LaView ONE Halo HD 3MP 2K Wi-Fi Doorbell Camera, Two-Way Audio, 180° Wide Angle, Weatherproof Front Door Security Camera, Wired Video Doorbell, Door Camera

The media could not be loaded.  I purchased the 5MP camera system from LaView last year. The system works great and we need a doorbell camera because we lost 2 packages during the holiday season. We chose the LaView One Halo doorbell since this is the only one that can connect to our DVR and it allows 24/7 recording on the internal hard drive free of charge. That is essential to us, especially since we heard that our neighbor didn’t get much help from her video doorbell for a lost package claim. Her doorbell cam only records when motion event is detected. Only with continuous recording can you get footage of the time on the courier’s record to prove that nothing was actually delivered during that time frame.Installation was better than I expected after I learned that the doorbell camera’s power voltage was only 18V. Still make sure you shut down the main power just in case. I only found the instruction video on LaView’s previous generation doorbell camera, but I was able to get the gist from that video. This new generation came with 2 angled brackets. I didn’t get a chance to use them but it’s cool if you have slim door frame or the old doorbell was perpendicular to the door. I had to install the power booster to the chime as we got buzzing sound from it after installing the camera. The included instructions didn’t illustrate this very clearly though. Basically, you need to replace the wiring to the chime with the power booster. In my case, I unplugged the original wiring to the TRANS and connect it to the white cable, then I connected the other end of the white cable to the TRANS. Same for the FRONT wiring and the black cable. There are instructions in the LaView One app as well. You may find something helpful there if you have difficulties. If you follow those instructions patiently and carefully, there shouldn’t be any trouble at all in installing the camera.Setting up the camera is super easy, as I expected. After restoring the main power, irrc, it took me less than 3 minutes to get the camera feed on my phone. I only needed to scan the QR code on the camera label and enter the password to my Wifi network. I have the camera connected to our 5G Wifi to get less interference from our other mobile devices within the wireless network. I read reviews somewhere else saying if you have ios 10 and below, you may get a more complicated manual mode. If that’s the case, borrow an Android phone or iphone with ios 11 and up for initial setup.The app interface is as smooth as my DVR cameras. The 3MP clarity is much higher than the other doorbell cameras from my research. You get a lot more detail in the picture with real time 30 frames per second. What surprised me is how vivid the camera’s color is during the day. I have to say I like the way my front yard looks on the doorbell camera more than how it looks on my iphone. LaView’s website stated the camera is equipped with a Starlight lens, similar to the 5MP system, to produce color night imaging. The camera produces the night imaging in color as good as the bullet cameras from my other system. Note: we do have a porch light to supply additional ambient lighting to the camera. If it gets too dark, I believe the camera will switch to black and white night vision (that’s what we learn from our handy man when we installed the other system).When it comes to the doorbell function, the two-way audio feature is amazing. I can clearly hear anyone speaking near my door via my phone. The push notification also works more accurately than my DVR system. I get a lot less false notifications as the doorbell cam has a secondary sensor to only detect humans, so I don’t get notification triggered by trees, rain or snow. I also excluded the street in the camera’s detection zone, so I only get notifications related to movement at my door. You can customize the area and distance for the human detection you want from the Laview One mobile app very easily. The app also gives you the option to customize the time schedule to receive the notification, but I didn’t get a chance to use it.The most important feature to me is the camera’s ability to connect to our LaView DVR. LaView demonstrates the process for this in step-by-step instruction articles, which makes this really straightforward. Basically, you just need to add the camera as an IP camera. I entered the doorbell camera’s IP address and password in the DVR menu and it popped up within 10 seconds in the DVR menu (Note: the default password to the doorbell cam is the verification code on the label of the camera). After that I set up the camera on a continuously recording schedule in the DVR menu, just like the other cameras I have connected to the DVR. There are people stating motion detection didn’t work well when you connect to the DVR. Didn’t test that as I mainly