The NEW Tapo D260 Review - Install, Setup and Guide! - video Dailymotion

Automate Your Life

The new Tapo D260 smart video doorbell  is an impressive new option for your smart home. It's reasonably priced, doesn't require a subscription at all, but is it a good fit for you and your lifestyle they good and does it fit your home and your lifestyle?   I'm going to walk through what you get in our Tapo D260 unbox, how to setup the Tapo doorbell, and how to complete a full Tapo D260 wired installation in your own home.  I'll also be sharing tips and tricks for getting your smart video doorbell to be the best it can be!  Get the Tapo D260 here: Amazon: https://link.amazon/B04B6EMmb (Amazon affiliate link) or Tapo Store: https://tplinksystemsinc.sjv.io/zz9O3W (affiliate link) Use coupon code: 40TAPOD260 (valid until 11/10) for $40 off!  See more on the Tapo DL130: https://youtu.be/6oGTvn7U2kM See more on the Tapo H500 Hub: https://youtu.be/ieSuXxKgaWk See more on the Tapo D225 vs Tapo D260 (lower priced competitor): https://youtu.be/JU2V7v_dwos  And yes, there is a Tapo D260 Home Assistant integration, here  Timecodes for today's video: 00:00 - The NEW Tapo D260 Review 1:04 - How To Use This Video (Because it is long) 1:39 - How Does The Footage Look? 8:42 - How Does It Work When Someone Arrives? 11:27 - Package Detection And How Field of View Helps 13:17 - Aerial View Is Awesome! 15:25 - How To Record 24/7 (And What That Changes) 17:27 - Integration Options For Extra Chimes 19:28 - Physical Options You'll Want To Know About 20:42 - A Detection System That Actually Works (And Why) 26:11 - How To Setup The Tapo D260 32:01 - How The Mounts Work (Surprising) 33:54 - How To Install The Tapo D260 42:14 - Settings To Check After Installed 45:38 - Amazon Alexa With The Tapo D260 47:18 - Google Home and Nest Hubs With The Tapo D260 49:44 - Samsung SmartThings With The Tapo D260 50:29 - Home Assistant With The Tapo D260 52:14 - My Final Verdict  Channel links:  Join this channel's member program to get access to extra videos, early releases, and our member's vault! (Automater II and higher), plus other perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtRSKEipM17PF7n0mi66btQ/join  Subscribe to Take The Frustration Out Of Automation: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtRSKEipM17PF7n0mi66btQ?sub_confirmation=1  Automate Your Life is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com and other Amazon websites.  Thanks for watching, and Live Smart.  Brian

Transcript

00:00This is the new Tapo D260, a brand new video doorbell from TP-Link, and it's one of the most

00:06interesting and useful video doorbells I've ever tested. It includes 24-7 recording options,

00:13an event detection system with two impressive layers, an aerial view to see how people are

00:20approaching your property, human, pet, even facial recognition, plus package detection,

00:27and one of the best two-way audio experiences I've ever seen. And all of that is happening

00:33physically on this device. This is what's called an edge computing video doorbell. It's got enough

00:41processing power to do that here instead of in the cloud where you're going to need the internet.

00:47Now, nothing is perfect. So I'm going to show you how all of these features work. I'm going to show

00:53you how it gets set up and installed, some of the quirks, some of the little things that you might

00:58need if you're considering the Tapo D260. Let's give it. Now guys, this is a fairly long video, and

01:07I get that some people might not love that, but this is long because when you're buying something

01:14like this, I feel like you need to understand all of the little nuances, all of the little things

01:21about a product that can trip you up. So instead of producing a 10-minute showcase that really tries

01:28to sell you the device, I like to show you everything about it. So the time codes are all

01:33below. Jump around this video as you see fit and come back to it when you need other components.

01:38Obviously, the most important component here with any video doorbell is how does the footage look?

01:45So let's talk about that. First of all, I think from daytime, really bright daytime scenes,

01:52this camera is really well balanced. When I compare this versus some other cameras that I've had,

01:59sometimes across the street, I lose detail. Sometimes I even lose the homes with some cameras.

02:05They can disappear because this is not necessarily the brightest little cave, so to speak, on my porch.

