Best Doorbell Cameras for Low Lighting 2025

1. SimpliSafe Video Doorbell Pro - Best Video Doorbell Monitoring

SecurityScore:

9.4 /10

877-621-6572

View Packages Links to SimpliSafe

877-621-6572

View Packages Links to SimpliSafe

While SimpliSafe’s Video Doorbell Pro can be used as a standalone product, we only recommend it when used alongside a SimpliSafe security system. But, when used with a full security system, it offers better security than any other video doorbell, largely thanks to the optional active monitoring.

>> Learn More: SimpliSafe Video Doorbell Pro Pricing in 2025

Active Professional Monitoring

What makes SimpliSafe’s Video Doorbell Pro stand out above the competition is their active professional monitoring subscription. It requires a SimpliSafe Outdoor Camera as well, but with the combination, SimpliSafe’s monitoring agents can access your video doorbell when the outdoor camera detects a potential threat. Then, they can use the two-way talk of your video doorbell and outdoor camera to scare away the potential threat. We cover all the details in our SimpliSafe review.

As you might expect, this capability isn’t cheap. SimpliSafe prices active monitoring at $49.99 per month for overnight protection or $79.99 per month for 24/7 protection. That’s less than the competition charges for similar features, such as Ring’s Virtual Security Guard at $99 per month, though. Check out our SimpliSafe vs Ring comparison for a complete breakdown.

Reliable

As a hardwired video doorbell that can replace almost any existing doorbell, you never need to worry about charging its battery. In our experience, people tend to forget to charge their batteries more often than they’d like to admit and in the case of video doorbells, that can leave your home unprotected. You never need to worry about that with SimpliSafe’s Video Doorbell Pro.

Customizable Alert Sensitivity

No matter how good a video doorbell’s night vision is, its motion alerts are not going to be as accurate at night as they are during the day. We wish we could tell you otherwise, but it’s just not the case. That’s why SimpliSafe allows you to set different motion sensitivities for daytime and nighttime.

We adjusted ours to “High” sensitivity during the day and “Medium” sensitivity at night. This significantly cut down the amount of false alerts we got at night. And let’s face it, false alerts when we’re trying to get our beauty sleep at night are a lot more annoying than when we’re at work during the day.

2. ADT Doorbell Camera - Best Security System Doorbell Camera

SecurityScore:

9.3 /10

855-908-4461

View Packages Links to ADT

855-908-4461

View Packages Links to ADT

ADT is a home security brand, and like any of the best security systems, it offers doorbell cameras. We won’t go into too much detail about the doorbell from ADT – the Nest Doorbell (battery) – because it actually also made this list as a standalone device. What we will say, though, is that using the Nest Doorbell with ADT makes it even better. The low-light video quality doesn’t improve, but you’ll gain access to unique features such as Trusted Neighbor and video verification that you don’t get from a standalone Nest Doorbell, or most other doorbell cameras for that matter.

>> Learn More About ADT: Our 2025 ADT Home Security System Review

Video Verification and Trusted Neighbor

Since buying a Nest Doorbell from ADT links the device to a security system, you get some extra benefits. First is video verification, which would allow ADT’s monitoring center to confirm alarms through security camera footage, including from the Nest Doorbell. Trusted Neighbor, on the other hand, is a rule-based automation feature that uses Nest Doorbell’s facial recognition to identify and let designated trusted people in your home when needed. Both features require a monitoring plan from ADT (the Complete plan that ranges from $39.99 to $49.99 per month). Trusted Neighbor also requires a compatible smart lock.

Professional Installation

Note that ADT offers only the battery-powered version of the Nest Doorbell, and in our experience testing it as a standalone device, it’s very easy to install. We appreciate ADT’s professional installation service, though. The technician suggested a slightly different placement for our doorbell, and we believe he made the right call. His placement ultimately gave our doorbell better coverage of our front yard than what we had in mind.

Frequent Video Doorbell Deals

The Nest Doorbell (battery) costs $179.99. That’s the retail price from Google as well, so ADT’s pricing is not marked up. In fact, it’s the opposite. ADT often runs deals, and the company sometimes gives away the Nest Doorbell for free if you buy a participating package. Other times, it offers the doorbell camera at discounted prices. During the ADT Black Friday sale last year, for example, the pre-customized package that includes a doorbell camera – the Front Door Protection package – received a whopping 60 percent discount. That’s over $100 off of the $179.99 original retail price.

Keep in Mind: To take advantage of the best features – Trusted Neighbor and video verification – you need a professional monitoring plan. So when budgeting, make sure you take into account the $39.99 (for DIY ADT systems) to $49.99 (for professionally installed systems) monthly monitoring fee.

