The doorbell camera has done something genuinely useful: it put a camera on millions of front doors that would otherwise have nothing. If a parcel goes missing or someone tries the handle at 2am, there is a fair chance you will have a clip of it. For a lot of houses, that is enough.
It becomes a problem only when people believe they have CCTV. They have one camera, on one wall, pointed at one approach, storing clips on someone else's server for as long as the subscription is paid. The burglar who matters rarely rings the doorbell.
What the consumer kit quietly leaves out
Battery and doorbell cameras record in clips, triggered by motion, which means they wake up when something is already happening. A figure crossing the garden at the edge of range may trigger nothing at all, and cold weather and a tired battery make the gaps wider. Most of these devices also keep footage in the cloud, so your evidence of last Tuesday exists only if your plan stores it that long and the wifi was up when it happened.
An installed system works the other way round. Wired cameras, usually powered over the network cable itself, record continuously to a box in your house, an NVR for network cameras or a DVR for older analogue ones. There is no battery to die, no clip that started three seconds too late, and typically a couple of weeks of footage sitting on the hard drive whether anything triggered or not. When the police ask what happened between midnight and six, continuous recording answers; a folder of motion clips often does not.
The honest dividing line
A flat, or a terrace where the front door is the only way in, is well served by a doorbell camera and perhaps one more unit. The subscription is the whole cost and there is nothing to install.
A detached or semi-detached house with side access, a rear garden, a drive and maybe an outbuilding is a different shape of problem. Now you are covering three or four approaches, you care about what happened before the motion alert, and you want the footage in your own hands. That is installed-system territory, and the cabling is precisely why it is an installer's job rather than a Saturday project: runs through the loft, drilled exits, tidy terminations, and a recorder placed where a burglar will not simply take it with them.
Keeping both, sensibly
The two are not rivals. Plenty of installed systems live happily alongside the doorbell that started it all: the doorbell handles the chat with couriers, the wired cameras handle evidence. What is worth retiring is the belief that the doorbell was ever doing the second job.
If your house has more than one way in, get someone to walk the property and say what full coverage would take. Among the 335 CCTV system installers listed here, the listings show who does domestic work and where. Look through installers covering your area, or describe your property and get quotes. Then count the ways into your house that your doorbell cannot see; that number is the brief.