02:12Then when it gets really bright on those houses, cameras can sometimes struggle. I like the fact

02:18that I'm not losing those details across the street. I'm not losing the details of people coming up to

02:24the home if it's really bright out there, and that's actually really hard for a lot of cameras to deal

02:29with. At dusk, I have a whole demo to show you, and this kind of explains exactly how this camera

02:38behaves.

02:38It's dusk, and you can see actually how hard this is being on my camera right now. This is an

02:45incredibly

02:46hard thing for a video doorbell to deal with because of exactly this effect. It's going to have to darken

02:54because it's so bright right here. Well, let me turn around. I'll show you. You can see my face

03:02in the doorbell here. You can hear me. You can see me, and it's not like my face is really

03:10dark. I'm not

03:12struggling to see myself. This is not a dark scene, and that's what a lot of video doorbells do. So

03:18this is

03:19honestly remarkable how good this looks. I'm so impressed. Now, at night, first of all, the full color

03:28night vision is incredible. This has been something that Tapo's had for a long time, and it's just working

03:37really well here. They need very little light at night in order to create full color night vision, and it

03:45looks

03:45fantastic, okay? Some of the industry leading, as far as I'm concerned, when I compare it to other cameras that

03:52try to do the same thing. And they're using, again, very little light. Their spotlight on the front of

03:58that camera is really small. It doesn't look like a spotlight. It's not blinding you as you're coming

04:04up to your own home. It's not blinding guests, so they're not going to trip over stuff. It's just a

04:08little ring light. Now, at my home, when you switch to that traditional night vision, that black and

04:15white night vision, there's something that happens here, and this is something you need to consider for

04:22your own installation. So basically, the night IR lights are reflecting off the side of my home,

04:31and that's because my video doorbell is pointed straight out, and the two IR night lights are kind

04:38of out the side. They're on the sides of this doorbell. They're pointed straight out, and so there's

04:43reflection, because they're pointed very close to my wall. Now, what that does is it creates a

04:50reflection, and then the camera's not seeing as far out with that night vision. So if I wanted to

04:56correct that, I would use one of the wedge mounts to angle a little bit away from there, instead of

05:04the angle down that I currently have. From an overall standpoint, I think it's important for you

05:09to understand that this camera is doing 15 frames per second. In a lot of cases, people are kind of

05:16used to 30 frames per second video. That's kind of what I would call standard. It comes from TV way

05:23long ago, but nowadays on YouTube, we can upload at 60 frames a second. So when you're talking about

05:2815 frames a second, it's essentially 15 stop moments that are being taken per second with this camera.

05:36So what that can mean is if there's a lot of movement, you will have difficulty reading things.

05:44Okay, if someone's moving very quickly, you want to try and read something or get great details off

05:50of them, 15 frames per second can be a little bit difficult. That doesn't make this useless. It just

05:57means that in certain moments, you're not going to be able to get all of the details. Okay, it's not

06:03going to look like this video right here where you can see all of my blemishes. I do wish the

06:10Tapo would give us a little bit of a bump when we hardwire the camera because 15 frames per second

06:18is pretty typical for battery use situations. So I'm hoping at some point they come and they bump up

06:24the camera to 20 frames per second. Now, what is so good about this versus some other cameras

06:32that I have used? First of all, you can see the full porch with the 180 degrees. That's fantastic.

06:39And that's really useful for package detection. But the video doorbell for me anyways, is here when

06:47I need it. And what I'll tell you is a lot of video doorbells, if somebody's walking outside right now,

06:55they come up, they press the doorbell. And then I go and I try to talk to someone and look

07:00at the feed,

07:01things kind of choke, right? Your Wi-Fi chokes. And oftentimes you can't actually have a good

07:08conversation. This is a dual Wi-Fi device. So it's got 2.4 gigahertz Wi-Fi and 5 gigahertz. And

07:17that has

07:17been very beneficial. I've never seen this feed choke slow down. And we're piping 4k footage through your

07:27home onto your phone. That's going to take 5 gigahertz. So something for you to consider,

07:32you know, if your 5 gigahertz Wi-Fi isn't getting out there, and I'll show you, mine is, and it's

07:39a very

07:40strong signal strength. My mesh point is probably 15 feet that way away from my video doorbell. But if

07:49you have that, this has been bulletproof from a connection standpoint. And when I need it,

07:57when those events happen, when I want to review footage, or I want to review an event, it's a quick

08:03tap, and it is coming right up. I think that's the most important point of a video doorbell. And I

08:10see

08:10a lot of video doorbells that choke in those moments. And this one hasn't. So it's not always just about

08:17the

08:17quality of the footage. It is about when you can access that footage, and then how it looks. So I

08:24think here, it's really balanced, there are those little things that you'll want to think about. But

08:31in general, this has been one of the best visual experiences, and one of the most useful video

08:39doorbells, because it works when you need it. One of the most important things to know is, can you pass

08:45by

08:45your house without triggering your notification? So just walking by here? Nothing. Perfect. That's

08:57exactly what we want. Let's see when I walk up to the house, when the notification comes in.

