TP-Link Tapo D235 review: The new king of the video doorbells

The increasing capability and affordability of video doorbells and security cameras mean the marketplace is getting increasingly crowded with devices that, at first glance, both look and perform alike. But look closely and you’ll see that they’re not all the same, a fact the Tapo D235 provides ample proof of.

The D235 isn’t the most fancy of video doorbells, but it has all the basics covered. There’s AI-assisted motion sensing that can distinguish between a cat, a person or a van. It has a a 2.5K video feed, the option to store recordings on a memory card without the need for a subscription and it has a bundled chime (something Ring charges £30 for). On sheer value for money, it’s our new favourite doorbell.

Tapo D235 review: What do you get for the money?

The Tapo D235 is priced right in the sweet spot for video doorbells at £99 (the RRP is £119 but the price rarely rises that high). Here, it sits between budget models like the Blink Video Doorbell and Ring Video Doorbell at £50 to £60 and more advanced doorbells like Google’s Nest Video Doorbell and the dual-camera Eufy Video Doorbell E340, which cost around £200.

Perhaps more importantly, at less than £100 it’s also cheaper than our previous favourite, the Tapo D230S1. The DS230S1 has a same-resolution camera albeit limited to 15fps rather than 20fps video, a smaller battery and no mains power option.

The D230S1 does however give you a combined hub/chime with a MicroSD card slot and it has Ethernet port, which connects to the doorbell via a “sub-GHz” RF connection. As a result, the D230S1 is not dependent on a Wi-Fi network and you don’t lose your recordings if the doorbell is stolen.

The D235 is narrower and taller than a Ring doorbell, measuring 150 x 50 x 30mm, and neatly designed, but it isn’t the most attractive thing you’ll ever have laid eye on. I prefer the more svelte look of the all-black Blink camera that is usually fixed to my front door. The Tapo does feel very solid, though, and it has an IP66 weatherproof rating, which is something that (surprisingly) not all doorbells are endowed with.

The front of the unit is dominated by the camera lens. This provides a 170.6-degree horizontal and 140.1-degree vertical field of view and is backed by a 1/2.7” CMOS sensor. The doorbell button below it is surrounded by a variable-brightness LED light that doubles as a floodlight for night-time use and there’s a PIR motion sensor for triggering motion-related recordings.

On the rear of, you’ll find the USB-C and MicroSD card slots under a weatherproof silicon plug, sync/reset and on/off buttons plus the pressure sensor for an anti-theft system, which sounds an ear-piercing alarm if someone attempts to steal the doorbell. Meanwhile, at the bottom on the rear is a pair of screw connectors for an external mains doorbell power supply; if yours delivers between 8V and 24V, it should work fine.

Plus, Tapo bundles all the hardware you’ll need to mount the doorbell to your door or wall. There are not one but two wedge mounts in the box as well as a flat frame in the box – a more generous selection than most – giving you plenty of flexibility when it comes to mounting options. All the screws and wall plugs you need are supplied, but if you don’t want to get the drill out, there’s also a 3M adhesive pad included.

Tapo D235 review: How easy is it to set up?

As with most other video doorbells, setting up the D235 is a simple case of downloading the Tapo app, setting up a free account and then following the on-screen instructions to connect the doorbell to your Wi-Fi network. As I already had the Tapo app installed, I was up and running in about two minutes.

Location is critical with the D235 thanks to the wide-angle lens. This can cause issues if, like me, you have a front door that is recessed or set back in a porch. When placed on my front door the camera view was restricted because the outer third of the view on each side just showed the inner facings of the masonry door frame. In this circumstance, the narrower 135-degree view of my Blink doorbell is a better fit.

To make the most of the D235 I would have needed to break out my masonry drill and relocate the doorbell to the front wall of my property. In that position, it would be able to see right up and down the street.

As was the case with the Tapo D230S1, you don’t need to take out any sort of paid subscription to take full advantage of all the D235’s features. You simply need to install a MicroSD card – up to 512GB in capacity – to store camera recordings locally. These can be motion triggered, you can choose to record video at a set time for a set period and there’s also a continuous record option, although you need to have the doorbell wired to the mains for that to work.

Tapo does offer a paid subscription for cloud storage but the average home user simply won’t need it. If you want to test the waters Tapo offers a 30-day free trial.

The Tapo app also supports a wide selection (11 for Android users) of widgets, the most useful being a half-screen affair that can be linked to any camera. The widget gives you instant access to a live feed, the clips archived on the camera’s MicroSD card and the start recording function. The image on the widget is updated each time you access the live stream.

