Is this the cheapest way to fit a video doorbell to your home?
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When it comes to securing your house, a video doorbell is a superb place to start.
They constantly monitor movement around your front door, even long before someone rings the bell. So if an intruder is just creeping up to snoop around you'll know about it.
They're useful for protecting deliveries that have been left while you're out, and it's a handy way of keeping track of any comings and goings throughout the day - whether they're friend or foe.
They can be a little pricey though. Everyone seems to buy Amazon's Ring Doorbells and, while you can get a basic wired one for about £50, a decent wireless one will be around £100.
And that's before you pay for the subscription. While you can use one quite happily without a monthly fee, you'll need to stump up at least £5 every month to store footage, activate smart alerts or get video previews.
If you want features like 24/7 recording, or continuous live view, that'd be a quite hefty £16 per month.
There is a much more economical way to do this, though. And I've seen a brilliant deal on a branded video doorbell with no monthly subscription.
Tapo, one of my favourite tech brands, has a range of video doorbells. I've tested some of them and they work really well.
This TD21 2K doorbell camera comes with a chime (which would cost extra with Ring) and features colour night vision, free AI detection, six-month battery life, and a 160-degree field of view.
This sort of tech would come at a serious price with a Ring doorbell, but if you can catch the deal on Amazon in time you'd get it for £44.99. It's a 36% saving.
The best bit, though, is there's no monthly fee. You can, if you wish, sign up for a fairly inexpensive Tapo Care subscription, but there's no need - just insert an SD card (here's one on a special offer for £4.73) and you get to store all your footage without paying for cloud access.
That means you could be up and running for less than £50, which is about the price of Ring's basic wired doorbell, which ideally needs a professional installation and doesn't come with a chime.
In the interests of completeness, this Tapo doorbell isn't actually the cheapest option on the market. If you're feeling brave, you could take a punt on this "Sunnyjane" 1080p smart doorbell camera for just £11.99. No, that's not a typo, it's actually £12. And it comes with a chime.
You need to sign up for cloud services at a cost if you want to save footage, but for a very basic alert system, it's incredibly cheap.
But I can personally vouch for Tapo's products. I know it's January, and we're all feeling the pinch, but if you've ever flirted with the idea of getting a video doorbell, this might just be your best chance.