09:10There it is, right there. Just as I get to the door. Now if I tap into that, I'm already

09:18on the view here.

09:21And another thing is when I review the footage. Look right there, I get that little, those dots.

09:30Show me where I've traveled. And this has been a pretty typical experience for this video doorbell

09:39from Tapo. Very fast response. I can increase that response if I want. I can make it more responsive.

09:46And to get into the recordings and get useful information is like that. So what about when

09:55someone rings the doorbell? Look at how fast that comes up. Now tap in, and now I'm in a conversation.

10:04Now I'm going to turn that off. You could hear it was working.

10:09Hello? See here how good that is out of there? There's a pretty neat little feature here. A voice

10:16mask feature. Adult male. What am I not? Hello? Hello?

10:26Now I'm just creepy. And look, it's still tracking me. I'll show you that feature in a minute.

10:34Plus one more thing here. You know, at any point I can start recording instantly. This is going to be

10:41a recorded video that I get with audio. It's already saved to memory. So I can go into here,

10:50go to playback and download. Here's the downloaded clip. Right there.

10:57Now this is piping straight to my phone. So as soon as this is done, this is going to be

11:02a recorded video.

11:13Thanks for stopping by. If you've got a package, you can leave it at the door to the side. That

11:18would be

11:19great. Otherwise, I've been notified that you have come to our home and we'll have to catch you next

11:26time. There's a few things that are better than other video doorbells, or they're definitely going

11:32to be main considerations for you if you're looking at buying one of these. And you know, the first one

11:38is actually really visible right there. So I had a package delivered and they put it almost right up

11:46against my home. You could see that, yeah, this camera can see it. And that's because of a 180 degree

11:55field of view. It's a diagonal measurement, but what that means to you is that you can see very

12:01close to your home. Now it's not right up against your home, but it is very close. And you know,

12:07comparing versus the doorbell that I've had on my home for the last year, it is a lot better.

12:14So there it is. Okay. Ready for this one?

12:19That is really close to my home. Now, obviously, as we get a little closer here,

12:25it's going to disappear. That's about my limit. And I'd call that kind of the reasonable spot.

12:32And what does that translate to? Right there on my porch. I'm actually going to show you a trick

12:39right off the bat. See, there's this distortion correction setting at the bottom right there.

12:48Okay. And if I hit that, you'll notice I lose a little bit of the area. So when I turn

12:57that on and

12:58off, you'll notice I'm getting more of what you might want to see close to your wall. So now,

13:07with that distortion correction turned off, I can see everything on my porch. Honestly,

13:12I can see right up against my door. And that's pretty incredible. One other really cool feature.

13:19This is actually something that I think I've only ever seen with ring cameras or ring video doorbells,

13:26and only they're like top series. It's called aerial view. Now, aerial view, which I'm going to set up here

13:34with you basically lets you see a path that people are walking to get up to your home.

13:42Now, this is very powerful for a lot of reasons. You know, when you're reviewing footage,

13:47you don't necessarily know why someone's coming up to your home or what their intended purpose is.

13:53And this I find tells me a lot when I watch these kinds of demos and when I've had it

13:59on my home.

14:00So this is how you set it up. I'm just going to hit set up view and it's going to

14:05locate us

14:06automatically. You'll have to give it those permissions if you haven't already. But what

14:11we're doing is setting up the aerial scene. Then we're going to drag a pin to where our doorbell is.

14:18And then we're going to drag the arrows, rotate the boundary to match your current camera's point of view.

14:25I'm going to put it right there and then I'm just holding on here. We're going like that.

14:35That should do it right there. So now I'm going to hit save and check that your aerial view matches

14:43your movement. Take a step outside and let's see what we get. So a little orange dot. You can see

14:53it

14:53and I'm just going to take a step to the right. See that it knew. Okay back to the left.

