or 13 in the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi band. Devices sold outside of the US ought to support them.

The app walks you through the physical installation of the doorbell, before reminding you to charge it if you’re relying on battery power – there’s a cable, but no charger in the box.

One potential issue with the lack of hub is that this doorbell relies on onboard MicroSD card storage. If the doorbell is stolen, your recordings are gone. You can deter this by enabling the piercing removal alarm, but if it’s essential to avoid it, you will have to subscribe to Tapo Care cloud storage.

Once installed, you need to pair the TP-Link Tapo Video Doorbell Camera D235 with its supplied chime. You can also add any existing Tapo chimes, or a hub such as the Tapo H100. I found the chime’s default sound far too loud, but you can adjust its ring tone and volume.

The Tapo app is great. It’s easy to add, manage and use the D235, which you can add to the Favourites tab for quick access. Android users can also add a camera widget to their homescreen, giving a regularly updated snapshot of what’s going on, and a quick link to open the live feed. It’s easy to browse recordings, too, and filter them by different event classes such as vehicles or people.

This doorbell can be scheduled in hourly blocks. You can set it not to record, to record on events, or to record constantly – although the last is only available if you’re using wired power. The app also lets you choose between different night modes – I prefer Doorbell mode, which uses infrared light unless an event is detected, upon which the D235 will switch on its spotlight and record in colour. It’s worth mentioning that this light isn’t bright enough to be a deterrent: it’s just enough to allow colour recording.

I was pleased to see that the TP-Link Tapo Video Doorbell Camera D235 has the same powerful AI detection features as the D225. It can spot movement, and classify people, pets, vehicles and packages appearing in its field of view. Just as importantly, you can define activity zones for each function, letting you concentrate on the areas you need to cover. This is essential to get meaningful notifications and avoid false alarms outside anything other than the quietest doorway.

The D235 supports Google Home and Amazon Alexa, and you can also use it to trigger other Tapo devices. This would, for example, let you turn on or change the colour of a Tapo smart bulb when someone rang the front door, or when it detected movement – that could be a good way to light up the driveway or front path when you come home at night.

You can also use the doorbell ring as a trigger in Google Home, which would let you do something similar with non-Tapo devices. The D235 doesn’t support Matter or IFTTT, though.

Performance

• Very good AI and filtering performance
• Great image quality
• Fast notifications

I live in a comparatively challenging spot for video doorbells, set back only about five metres from a busy road and pavement.

I needed to adjust each of the detection features separately, excluding the bushes beside our drive from motion detection, and excluding the road and pavement from everything else. That worked to filter out almost every false alarm, but as with the D225, the TP-Link Tapo Video Doorbell Camera D235 kept picking up passing vehicles even when I’d completely excluded the road from its activity zone – I had to turn the feature off.

With this done, the doorbell was perfect, typically notifying me almost instantly when it detected various things, or when someone pressed the bell. Impressively, even at night it would usually detect and notify me about people outside even before they’d had a chance to press the bell – its AI detection features really seem to work. Just as importantly, I received no false alarms during my tests, although the D235 would sometimes classify items my partner and I were carrying as packages.

The combination of AI, inbuilt lighting and a busy environment took a toll on this doorbell’s battery life. Over 10 days of use in cool conditions, its fully charged battery dropped to 79%. That suggests I’d need to recharge it about every seven or eight weeks, which, while not awful, would be a bit of an inconvenience. In rural areas or at the end of a longer driveway, I’d expect it to last considerably longer.

This camera’s very wide field of view is impressive – it was impossible to approach my door undetected with it operating. I was also pleased with its wide dynamic range: looking north and heavily shaded, it could expose almost everything from the shadows around my car to the bright blue autumn sky beyond, with just the very brightest region overexposed.

Recordings were generally sharp and detailed, especially in the day. As the shadows lengthened, digital artefacts became more visible, with more blockiness creeping in, particularly around areas of movement.

All the same, the D235 could film in colour well into the evening, only finally switching to infrared mode when the sky was almost completely dark, as in the left image below. Here, and in full night (right), the doorbell coped excellently with reflected infrared from a thick porch support passing down the middle of its view, still managing to expose callers and other details well.

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