use the doorbell cam for 24/7 recording. So, now the doorbell cam is keeping all the footage on the internal 2TB hard drive of the DVR, and I have the continuously recorded footage on the camera for weeks. I also put a 32GB memory card in the camera as back up storage. Just in case the DVR or the hard drive fails. Like other doorbell cameras, the LaView One Halo camera only records motion detection footage on the memory card. That’s easy to understand as you don’t want to override the memory card too frequently. I kind of want to try cloud storage recording as well, just in case an intruder grabs both the camera and DVR and I lose all of my locally-stored footage. Unfortunately, the cloud storage isn’t available yet in the app. LaView says there will be an update available for this feature in February. I’ll update the review if there’s more information.I read some reviews and people got the camera working with Amazon Alexa. I’m not a huge fan of that, but it’s always something cool to show off to visitors. Enabling the Alexa skill was straightforward. Search LaView ONE Alexa skill and make sure you disable Image encryption in the mobile App. My Fire 8 tablet started to stream the camera 6-7 seconds after I called ‘Alexa, show doorbell camera’. The streaming delay is more than my mobile app probably because of my Fire tablet.Below are some thoughts and improvements I think the One Halo doorbell has. The App for setting doorbell camera is different from the DVR system. For the system I used LaView Connect. To set up the doorbell I had to download LaView ONE. I figured out that I can see both the DVR system and the doorbell from either App if I logged into the same account. But it did confuse me a little bit at the beginning. LaView customer support told me LaView ONE has better support for the One Halo doorbell camera. It also has the device sharing feature to give camera access to your friends and family. Another thing that bothers me is the default password of the camera (the verification code) is printed on the label on the back panel of the camera. It bothered me when I was adding the camera to the DVR, I had to unmount the camera to get the code. Therefore, if you have plan to add the doorbell to your NVR or DVR, write down the verification code BEFORE mounting it.Overall, this is a great doorbell camera. With the highest resolution on a doorbell camera, and the capability to connect to a DVR for continuous recording, LaView provided the best security camera solution for my house. I am recommending LaView to all my friends and colleagues who need a doorbell camera or security system. I am very satisfied with the high-quality products from Laview.

The picture quality and the ability to choose a cloud subscription or to use a SD card is why I bought this product. I get notifications from the app which was easy to set up. For the value of $150, you will hard pressed to find a better product.Update: purchased this 1.5 years ago and it stopped working. I have tried multiple times to contact customer support and no response. I would recommend buying another product with good customer support.Update 2: still no response after 3 months. Ended up buying a different product. Nonexistent customer support.

Great product, works wonderful, rings a little slow to my phone and some times I miss the door but defiantly records well and sound is great. Night vision is very good... no cloud fees!! Great product!! Only issue I had was needs a very good transformer. Needs 24 volt one or wouldn’t work also would burn out the others. So finicky install which is why I knocked off a star

Overall the hardware install for this doorbell was laughably easy. Everything in the setup video (search for "How To Install ONE Halo Doorbell | LaView Security" on YouTube to find the video as I cannot link it here) right up until 5:46 is an absolute breeze to set up. It's the software configuration that is a nightmare. From 5:46 to 5:52 of the video took me about two days to muddle through.I got a replacement thinking that perhaps there was an error with the sticker (wrong password, bad QR code, etc) only to discover that I was in the same situation. It just kept telling me that my "device password was incorrect" even though my phone was able to connect to the doorbell's wifi with no issues.