Aqara G4 vs Wemo Smart Video Doorbell
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Aqara G4
Power: 6 AA batteries or 24V AC/DC power
Storage: 512GB MicroSD or iCloud
Subscription: 10 days on any iCloud subscription
Best For
- Accurate motion and object detection
- Good quality audio and video
- Good notification delivery
Wemo Smart Video Doorbell
Power: 16-24V AC power
Storage: iCloud only
Subscription: 10 days on any iCloud subscription
Best For
- Excellent package detection coverage
- Very good audio capture
- Decent capture of motion events
The Verdict
Aqara and Wemo have delivered largely capable doorbells for HomeKit users, but Aqara comes out as a clear winner on most points due to more versatile installation options, faster processing, and a better camera.
Wemo has dropped the ball here with the worst camera image quality I have yet seen. My testing also seemed to indicate slower processing capability that resulted in longer stream start times both in live view and when recording events. This had a knock on effect of more missed events, shorter recording distances, and slower notifications.
The more favorable aspect ratio gives Wemo a leg up in package detection as it has a far more usable view of the drop zone, but aside from that you'll be better off with the Aqara G4 for just about any other use case.
What do these scores mean? Learn about our data-driven scoring system.
The Quick Version
Camera: Aqara has gone with a standard 16:9 1080p camera typical for HomeKit accessories. This delivers a crisp image with good dynamic range and color balance, as well as very good night vision performance. Wemo has opted for a 1200 x 1600 camera with a wide angle lens for better package monitoring, but delivers an aweful image that lacks clarity and detail at any range, suffers from over exposure and poor dynamic range in shade.Audio: Aduio for both doorbells is excellent, with good audio encoding that produces no artefacts or distortion. Live streams were flawless with no skips and break ups and spoken word was easily understood. Wemo edges ahead here with a louder speaker and better microphone pickup enabling longer range conversations.
Notifications: Aqara gets notifications out notably faster than the Wemo doorbell, but Wemo managed to catch usable thumbnails about 9% more reliably.
Motion Detection: Aqara's faster processing shows here with quick recording start times yeilding more accurate motion detection and longer event capture distances overall. This results in fewer missed events, although both doorbells had more difficulty at night and the movement was over a shorter period.
Smart Features: Smart object detection works very well on both models, with perfect scores for person, vehicle, animal and face detection. Wemo take an easy victory for package detection thanks to a more favorable view and higher detection accuracy.
Battery: The Wemo Smart Video Doorbell is a wired-only model, so doesn't compete here. The Aqara G4 can run on batteries, but takes a hit on notification speed and recording distance due to losing pre-roll video and longer camera wake times.
App Experience: Aqara beats out Wemo on processing speed again here, with live streams started in about half the time on average and with less variability between tests. Both doorbells use the Apple Home app for all functions, so privacy and usability scores are not applicable for comparison here.
Compare The Models
Each doorbell I review is put through a series of repeated test cycles over a 30-day period. These tests give me 32 data points that make up the 7 overall category scores. These scores rate key performance requirements for doorbells like video and audio quality, motion capture performance, smart detection accuracy and the overall user experience.
Note: As the Wemo doorbell is a wired only model, I’ve used Aqara’s wired power test results for comparison.
Here’s how these two models compare in each category:
| Category | ||
|---|---|---|
| Camera | 7.6 | 2.1 |
| Audio | 8.6 | 9.8 |
| Notifications | 8.5 | 7.9 |
| Motion Detection | 9.6 | 8.7 |
| Smart Features | 7.4 | 9.4 |
| Battery | 8.8 | N/A |
| App Experience | 9.0 | 7.9 |
The specific measurements that make up these category scores are shown in the next table:
| Data Point | ||
|---|---|---|
| Video Quality | 7.3 | 2.1 |
| Night Vision Quality | 8.0 | 2.4 |
| Dynamic Range | 7.5 | 1.7 |
| Two-Way Talk | 7.1 | 9.5 |
| App Audibility | ||
| Outdoor Audibility | ||
| Recorded Audio | 10.0 | 10.0 |
| Notification Delay | 8.3 | 6.1 |
| Thumbnail Average | ||
| Doorbell Average | ||
| Text-only Average | ||
| Thumbnail Effectiveness | 8.7 | 9.7 |
| Day Success | ||
| Night Success | ||
| Missed Events | 9.8 | 8.1 |
| Day Misses | ||
| Night Misses | ||
| Camera Wake Delay | 10.0 | 10.0 |
| Frame Remaining Day | ||
| Frame Remaining Night | ||
| Event Capture | 9.8 | 8.0 |
| Record Start Day | ||
| Record Start Night | ||
| Package Monitoring | 4.8 | 8.8 |
| Package Features | ||
| Detection Success | ||
| Smart Detection | 10.0 | 10.0 |
| Smart Features | ||
| Day Accuracy | ||
| Night Accuracy | ||
| Live View Response | 9.0 | 7.9 |
| Live View Time | ||
| Doorbell Ring Response | ||
| Privacy Features | N/A | N/A |
| App Usability | N/A | N/A |
| Battery Performance | 8.8 | N/A |
| After 30 days | ||
| Time To Dead |
Performance Results
I test video doorbells across 7 key performance categories comprised of 16 specific scores. Each overall category can contain several scoring criteria. The 16 criteria are:
Video quality
Nightvision quality
Dynamic range
Two-way talk quality
Recorded audio quality
Notification delay
Thumbnail effectiveness
Missed events
Camera wake delay
Event capture performance
Package monitoring
Smart object detection
Live response time
Battery performance
Privacy and security
App usability
Camera Performance
Camera performance is the elephant in the room between these two doorbells. While the Aqara G4 uses a standard 1080p (1920 x 1080) resolution it manages to deliver crisp well-balanced images with good dynamic range out to 5.8m (19ft). At night, the G4 employs a good level of infra-red illumination which gives it exceptional brightness in the night vision tests and allows for good visibility at far longer ranges. I was able to clearly read the test chart at an impressive range of 5.6m (18ft).
