Doro Hemma Doorbell review: The ideal video doorbell for the vulnerable and elderly

Doro is best known as a purveyor of basic mobile phones, designed for the elderly and vulnerable, and it’s now extending its reach to video doorbells with the Doro Hemma.

Like Doro’s phones, the Hemma takes an established product category and adapts it, making it simpler to use and adds peace-of-mind features, such as remote access for carers and relatives.

If you are reading this review the Doro Hemma may not be the doorbell for you, but it is the doorbell you should consider buying for your aged grandparents or a vulnerable family member.

Doro Hemma Doorbell review: What do you get for the money?

Doro packs everything you need to get going with the Hemma unit, including a wall-plug chime that doubles as a USB charger, all for £150. In the box is a two-piece door mount you can mount either flat or at a 30-degree angle, mounting screws and wall plugs, a 3M adhesive patch for users who don’t want to drill holes and a USB-C cable for recharging.

The doorbell itself is pretty standard fare in terms of size and weight at 155 x 47 x 30mm and 192g. That makes it taller but narrower than the latest Ring Battery Video doorbell, but not dissimilar in size or weight to the standard Blink doorbell.

Physically, the Hemma is a white plastic affair and it feels very sturdy. Doro claims an IP65-level resistance to water jets, so the British weather shouldn’t pose a problem. At the bottom of the Hemma is a substantial rubber bung that covers the MicroSD memory card slot, USB-C charge port and reboot/reset buttons.

A bright LED light surrounds the bell button, which glows a welcoming green when you press it and when motion is detected. If the battery is close to flat, the LED turns red and an amber light indicates a network problem. These are handy indications of problems if you forget to check the app for system health.

It’s all good stuff and, even better, you don’t need to pay any sort of subscription to access all the Doro Hemma’s features, unlike rival doorbells from Blink and Ring. Video recordings are stored locally on a memory card from whence they can be accessed through the Hemma app. Once you’ve coughed up the £150 asking price the only extra cost is for a microSD card, assuming you don’t have a spare one lying around.

Doro Hemma Doorbell review: How easy is it to set up?

Installation is much the same as it is for the majority of video doorbells. After you’ve plugged in the chime unit and charged the doorbell fully – this took about two hours from flat – you download the Doro Hemma app, create a free account and pair the doorbell to the app and the chime over a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network.

Once I had everything connected it was simply a case of clipping the doorbell unit to the wall-mount and turning the small locking key at the bottom of the unit a quarter-turn with a small flat-head screwdriver.

The locking key is very hard to see unless you know where to look and the back of the doorbell mounts flush to the bracket, a combination that I suspect will make the Hemma very difficult to steal.

The 77-page user manual includes detailed and well-illustrated set-up instructions in fourteen European languages and is a model of clarity. It even mentions you’ll need an Apple or Google account to download the Hemma app to your phone or tablet. That’s the level of user unsophistication Doro is anticipating. One thing worth making clear, at this point, is that the Hemma is not compatible with Google Home, Apple HomeKit or Amazon Alexa, in the sense that you cannot converse with people at the door using smart speakers or screens.

Adding other users to the doorbell is straightforward, though. You just ask the person to download the app and create an account, then in the owner’s app raise a six-digit alpha-numeric code the invitee can use to join your “Home” group. You can join multiple homes and swap between them for management purposes if you are an owner or administrator.

Doro Hemma Doorbell review: What does it do well?

The Hemma performed admirably when it comes to the basics with the 1,440 x 1,440 150-degree video feed looking bright and colourful in daylight and the digital zoom letting you get a close-up view of proceedings without excessive image deterioration. The two-way audio feed worked well too, with communications sounding loud and clear.

The night vision mode lacks anything in the way of a colour night vision feature but the black and white feed from the IR camera is crisp and shows good levels of contrast.

The doorbell’s strongest suit, however, is how simple the Hemma app is to use; if there is a more simple video doorbell control app I’ve yet to encounter it.

The main screen of the app offers two main options: Preview, which shows a live feed from the camera; and Event Log, which lets you look at and download video from the MicroSD card.