15:03Okay now let's walk out.

15:07Let's take steps. Okay we're walking and we're walking. Now let's see how far.

15:18I'm on the city pavement now. That's exactly what I want. There are a number of options with the D260

15:28that make it really impressive in a lot of ways. But some of these options that I'm going to tell

15:33you about now have little drawbacks. And I'm going to start with the first one called always on mode.

15:39So you can see it's just a little toggle inside of the Tapo app. Now what's the big thing you

15:45get with

15:45always on mode? Well 24 7 video recording. So that means that the video doorbell is constantly going

15:54to record. It's not just events. So it's not just people coming up to your home or animals or whatever

16:00you set in the app. It is constantly recording. Now the benefit there for you is obviously you're not

16:06going to miss any events. You're going to have every bit of footage out there. And it's not that

16:13I've seen the D260 miss any events. Okay. But some people really like this as an overall option,

16:21a good feeling for security. It also can give you a little bit of that early part of the event

16:26before

16:27your camera picks up someone coming up to your home. But there's a few things that you will need

16:33in order to do this. You can either use a micro SD card or the Tapo hubs. So I have

16:40the H500 in my

16:41home and that is local storage. So you need local storage. Micro SD card is easiest. You just pop that

16:48in. You don't have to spend that much money and it's going to constantly record to that card just by

16:54turning on this setting. The one thing that's kind of a drawback here is it's incompatible with your

17:02chime. Now, what does that mean? Well, you see that chime right up there? It won't ring. So you have

17:08to put one of the cables you get in the box. You have to put it on your chime. It's

17:13basically a bypass

17:14to that. And it will not ring the chime at that point. Okay. If you want this always on feature

17:22that is required. So your chime doesn't work with that in mind. There's a lot of different chime

17:28options. First of all, you can buy one from Tapo. They actually have dedicated chime products.

17:33Number two, you can use like an H500 hub. That's a chime. I am using Amazon speakers.

17:41You could use Google speakers as well. There's a lot of options out there and plus it's going to ring

17:47on everybody's phone. Something that's really great with the D260 is if you have other Tapo products in

17:54your home. Now, what's really good about this? I have the Tapo DL130. It's actually the best palm

18:02vein scanning lock that I have found today. It's so fast. It's so good. But you can see within my

18:09door lock, there's a doorbell setting and I can integrate with my doorbell. So I'm just going to

18:16pair it with my D260. It's doing a physical pairing here. What does that mean? Well, actually my door

18:25lock just became its chime. Okay. So that's one of the really great things that you get with this.

18:33Now, if I pair it with the H500 hub, first of all, you have the storage, you have extra facial

18:39recognition options. Then you have the mirroring where you can just see all your different Tapo cameras,

18:46that includes your video doorbell. You just have that rotate through on even a TV screen.

18:53There's also things like an event feed. So if you have a number of Tapo cameras,

18:59you know, right there, I have a whole feed of all the different events. I can see them

19:04and they're all being recorded on that H500. So that's another example of a really good integration.

19:10Something that they don't do with that, that other companies do with their door locks,

19:16is they're not putting the feed right above the door lock on the page there. So if you go to

19:21unlock

19:22your door in the app, you're not seeing the camera feed there. That's maybe something I'd like to see

19:27them add. Another good option for you is whether it's wired or battery powered. This is a very good

19:36long-term battery. Okay. And you have USB-C charging capabilities, so it's easy to charge. It is

19:43integrated. The battery is integrated into the device. It's not removable. So that is a concern for

19:49some people. But in general, I don't have any problems with that, especially since most of us

19:55are going to be hardwiring, but you do have that option. There are multiple mounting options. Now,

20:01the screws you get in the box, they're very little, very little head. I have had a few people complain

20:09about these screws, but honestly, just be careful, go slow. It's not a problem. But they could be stripped

20:17fairly easily. But there is a flat mounting plate. There's a wedge that can go up or down. You can,

20:26you can flip it. And there's a wedge that can go left or right. Those are just some of the

20:32options.

20:32You know, you have little nice features like the little ring light. You can change the color of that.