3. Lorex Video Doorbell - Best Image Quality

SecurityScore:

7.5 /10

View Packages Links to Lorex

View Packages Links to Lorex

The Lorex 2K doorbell cam may not have everything — like Siri integration (ouch!) — but the video quality is superb, even at night when many competitors head to Grainy Town. At $150, the wired model is 30 bucks cheaper than Lorex’s battery-powered video doorbell. Same features, permanent power source. Unless you don’t want to touch doorbell wires or you can’t get someone to do it for you, this is a great way to rid yourself of the dreaded “low battery alert” forever.

Sharp 2K Video

The Lorex 2K delivers precision video, with live feeds as clear as recorded clips. Two-way audio is also loud and clear, eliminating laggy, off-kilter convos. As long as you place the Lorex doorbell cam snugly next to your door, the extra-wide 164-degree field of view will easily cover your entire front-door area.

Color Night Vision

Low lighting wasn’t a problem for the Lorex 2K. Without any front-door illumination, you may notice slightly washed-out colors in color mode, but black-and-white IR footage is excellent. If you need to get a closer look at a potential perp from a distance, the Lorex 2K features a pretty handy 8x digital zoom. The wider viewing range, which is good for detecting activity at the fringes, may distort objects at greater distances, especially in low-light situations.

Local Storage

Local storage makes sense for plenty of homeowners. You escape monthly cloud-storage bills and keep your footage away from prying eyes. Ring users will know just what we mean. The Lorex 2K comes with 32 gigs of local storage, and it’s upgradable to 64 gigs.

4. Ring Wired Doorbell Pro - Best Motion Detection

SecurityScore:

9.2 /10

View on Amazon Links to Amazon.com

View on Amazon Links to Amazon.com

The $230 Ring Wired Doorbell Pro (known as Video Doorbell Pro 2 before) is an outlier on our $180-and-below list, but we’ve added it because the near-2K HDR Ring, with its square, top-to-bottom videos and six-second preroll footage, is pretty hard to ignore. The Wired Doorbell Pro is another wired option, so be prepared to get your hands dirty on the installation. You don’t have to sign up for a plan to use the Ring doorbell, though, but if you want cloud video storage, it will require a $4.99 monthly subscription.

Crystal Clear 1-by-1 HDR Video

The Ring Wired Doorbell Pro shoots in near 2K. The resolution is actually 1,536 by 1,536p, or 2.4MP, which is practically double the pixel density of the Nest Doorbell (see below). The Pro’s square aspect ratio is like an Instagram video. It doesn’t crop out traffic at the edges and it’s tall enough to capture a visitor head to toe. In low light, color video is crystal clear without any lag in notifications or buffering when you stream, thanks to the Pro’s high dynamic range (HDR) technology, similar to that of the Nest Doorbell.

Advanced Motion Detection

The wired Ring Pro doesn’t use a passive infrared (PIR) motion sensor like the battery-powered Ring Video Doorbell. It’s always on, and it will add up to six seconds of footage to the front of any motion-triggered event. That means you’ll never end up with a clip of a porch pirate’s back magically appearing on your stoop, which can happen with battery-powered video doorbells that are slower to trigger. You’ll capture his or her complete entrance and exit, which is a big security advantage.

Alexa Greetings

The Wired Doorbell Pro’s engineers went to town with native automations and integration with Alexa, which makes sense because Amazon is the parent company of Ring. You can program Alexa to tell an Amazon delivery driver where to leave your package, for example — and since the Ring Pro now has package detection, you’ll also know when the package has been dropped.

5. Nest Doorbell - Best Smart Home Integration

SecurityScore:

9.0 /10

View on Amazon Links To Amazon

View on Amazon Links To Amazon

Remember the Nest Doorbell? Besides being one of our top picks because of its ADT integration, we also like it as a standalone doorbell because of how well it plays with other smart home gadgets. But more on that later. In terms of low-light performance, the Nest Doorbell doesn’t quite match the clarity or range of the Lorex 2K. Still, it has HDR, which helps in the clarity of nighttime videos. Combine that with its four 850nm infrared LEDs, and you get more than sufficient low-light video quality from one of the top smart security brands.

High-Res Night Vision with CVR

Like the Nest Cam, the Nest Doorbell manages to deliver crisp video day or night — even with its punier resolution (1080p HD) and lower (6x) maximum zoom factor. And if you opt for the wired version, you can also get the option for continuous video recording. That is, if you’re willing to cough up $15 per month instead of the regular $8 per month you’d pay for a Nest Aware subscription.

