Ring my bell: Annke Whiffle Smart Doorbell

I’ve reviewed my fair share of cameras and smart doorbells over the years. With an endless stream of couriers dropping and picking up review goodies from my front door, a smart doorbell has become an essential part of my smart home setup. Thanks to doorbell notifications on my smartphone, I hardly ever miss anyone at the door, regardless of where I am.

Adding a smart doorbell need not be an exercise in economic pain, either. The Annke Whiffle smart doorbell not only has a quirky name but retails for a wallet/purse-pleasing $64.99, making it easily the most affordable smart doorbell option I’ve ever seen outside of Chinese mailorder co’s with no local customer back-up.

Annke might not be a brand most Kiwis are familiar with, but the rather amusingly named Whiffle looks and feels solidly constructed. Like most other video doorbells, it sports a camera on its top and a doorbell button lower down. Its mounting bracket is cleverly attached using a small SIM removal doodah, adding to its security and lessening the likelihood of it ever being stolen.

Underneath the bracket, on the bottom of the doorbell, is a power/reset button and a slot for a microSD card. This means that you don’t need to subscribe to a plan to store recordings on the Cloud (more on this later).

So far, so good – at least, until I got to its charging socket, a micro-USB port. With USB-C now a de facto standard, everyone (including me) has a sizeable pile of USB-C cables, while micro-USB cables are becoming vanishingly hard to find. This was a minor annoyance but an avoidable one.

Micro USB irritations aside, getting set up was a complete doddle. After charging, mounting, and powering up the Annke Wiffle, I scanned a QR code, waited for the app to find the doorbell, provided my home’s Wi-Fi credentials, and paired up the bundled bell chime. Ten minutes later, I was up and running.

As part of the setup process, I was offered a free trial of Annke Cloud storage for 1 month. After the trial, it costs a reasonable US$2.59 monthly and provides up to 3GB of storage. Annoyingly, however, many of the features that make the Annke doorbell so appealing don’t work without a Cloud subscription. Suppose you want the doorbell to be able to detect people/cars/pets/packages or have specific user-defined activity zones. In that case, you’ll need to cough up for a subscription.

In use, I found that the doorbell captured plenty thanks to its wide 148-degree field of view. That said, it defaulted to recording in SD, which was more about not tapping out its battery or maxing out finite SD card storage. Switching it to HD recording saw footage captured in 720P at 15FPS, which is fine for most situations but could hinder positive identification of a porch pirate compared to the Ring doorbell’s 2K video.

On the plus side, the doorbell was super responsive. Notifications popped up quickly and reliably, which Ring could learn from. Recorded footage looked crisp in the daytime and dropped to monochrome at night under IR illumination, resulting in passable night video.

Another pleasant surprise is that the Annke Wiffle can play nice with Alexa. Asking my Alexa show to display the front door, I saw a live video feed popping up, allowing me to talk to whoever was at the door via the Annke Wiffle’s built-in mic/speaker.

Annke’s blurb says that the 4,800mAh battery should last 1-2 months. Given the considerable number of couriers ringing the doorbell daily, I was getting around 3-4 weeks of use per charge, which isn’t too shabby.

While you can get higher resolution smart doorbells from other brands, few are as affordable as the Annke Wiffle. A straightforward setup and reliable use are a pleasant surprise at this price point, even if you then must pay (an admittedly small amount) per month to access all the clever stuff this doorbell is capable of. That said, if you want to secure your front door and you’re on a tight budget, the Annke Wiffle is a solid choice.

https://annke.co.nz/product/wireless-doorbell-camera/