Subscription service or local storage? What to know when buying a doorbell camera

In this Tuesday, July 16, 2019, photo, a Ring doorbell camera is seen at a home in Wolcott, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)

Video doorbells can let you see when packages arrive or who is at the door when you’re not home.

After video of an armed, masked person tampering with the doorbell camera of Nancy Guthrie’s home was released, questions have been raised on how this footage is stored and who can access it.

Guthrie, 84, was last seen on Jan. 31 before she was apparently kidnapped, after she disappeared from her secluded home in Tuscon, Ariz., without her phone or medications.

The masked person seen on the doorbell camera the morning Guthrie was believed to be kidnapped was also recorded at her doorstep on another night, a source told CNN.

Guthrie’s disappearance has sparked interest in how doorbell cameras store recordings, how long that footage lasts, and who can access it.

Most video doorbells capture footage from where they’re mounted and then feed that footage to the manufacturer’s cloud-based servers. In most cases, customers need to pay for a monthly subscription to save and access those recordings.

“Usually, with most cameras, when you are recording and it goes to the cloud, but you don’t have a subscription, the recording is not saved,” Dan Wroclawski, of Consumer Reports, said.

“It might temporarily get stored on the server, but it is eventually deleted.”

Some consumers prefer cloud storage for its convenience and additional features, while others prefer cameras that store footage locally to ensure their videos are private and secure.

Most cameras with local storage use a microSD card.

“Your safest thing to do is get a model that has a separate hub or base station that the microSD card goes into, and you can place that somewhere else in your house that’s far away from the camera,” said Wroclawski.

Local storage typically means no monthly subscription fees and more control over the footage, because police would have to request the footage from the homeowner instead of the manufacturer.

Those two reasons play part in why some homeowners are moving away from cloud-storage cameras.

“If I were to do this all over again, I absolutely would go with cameras that use local storage,” Wroclawski said.

Consumer Reports tested doorbell cameras with both local and cloud storage, and the TP-Link Tapo D130 and the Eufy Video Doorbell C31 performed well.

Testers also gave top ratings to these security cameras: the Lorex 4K Spotlight Outdoor Wi-Fi 6 Security Camera and the TP-Link Tapo C660.