(see attachments)I tried moving my router closer and renaming my wifi and password to something ludicrously simple, but that still didn't help (still kept telling me that the device password was incorrect, even though it copied it correctly to my clipboard, tried typing it manually as well and still didn't accept it).I was able to add the device to my account but I had to dig up my wife's old iPad and use the iOS version of the app. I still had issues with the iOS app, but it at least found the doorbell and was able to add it to my WiFi.The next issue was trying to view the video feed and it asked me to enter the password on the back of the doorbell to decrypt and view the feed. Of course, that password didn't work and I have no idea why (I've tried it with uppercase and lowercase letters). The app had the option to reset the password, so when I tried that route, it e-mailed me a code and I entered that code into the app when it asked and.........nothing. The app just went back to the settings page. So I was unable to unencrypt my video feed because the provided password didn't work, and I had no way to reset it (that would work). I was just about to take it off the wall and return it for a refund when I found an option in the app settings to turn off "Image Encryption". Unfortunately, it asks you for the same encryption password on the back of the doorbell, which of course doesn't work. The good news is that the app is horribly written, so if you just hit "cancel" and exit the settings page, it will still save your settings and de-encrypt your video feed! So I was successful in setting up my LaView camera and able to view the feed (when not encrypted) after a couple of days of jumping through hoops, and with absolutely no help (or even a response) from the LaView support team. I don't really care if the feed is encrypted or not as I could care less if anyone else has access to the feed of my front porch.The device has a pretty severe fish-eye lens that can really distort the image (made it impossible to see the logo on a shirt of someone who approached my door), but the hardware seems great otherwise.IR is fantastic, and the only thing that makes this camera one to avoid is the software. I've configured the detection range to the shortest possible 5ft because if you use anything else, it will go off when cars drive by..........about 30 feet away. This isn't a huge issue as I really only want it to notify when people approach my door. As for the notifications, they work pretty well. It is very reliable as it goes to my phone every time it detects movement. Where it fails again is when someone actually pushes the button. It is supposed to notify you when someone rings the doorbell (my mechanical doorbell barely makes a noise when the button is pressed, but I'm guessing that's because I need a more powerful transformer as 16v doesn't appear to be enough), and it only goes to my phone when I'm on the same wireless network, and even when I'm at home on the WiFi it only alerts about 20% of the time, so that feature is essentially useless.I even got my Hikvision NVR to see the feed from the RTS feed, but I ran into a disappointing limitation. When I try to set up a motion detection event through the Hikvision NVR (as I was planning on ditching the LaView app and just using the Hikvision app for everything), it tells me that "The camera does not support the function." I REALLY wish I knew that it didn't support motion detection as that is pretty much the only reason I bought it. Perhaps you can't do motion detection with RTS and it requires ONVIF, I'm not sure, but this issue really bites. I'll probably keep it until something better comes out and I'll just have to learn to live with the LaView app and just record everything (instead of just events) to the NVR, but this would have been a definite deal-breaker if I'd had known.Another fun "feature" is that when I first tried setting it up, it asked me to test the signal strength to my router, so when I clicked that button it loaded a utility that tested your signal strength, but everything was in Chinese (I assume). Since I can't read Chinese, I had no idea if my signal strength was suitable, but I moved the router right next to the doorbell just to be safe.(see attachment)Also, EVERY TIME I open the app, I get "Operation failed, failed to get the device list, please check your network" with a retry button. If I close the app and open it again, it then works......every......single.......time.(see attachment)Occasionally when I try to playback a video, I just get an Operation Failed error and some files just aren't playable.(see attachment)The last thing I didn't like about this camera is that there is no room behind it for the marrettes so right now, I have the wires sticking out to the sides of the doorbell until I can find time to chisel out a hole to tuck them into (my old cheap button doorbell even had room for two small marrettes.(see attachment)I would rate this model an "avoid" for the software issues, no ONVIF, and overly difficult setup.*UPDATE*As I was typing up this review, I noticed that there was a new firmware update for the doorbell which ADDS ONVIF SUPPORT! I just took the update and it indeed now supports ONVIF. I just readded it to my NVR using ONVIF instead of RTS and I can now use the motion detection through my NVR instead! If they could fix the notification reliability when someone pressed the doorbell button to allow me to answer my door from anywhere, I would move this up to a "Buy" (even with the incredibly difficult setup, you really only need to do that once).