Tapo D235 review: What does it do well?

The image quality of the 2,560 x 1,920 video feed is impressive. Not only can you see a lot thanks to the wide field of view, but the images are sharp and crisp even if there is some fish-eye distortion towards the edges. The D235’s resolution matches that of the more expensive Eufy E340 and has the 960 x 1,280 Nest Doorbell (battery) and the 1,440 x 1,440 Ring Battery Video Doorbell beaten, too.

However, the field of view still isn’t quite wide enough to see packages right down at the foot of your doorstep. For that, you will need to use the vertical mounting wedge to increase the downward angle, or purchase a dual-camera doorbell like the Eufy E340.

Night-time performance is impressive, especially in full-colour mode, although engaging this switches on the LED light that surrounds the bell button, which annoyingly, drains the battery. I say annoying, because the light emitted by the LED is pretty weak, and it had no impact on the ambient light on my street as I proved by masking the light. An option to engage the night colour mode without the battery-draining and tell-tale LED light would be welcome.

When it comes to selecting the type of activity the camera is activated by, the D235 offers the same very wide range of options as the Tapo C120 security camera, so you can choose between basic motion detection, person, pet, vehicle or package.

Additionally, you can define virtual zones within the camera’s field of view where motion must be detected before the system starts to record. I found the zonal detection system to be more accurate than the Ring Video Doorbell’s.

Within each motion category, you can adjust the sensitivity of detection between 1 and 10, so for instance the camera can be set to pick up all vehicular activity on your street but only animals that come right up to your doorstep.

I also tested the D235’s reaction time for several activities, as this is critical to how quickly you can respond to someone arriving at your door, or any attempted break-in. Across the board, the Tapo proved to be one of the fastest doorbells we’ve tested, matching the likes of the Ring Video Doorbell and beating the Nest Doorbell (battery). Looking back at the results from all the Tapo cameras we’ve tested this seems to be a speciality of the house.

The bundled wall-wart chime is great. Out of the box, it was preset to its loudest level, which was enough to wake the dead and scare the hell out of my greyhound, but you can turn it down – there are three volume settings.

And the chime’s performance was great, with the chime sounding the moment the doorbell button was pushed. I experienced little to no lag with audio: both microphone and speaker proved capable of supporting a clear and easily understood conversation. And you also have the option of having the doorbell automatically relay a voice message when pressed, either from a pre-recorded selection or one you record yourself.

Finally, battery life is top notch. Tapo says a full charge of the 10,000mAh battery should last for around 210 days or seven months. In the time I had to test the D235, it was impossible to tell how accurate this claim was, especially as battery life is drastically affected by how often the doorbell is used, how you have the sensitivity of the motion detection and camera recording systems set up, what resolution you have the video feed set to and a host of other options.

What I am confident in saying is that the D235’s high-capacity battery will run for considerably longer than any other doorbell I’ve encountered. Recharging once every two months should cover even the heaviest usage scenarios. That’s a positive side-effect of a battery that’s nearly twice the capacity of some of the competition. The Nest doorbell houses a 6,000mAh battery while the Ring Video Doorbell Plus’ battery is 5,960mAh in capacity.

The Tapo app’s power use screen, which lets you see where the juice has been going in either a 7 or 30-day timeframe, is very helpful here. The app also shows the current battery level on the main device screen, so there’s no need to go rummaging around in the menu system to check if you need a recharge.

Tapo D235 review: What could it do better?

Finding fault with the D235 involves being very picky, so I’m reduced to mentioning the absence of support for Apple’s HomeKit, Matter and IFTTT smart home protocols. Users of Alexa and Google Home are however supported and you can use voice commands to open the camera feed on a smart display such as the Amazon Echo Show 8 or the Nest Hub.

The only other nitpick I have is that the D235 only works on a 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi signal, which will be an issue if you have set your router to work at 5Ghz only. This is par for the course when it comes to video doorbells and other smart home gear, however, and should not pose a problem to most users.

Tapo D235 review: Should you buy it?

Given the Tapo D235’s performance, versatility, image quality and what’s included in the box (you get everything you need thrown, in, including two mounting wedges and a chime), plus the important fact that you don’t need to pay for a subscription to access your recordings, I can think of no other doorbell we’ve reviewed more deserving of a recommendation.

That’s doubly the case when you consider that at just under £100 the D235 is very good value. Granted that’s more than the budget Ring or Blink video doorbells, but the Tapo delivers far more value than either of those products. It’s our new favourite video doorbell.