20:40It can, it can light up to whatever color you want. One of the things that companies do with video

20:45doorbells

20:46is exactly the opposite of what Tapo is doing. And honestly, this is why I like a lot of their

20:53cameras in 2026. Okay. Right here on the bottom of the box, it says free AI, person, animal, vehicle,

21:02and package detection. Now there's also facial recognition and that's all happening physically

21:10on this device. So why does that matter to you? Well, number one, it's faster. Your notifications

21:17are coming faster. The recognition is happening faster. The recordings are starting faster. If this

21:23has to go out to a cloud service to use an AI service and then process all your footage and

21:30figure out

21:30whether there's a package in front of your door, that can take a long time. Secondly, it matters to you

21:37because it's not leaving your home. When we're talking about detection types, if the company is

21:44having to use a cloud service and they're therefore sending your footage out, that brings a whole other

21:51level of privacy considerations for you. If you're not using their cloud service for recording, you're

21:57using one of their local options, the footage isn't leaving your home. So that's a big deal to me. I

22:03think

22:04it's going to be a big deal to a lot of people. One of the major issues with video doorbells

22:08still today is that you can get a hundred notifications in a day. What that means is

22:15either a hundred people are coming up to your house or your video doorbell is lying to you.

22:20This is a major problem. Okay. And what it ultimately results in is you stop listening. You stop paying

22:28attention to those notifications that you're getting. So TAPO combats this in two ways. It's

22:35basically a two layer approach. The first layer is hardware and what they're doing here is really

22:42sophisticated. It's actually something that we're seeing on some smart home sensors inside of our home

22:49today. They have a PIR motion detector that essentially turns on the next layer, which is

22:57a radar sensor. And that is actually how we're getting that aerial view. So it knows where you are,

23:05where you're moving to, can pinpoint you. And that actually eliminates a lot of that tree movement,

23:13a lot of those kinds of triggering cameras, and then they go to the software method,

23:19which actually has a hardware component to it as well. That is the overall detection system.

23:27They actually have one of the most effective event detection systems out there today. Let me show you

23:34how it works inside of the main settings page for your doorbell. Here it is inside of detection.

23:39This is very common for TAPO cameras. There's a few differences here. Now you can either wake up

23:46based on an event being detected, which I'll show you all the different event types or the doorbell

23:52pressed, and you can adjust a basic sensitivity slider. Okay. This kind of determines how many feet

24:00out that it's going. And we'll talk about why this is so good. Okay. You could do a detection test.

24:08Basically, you're going to want to see when you start this test, if it's seeing you where you want it

24:14to

24:15start. Okay. So it's starting at about 18 feet out from the doorbell. The detection zones are really

24:22powerful. You can set for each type of detection. You can set a different zone. So I love using this

24:30because it lets me do things like I only care about animals if they're on my porch, for example. Okay.

24:39Or at least on my yard here, I can add a second zone if I need to cover more of

24:47the land. Okay. But I'm

24:49not going to need that for this. That's my zone for animal detection. And again, I can set a sensitivity

24:56and I can set different ones for these other ones. Package detection. This was really neat. Actually,

25:03when I turned this on, it was kind of preset on here. Now I don't want my neighbor. I don't

25:10need to

25:10detect that. And that's about everything I need, I think, from a package detection standpoint. So I'm

25:19going to hit save there. In terms of facial recognition, you can just tap in here. Now I

25:25have the H500 hub, but you'll be able to just turn that on if you don't have that hub. Okay.

25:29You can enable facial recognition. You can set again the activity zone. So if you only want to

25:35detect people within a zone, you can do that or a couple of zones. Now in general, this is what

25:41the

25:41facial recognition is going to end up looking like. Like you can set the different people in your home.

25:48You can hit plus, you can add familiar people. You can take a photo, choose from photos. And then as

25:54people are seen, they're set as unknown and you can add those to other people, to the familiars in your

26:04home. Okay. So that's how you can just get the facial recognition to be better and better on this

26:10device. Here's how you set up the Tapo D260. Now you can see this little flashing light

26:18red and green. That's the state you want it in. And it's a good idea to plug in a USB

26:24-C cable just to

26:25get the doorbell fully charged. Okay. You don't have to charge it fully if you're going to hardwire it

26:33in. That's up to you, but I do think it helps to kind of start out in that state. Now

26:39I'm in the Tapo

26:40app. I'm going to go to add a device and you can see it found it right away, but this

26:47is based on

26:47Bluetooth. Okay. You have to have Bluetooth turned on and then it may or may not find it. If it