Below these are options to add a new device and manage your account’s “Home” settings, but these are well separated, making it easy to distinguish between the things you do and don’t want an elderly relative messing with.

Open the Preview live-feed screen and two of Doro’s chief security features appear at the top of the screen. One is the Assist Me, a tap of which lets you instantly pass the doorbell call to anyone in your Home group. Once you’ve done that, the person you’ve handed the call to can interact with whoever is at the door on your behalf.

The second feature is the siren. Tap this and, after five seconds, the doorbell issues an ear-piercing 97dB shriek that should easily attract the attention of passers-by and deter anyone with nefarious intent. The siren continues to howl until it’s switched off manually.

Moving indoors, the chime is particularly impressive. To start with, it sounds immediately after the doorbell is pressed without even the slightest hint of a delay. It’s loud, too, reaching 92dB at the maximum setting. There’s a choice of five tones, any of which can easily wake the sleeping or the hard-of-hearing, and there’s a bright LED alert light to give a visual clue that someone is at the door.

Battery life is a moveable feast with video doorbells, depending so very much on how many times the doorbell is pressed and, more importantly, how often the motion detector activates and for what duration it records video. You can mitigate this by tweaking the motion detector sensitivity (there are three levels) or simply switching it off, which is useful if the user lives somewhere with constant, and close, foot traffic.

In a week of intense use and with the motion sensitivity set to the maximum, the battery dropped to 87%, which suggests that at worst the Hemma will need to be charged once every six weeks to two months. I suspect that may stretch to around three months with less intense use and the motion detection reined in or turned off.

That’s not as good as the Ring Battery doorbell I tested recently but still perfectly acceptable and, more to the point, long enough for it not to become a chore for a relative or carer to drop by to remove the unit and recharge it, assuming that’s a task beyond the owner.

READ NEXT: Best Ring doorbell

Doro Hemma Doorbell review: What could it do better?

The only performance issue I encountered with the Doro Hemma was with the speed of alerts to my phone from detected motion. These took a sluggish 10 seconds to arrive – via Wi-Fi, over a cellular connection it took a second or so longer — and the detector doesn’t reset for a further 70 seconds. Unlike the Ring app, the Doro system does not give you an option to change this reset time. And it means that for more than a minute after each event, the doorbell will simply not react to motion.

Other reaction times were also a little on the slow side, but I wouldn’t describe them as deal-breaking and most of the important reaction times – such as the time it takes to alert you on your phone from a bell press – were broadly comparable to the Nest doorbell.

When it comes to managing recordings, your options are limited. You can only vary the minimum length between 15, 30 or 60 seconds and download videos to your phone. If you want to clear videos, you have to take the card out and delete them manually or re-format the card using the app. With branded 256GB microSD cards costing around £20, worrying about storage is arguably moot but I’d still have liked the option to delete individual recordings through the app.

Also missing is any kind of zoned motion detection or privacy system. You can’t prevent the doorbell detecting motion or recording video on a neighbour’s garden path, for instance.

Doro Hemma Doorbell review: Should you buy it?

If you want a video doorbell for an aged, infirm or otherwise vulnerable family member then the Doro Hemma recommends itself, especially as the key third-party access feature is free of charge. The ability to pass doorbell calls to a specific person is a killer selling point and one unique to the Doro Hemma as far as I know.

Granted, the Hemma isn’t as replete with features as the likes of the Ring Battery Video Doorbell with its zoned motion detection and privacy features, nor is it as fast. However, it’s fast enough for general use and offers all the necessary basic features like two-way audio, motion detection and video recording.

At £150 the Hemma isn’t the cheapest video doorbell on the market in terms of initial outlay but keep in mind you don’t need a subscription to access and store recordings. At the time of writing the Ring Battery Doorbell is on sale for £70 but add to that the cost of a Ring Chime for £30 and a 12-month subscription for £50 and you’ve spent the same amount. That makes it a very good option for anyone looking to kit-out an elderly relative’s home with a little extra safeguarding.