Smart Home Integration

The Nest Doorbell works with all Google smart devices, plus Amazon Alexa. Apple HomeKit is a bust, however. Sorry, Apple folks. Basic stuff such as hooking up your doorbell to your Nest Hub or Nest Secure to see who’s at the door is predictably easy, but smart automations with third-party devices such as light bulbs and switches could get tricky. If this is your first plunge into Google’s smart ecosystem, you may want to check out integrations with your existing smart equipment before you commit.

Artificial Intelligence

The Nest Doorbell is a Google product, so it’s smart and AI-powered. Smart alerts are free and can distinguish people from other moving objects. The Nest Doorbell also supports advanced facial recognition — a feature they call Familiar Face Alerts — which lets you train your Nest camera to not only recognize a human, but also to recognize specific humans and alert you accordingly. The only rain on this AI parade is that Familiar Face Alerts isn’t free. You’ll need a basic Nest Aware plan to unlock it ($8 per month for unlimited Nest cameras).

6. Wyze Video Doorbell - Best Budget Camera

SecurityScore:

8.7 /10

View on Amazon Links to Amazon

View on Amazon Links to Amazon

A smart doorbell camera with 1080p HD color night vision that works with your Alexa- or Google-powered home for $29.99? Too good to be true? Nope. But there are a few things you should know about the dirt-cheap, 1080p Wyze Video Doorbell before you buy.

Full HD Video Quality at 3:4

Some top security cameras with less-than-stellar resolution load more info into their screens via extra-sensitive sensors, enhancing picture quality. Google Nest cams are good at this. Others have the numbers but stint a little on the goods. The Wyze Video Doorbell boasts a healthy 1080p resolution. That’s full HD on paper, but in the field, the camera’s lower processing power can’t quite compete with the Nest Doorbell. Still, the low-light image quality is very good for a device that costs about a third the price, and that’s what we’re here to talk about. The only other image-quality factor to consider with Wyze is the odd 3:4 aspect ratio, which gives you vertical portraits, not the wider landscape views you’re used to.

Wyze Lock-Compatible

Wyze is turning itself into a smart home powerhouse, so if you grab a Wyze Video Doorbell, it makes sense to pay a little more and walk away with a Wyze Lock too. You can get both for around $125. If you own both devices, you can open your front door for guests remotely via your doorbell. Sound good? Just remember that the Wyze Lock Bolt comes with a new deadbolt you have to install yourself.

Cost

At $35, the Wyze Video Doorbell is, hands-down, the best doorbell camera deal on our list. (You can actually grab the doorbell without the chime for $30!) But that price tag is a little deceptive. You can hypothetically use the Wyze Video Doorbell right out of the box without a subscription, but it would be difficult in practice. The problem is, Wyze gives you 12-second clips with five minutes of downtime in between, which is borderline useless. On the other hand, with Wyze’s $2.99 cloud storage plans — 30 days’ worth of back-to-back clips — you unlock package, pet, and vehicle detection. That’s an offer most Wyze users will literally not be able to refuse.

7. Arlo Video Doorbell - Best Field of View

SecurityScore:

9.1 /10

View Packages Links To Alder

View Packages Links To Alder

Arlo Video Doorbells are the most versatile smart buzzers we’ve tested, natively compatible with Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, and Samsung SmartThings. Video quality is high for a $130 (wired) doorbell camera. Its viewing range is a whopping 180 degrees, and its smart functions are impressive. The only catch? Unlocking all of Arlo’s goodies requires a $7.99 monthly investment.

1536p HDR IR Video

Arlo isn’t king of the hill when it comes to nighttime video. The 1536p HDR Essential Video Doorbell can go head to head with the Ring Pro 2 — by day at least. Come nighttime, without color night vision, the Essential’s black-and-white IR shoots a bit muddy. Its massively wide 180-degree field of view, on the other hand, is impressive. The only caveat is that the 1-by-1 frame, stretched so wide, can pull objects out of shape.

Flexible Smart Integrations

One of the issues you find with many premium doorbell cameras is smart-home integration. When a buzzer isn’t compatible with your ecosystem, you have to search for hacks and middleman platforms. That’s generally a hassle, no matter how easy the patch is. Kudos to Arlo for solving the problem by allowing homeowners to connect natively to all major smart device vendors. Apple households, in particular, will appreciate this.

Messages

We have a soft spot for smart doorbells that can do tricks, such as barking at prowlers (scroll up for that). Arlo has a few tricks of its own. Package detection is at the top of the list, followed by people, vehicle, and pet detection. You can also program the Arlo Essential to ask visitors to leave a message if you’re not around, which is kind of neat but maybe not at the top of our “doorbell feature upgrade” wish list.

Unfortunately, all the features I’ve described above — the super useful and not so useful — won’t work without an Arlo Secure subscription. Those start at $7.99, so they’re not outrageously expensive, but still. It’s the principle of the thing.