Wemo has gone with a 1200 x 1600 resolution in order to provide a ‘head-to-toe’ view. This is far better for package monitoring, but the sensor itself seems to be very poor quality. I struggled to get a good read on the image clarity chart further than 1.7m (5 ft) which was about the same at night. Night shots were also hampered by very limited infra-red visibility that only allowed any sort of identification at fairly close range.
| Camera Performance | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Aqara G4 | 7.3 | 8.0 | 7.5 |
| Wemo Smart Video Doorbell | 2.1 | 2.4 | 1.7 |
Day Score - A weighted score based on the maximum distance a Landolt C vision test chart can be read through the live view of the doorbell.
Night Score - the same test repeated under night vision conditions. The weighting here is more favorable as this range is typically shorter than during the day.
Dynamic Range - The number of swatches on an OECF 36 test chart that can be clearly or partially defined by software selection on a captured screenshot.
Audio Performance
Audio performance provides an equalizer here, with both doorbells benefitting from the high-quality audio encoding employed by HomeKit. In both cases this produces very good quality audio with no skips, distortion or audio artefacts at all. This was repeated in both two-way talk live streams and recorded clips.
The primary differentiator here is the microphone and speaker hardware in the Aqara doorbell which proved less capable in terms of pickup range and volume. This significantly limited the usable range where we could hold a conversation at normal speaking volume to only 3.5m (10ft). Wemo, on the other hand, has included more punch in the audio hardware which allowed for conversation easily out to 9m (29ft) without issue.
| Audio Performance | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aqara G4 | 7.1 | 10.0 | ||
| Wemo Smart Video Doorbell | 9.5 | 10.0 |
Two-way Talk - A combined score which rates two-way talk quality based on the presence of distortion, encoding artifacts, dropouts and audible range.
Recorded - A combined score which rates recorded audio quality based on the presence of distortion, encoding artifacts, dropouts and audible range.
Indoor Range - The maximum distance from the doorbell an outside visitor could be understood when using the app (max tested range 10m).
Outdoor Range - The maximum distance from the doorbell an outside visitor could clearly hear the app user speaking (max tested range 10m).
Notification Performance
When getting motion alert notifications out to my iPhone, Aqara performed significantly better overall, but Wemo snuck ahead on capturing a usable thumbnail image of the event providing this slightly more reliably by a margin of about 9%. When using HomeKit you can drop the notifications for faster delivery by using the ‘Any Motion’ setting for notifications. While Aqara did far better in this mode, it’s actually not very practical in most cases since you get spammed with even the slightest movement in the scene.
The ‘Specific motion’ setting ensures you only get notifications about the kinds of motion you are interested in. HomeKit does an excellent job of object identification, so with this mode enabled you can effectively filter out the noise and keep the alerts actionable. Aqara delivered these notifications faster than Wemo by an average of 2 seconds, which is significant when you need to respond to something going on. Aqara’s test times were also more consistent, with less severe spikes in delays.
| Notification Performance | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aqara G4 | 8.3 | 8.7 | ||
| Wemo Smart Video Doorbell | 6.1 | 9.7 |
Speed - A weighted score grading the delivery delay of notifications combining times for thumbnails, text, and doorbell rings.
Thumbnails - The percentage of tests in which a usable thumbnail was included in the notification.
Text-only Speed - The average delivery time of notifications using text-only.
Thumbnail Speed - The average delivery time of notifications including a rich media component, usually a still image of the triggering object.
Motion Detection Performance
The Aqara G4 demonstrated a faster overall response time, which allowed for quicker notifications as well as faster recording start and object-based triggering. We see this in the motion detection tests where Aqara misses fewer events and records events much earlier and more consistently when approach from a distance.
