It was yanked earlier this year, but the makers promise all issues are now sorted
The August View, the smart lock specialist’s wire-free doorbell camera, is available again, with the company saying it has made improvements to connectivity, video quality, operation speed, notifications and device wake-up time.
August originally halted shipping of the View doorbell camera, due to problems related to Wi-Fi connectivity, back in April.
As we noted in our August View review, the doorbell camera frequently disconnected from the Wi-Fi network, rendering it useless as a doorbell camera. August told us that it was using a new Wi-Fi chip in the View, specifically designed to run the battery-powered doorbell on low power until an event wakes it up.
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But this chip appeared to be causing significant connectivity issues, regularly preventing users from viewing a live feed through the camera. The issue was particularly prevalent on mesh networks, something August was aware of and had been trying to resolve.
“Potentially because the Wi-Fi chip in the doorbell is very new it will have a different behavior based on different Wi-Fi access points you may be using,” a company spokesperson told The Ambient at the time of testing. “Specifically, with mesh systems, we think it switches access points, which lengthens the startup.”
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Featuring 1440p video – that’s 33% more pixels than 1080p HD – a unique high-quality zoom, and a wider view than August’s original video doorbell cameras, this third-generation doorbell camera looks great on paper; and we were certainly impressed with the integration with the August Lock when we originally reviewed it.
We’ll publish an updated review soon. In the meantime, if you are convinced by August’s fix promises, you can order one direct now for $229.