There are not many smart doorbell products with Apple HomeKit compatibility in the market today. Aqara Smart Video Doorbell G4 is one of them. It combines simple design with great features. This doorbell records 1080p with 162-degree field of view, and a horizontal 16:9 aspect ratio. It is compatible with HomeKit Secure Video, supports local streaming to Google and Alexa smart displays, or you can also put microSD card up to 512GB in it to record videos. Aqara offers optional paid subscription for cloud storage and some other premium features: intelligent alarm recording, filter events, unlimited storage (to store videos up to 30 days) and offline review from app. From 3+ months of usage, most users would be ok to skip the paid subscription. The cloud storage is also available from Apple HomeKit (if you have paid iCloud storage starting from 50GB plan), which will store recording on the last 10 days without reducing our 50GB limit.

Aqara Video Doorbell G4 product consists of two units: the external camera with doorbell button, and the internal hub unit. The external unit has two power modes. It can be powered by 6x AA batteries, or it can hardwired. HomeKit Secure Video is famous for requiring constant power, so it is generally recommended to choose wired power if your circumstances allow it. The internal unit has built-in speaker for the chime sound, and it needs to be always powered using USB-C cable. HomeKit connection and memory card storage are actually handled by the internal hub. This is a smart strategy to reduce the processing required on the external unit, hence saving power when used in battery mode.

It is worth to note that when used in wired power mode, this doorbell, it will start recording when it detects a person walking towards the door. When used in battery mode, the recording only starts when the person already close to the door, so it is a few seconds late. Even though its official website promises 4 months of use with 1 set of batteries, in my experience, real world usage is closer to 8-10 weeks.

There are several fancy features that make Aqara Video Doorbell G4 unique. First, we can customise the chime sound. There are 3 built-in options, but we can customise it to any sound in MP3 format. Next, it offers on-device face recognition (up to 30 faces). This means that the face recognition does not require some cloud service to work. Equipped with 2 way audio, we can answer people on the door through this smart doorbell. An interesting feature listed in the official website is that it allows voice changing, making our voice sounds like robot or 3 other options. I could not seem to find this option in the app. Maybe it has not been implemented.

Video quality is decent. It fits the purpose as a doorbell camera and nothing beyond that. Night vision works using infrared. It is not the best quality ever, but somewhat acceptable for a product with so many features at this price level. Indoor chime unit (the hub) is quite loud, so you will likely hear when someone pressed the doorbell button.

Other notable feature include face alerts, loitering alerts and tamper alerts. I turned on this tamper alert option and my internal unit rang loudly when I tried to change battery the first time. Lesson learned to always turn it off first before changing batteries. The tamper alert feature itself is useful to deal with people trying to steal or break the doorbell.

A lot of G4 features are also offered by Apple HomeKit and I primarily use Apple HomeKit. for my smart home setup. People who pair exclusively with the Aqara app (or with Google or Alexa) might have different experience.

Overall, Aqara Video Doorbell G4 is a solid product and would get my recommendation. It is almost funny that I bought this even though I was not even in the market for a smart doorbell.