Cable-free answer
A simple wireless doorbell is a good solution for modern homes, writes David Behrens.
It’s one of the most primitive pieces of technology in your home, and despite recent advances it remains stubbornly awkward to install. The door chime has gone from being a bell on a stick to a camera at the end of a length of wire, but the fundamentals have hardly changed at all. You need a cable to connect the two parts and a transformer to supply the power, and neither is likely to sit well with your decor.
Yet there is an easier way, and it’s one that has been almost lost in the recent hype over door cameras that connect to your wi-fi.
A simple wireless doorbell does away with the need to drill a hole through the door frame and staple wires to the skirting board, and it’s a whole lot cheaper than a camera. What’s more, it can ring in multiple rooms throughout your house, with no need to open an app on your phone when it does.
Wireless door chimes can be battery or mains operated, and typically work within 600 feet of your front door. If you plump for a model powered by batteries, you can expect it to run for up to three years before you need to change them.
Installation involves only screwing or sticking the buzzer to the door and pairing it with one or more indoor chimes. Battery units can be placed anywhere in the house and carried from room to room; plug-in chimes can go in any convenient 13-amp socket. And you can mix and match the two types in the same installation.
Most models give you a visual notification by lighting up when the button is pushed, and the button itself illuminates to let your visitor know it’s working.
This is simplicity itself compared with Amazon’s range of Ring video doorbells which, despite their sophistication, involve wall-mounted chimes, mains wiring and the installation of a diode that looks as if it’s come from a 1920s steam radio. And a Ring set-up will cost around five times as much as a simple wireless chime.
The market leaders in cable-free doorbells are Honeywell, Byron and
Avantek, and you can find them online and on the high street. Byron’s basic model is just £15 for a buzzer and battery chime, or £30 with a plug-in unit added. You get 16 melodies and five volume levels, and the buzzer is claimed to be weatherproof. But it has a range of only 500 feet, so it’s not suitable for a big house.
The £24 Avantek Wireless Doorbell, on the other hand, works up to 450 yards from the front door, so you could place one of its two plug-in receivers in your garden shed or summerhouse, if there’s a spare socket. You get 52 melodies and five volume levels, which at the maximum setting can be heard over the noise of a vacuum cleaner or food processor, and the buzzer is frost, dust and waterproof. The Avantek range is available mostly from Amazon.
At the top end of the market, but still less than £50, is the Honeywell DC917NG, which lets you pair front and rear doorbells with a single, portable chime unit which then lights up in different colours to let you know where your visitor is. You can also set it to sleep mode.
As with all these models, beware of Amazon’s optional £100 installation fee. It might be a sound investment for a video bell but it’s completely unnecessary for a basic wireless one.
If you do want to go down the video route, the easiest to install is the £90 second-generation Ring Video Doorbell, which is independent of your existing wiring and uses only a rechargeable battery in the bell itself. There’s no internal chime unit – just an app on your phone, but you’ll need to take the buzzer off the door every few months to recharge it.
Battery units can be placed anywhere in the house and carried from room to room.