While both doorbells benefit from HomeKit’s pre-roll video processing, which adds a few seconds of recorded buffer to the start of any recorded clip, Aqara was still able to capture my approaches earlier and more consistently. Wemo suffered from highly variable response times with some recordings starting very late or failing to start before I had left the frame, resulting in more missed events.
| Motion Detection | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aqara G4 | 9.8 | 10.0 | 9.8 | |
| Wemo Smart Video Doorbell | 8.1 | 10.0 | 8.0 |
Missed Events - Based on the percentage of test events that were not detected or recorded by the doorbell.
Camera Wake - A measure of how quickly the camera can begin recording when motion is detected.
Event Capture - A weighted score based on the average distance an approaching person is recorded (how much of an event is captured).
Detection Range - The average distance motion was detected and recorded by the doorbell during morning, afternoon, and night lighting conditions.
Smart Detection Performance
Smart detection works extremely well on both of these doorbell models. To be fair, this is primarily a feature of HomeKit Secure Video with the doorbell’s role being limited to capturing and sending the stream quickly enough, and with enough clarity for the processing to work. As such, we see a perfect score for both models in terms of people, faces, vehicles and pets.
For package detection, the primary factor here is the camera’s aspect ratio, and Wemo easily wins here. With a 3:4 aspect ratio and a fisheye lens the Wemo doorbell is able to see the entirety of the space in front of the door, down to the bottom of the wall directly below and well out to the sides. This gives it a perfect view for spotting packages, which HomeKit dutifully identified with near perfect accuracy.
Aqara uses a standard 16:9 aspect ratio which, at typical mounting height, simply doesn’t capture any of the ground where packages will typically be left. This limits package detection to further out from the door (approximately 2m or 6ft) which gave HomeKit more difficulty noticing packages reliably in different lighting conditions.
| Smart Detection | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aqara G4 | 4.8 | 10.0 | ||
| Wemo Smart Video Doorbell | 8.8 | 10.0 |
Packages - the percentage of packages correctly detected in various placements and lighting conditions.
Object Type - The number of smart detection features combined with the accuracy of object detection within the types supported by the doorbell.
Package Success - The raw accuracy of package detection.
Object Success - The raw accuracy of other smart detection types
Battery Performance
The Aqara G4 is the only doorbell that supports HomeKit Secure Video natively that can also run on battery power. Aqara opted for regular AA batteries for this, and a set of 6 will get you about 3 months in mild weather. I must caution, however, that on battery power the G4 performs considerably worse, with much shorter event capture distances due to slower camera wake up time and no pre-roll video recording.
The Wemo doorbell does actually have a small backup battery. This is used to keep the doorbell alive during short power outages so it can recover quickly and minimize downtime. This only gives you about 20 minutes, however, so it’s not really in scope for this test.
| Battery Performance | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Aqara G4 | 8.8 | ||
| Wemo Smart Video Doorbell | N/A |
Aqara G4 Battery Profile
App Experience
The faster processing speed of the Aqara G4 manifests again with the live view response times. Aqara impressed here with consistent start times of around 1 second and an average of 0.9 seconds. That’s extremely fast, and on par for the fastest live stream response tested so far. Wemo wasn’t too bad, with an average start time of 2.8 seconds, clearly slower than the Aqara doorbell, but well below average across all tested models.
Responding to doorbell rings was similar, with Aqara averaging 4.3 seconds and Wemo coming in at 7.3 seconds. Wemo’s times were blown out by several particularly high runs that took over 10 seconds to start. That’s not particularly useful when someone is waiting at the door.
As the Wemo doorbell is a HomeKit exclusive accessory, it has no app of it’s own. All app functionality, privacy and security features are defined by the Apple Home app. Aqara does have its own app, but this is not used when operating the G4 as a HomeKit doorbell. Given Apple Home is a common element between the two doorbells, it is not scored for comparison. If you want to read more about the Aqara app when using the G4 outside of HomeKit, check my full review.
| App Experience | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aqara G4 | 9.0 | N/A | N/A | |
| Wemo Smart Video Doorbell | 7.9 | N/A | N/A |
Live Response - A weighted score based on how long the in-app live view takes to start on average.
Average Time - The raw average time to begin a live stream in the first-party app.
Security - An aggregate score based on clearly defined scoring criteria around app authentication, security and privacy features.
Usability - An aggregate score based on clearly defined criteria around navigation, bugs, and recorded video access.
Model 1 vs Model 2
| Doorbell | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Aqara G4 | 8.3 | General doorbell use including front yard security monitoring | |
| Wemo Smart Video Doorbell | 7.2 | Package detection and speaking to callers |
Should you buy the Aqara G4?
I would recommend Aqara if you’re looking for:
Fast notification and live view response times
Good video quality and wide coverage
Security coverage and motion detection over a larger area
Should you buy the Wemo Smart Video Doorbell?
I would recommend Wemo if you’re looking for:
Reliable package detection and monitoring
Good audio capture and two way talk with guests
A smaller doorbell footprint for limited install areas.
See my video doorbell guides to learn more about other models, features, and options.
