Tapo’s new flagship doorbell camera does more for less

The Tapo D225 is something of a unicorn. The newest flagship doorbell from TP-Link’s smart home brand Tapo, this dual-powered camera has free 24/7 local recording and free smart alerts for people, packages, and pets — all for under $100. Free continuous video recording (CVR) is almost unheard of, especially without requiring a hub, and especially at this price. Plus, most companies make you pay monthly for all those smart alerts.

The Tapo can work on battery or be hardwired to your doorbell wiring (although it’s not a true wired doorbell). You need a microSD card for free recording and CVR, and the doorbell must be wired to record continuously. There is the option of cloud storage starting at $2.79 per month for 30 days of video history (cheaper than most of the competition). The Tapo D225 launches today alongside the more budget, battery-only Tapo D210 ($59.99), which doesn’t have CVR or package detection.

That continuous recording feature, which Tapo calls Always On Mode, is the D225’s best feature. It gets around the back-of-the-head problem that afflicts most doorbells that don’t use wires for continuous power. They take a few seconds to wake up when they detect motion, so sometimes all you see is the back of the person’s head as they walk away.

The Tapo D225 is a 2K-capable video doorbell that, as mentioned, works both with and without wires. Hooking it up to your doorbell wiring lets you enable continuous video recording, but that feature requires you to bypass your existing chime (a plug-in chime is included). It also trickle-charges the 10,000mAh battery, so if your power goes out the buzzer will continue to work.

If you go battery-only, Tapo says it can last up to eight months on a single charge, but you will have to remove the whole doorbell to recharge it. CVR doesn’t work in wireless mode. Instead, the doorbell can record clips locally to a microSD card or the cloud.