26:55doesn't

26:55head down to doorbells and then find the D260. This is where they're asking whether the doorbell

27:04is already red and green. So before I got on camera here, I, I held the on and off button

27:10just for a few seconds. You kind of wait and then it says, yeah, we're booting up. It'll,

27:16it'll give you a little confirmation there. So I'm already red and green, but if you're not,

27:21there's a little link there that says how to quickly reset the device. So it found it. And now

27:27it's searching for a wifi network that we have in our home for this device. So what you're going to

27:34do

27:34is select your network. If it doesn't have the right one right away, hit reselect, put in your password

27:41and hit next. Now it's passing the information across. There you go. And we're going to be connected

27:48to our wifi in just seconds. So you want to do this before you head outside and you go and

27:54install.

27:55That's my opinion. And I'll tell you why I say that. Now we named the device. Uh, you can see

28:03it was connected to Amazon already. That's because I have my Tappo account, uh, connected into Amazon

28:09as a skill. We can decide where we're putting it, probably the front door for a lot of people.

28:14And you can create custom rooms. If you want to call it something else down at the bottom there,

28:20then we'll choose an icon. I'm just going to choose the front door and you can always redo

28:25everything that I just decided to do there. We've configured the device. It's ready to use.

28:32And this is where we start to get a few questions about how we're going to use the device. Again,

28:36you can re all, uh, redo all of this later. Now you do get 30 days of unlimited cloud storage.

28:45I'm

28:45going to take advantage of that. At some point, you can actually, uh, get this later in the process,

28:51but for now, I'm just going to hit dismiss. I have a device in my home called the Tappo FH500.

28:58This is a hub of sorts from Tappo and it can do, uh, a wifi backup for them so that

29:08all of your data

29:09and your network traffic actually goes through that. So it's a backup. If your wifi goes out,

29:16this is helpful. You won't have that unless you have an H500 hub. Same with this local storage

29:22question. So I'm going to be storing on to that. If you don't have one of those in your home,

29:30what you're going to want to do is on the back here, there's a micro SD card

29:37and you just install one in there. Very simple. You're just going to push it in and, uh, then

29:44you'll be able to record things on to this video doorbell. You won't have to pay for any cloud storage.

29:52It's a great option that Tappo has at some point, you know, these get a lot of firmware updates

29:59and because of that, you're going to want to kind of set an interval. You can always come in and

30:04check

30:04in the app if there's an update available, but you could just do it that way. Now, this is exactly

30:10where they'll tell you about the local storage portion with a micro SD card. They're showing you

30:15what to do there. Uh, and I'm just saying no micro SD card cause I have the H500, but you

30:22can say yes.

30:23And once you plug that in, so here's where you're going to decide if you're going wired

30:27or battery powered. And again, you could change this setting later. So don't panic if it's going

30:33to change in the future. You just want to test this out. So I'm going to use my power supply.

30:38You do have to know if your transformer is, uh, eight to 24 volts. This is something that is in

30:47my basement and, uh, yeah, you'll want to check that basically before you even buy one of these.

30:54This is called always on mode and it's a bit of a decision point for you. Okay. When enabled,

31:00your doorbell will actively monitor capture video at all times. Okay. So that's regardless of this

31:08sensor on the front detecting anyone. And then basically they're going to pre-roll. So, uh, you can

31:16get the five seconds before your clip starts or the five seconds before this doorbell has, uh,

31:23seen anyone. It allows for 24 seven recording as well. So there's a few things, but what it does

31:30is it makes the doorbell incompatible with a traditional chime. You have to do this little

31:36bypass. They give you a cable in the box, a little important to know what you're doing here with this

31:42one. Uh, I'm going to disable it for now. I am going to use a traditional chime. Okay. If we

31:49bypassed

31:50it in the past, we need to remove that. And I'm going to hit confirm. Now this is guiding us

31:57through

31:58the wiring process, which I'm going to go out there and do before we head out. I want to show

32:03you a

32:03couple of things with the mounts. Now this is our wedge mount. Okay. A little, a little thicker on one

32:10side and they are reversible. Okay. You want this, you see the little screw at the bottom.

32:18So if you wanted to mount kind of facing that way, that's how you would do it. You see there's

32:24a

32:24little up there, pull that out, flip it around. There we go. And now we've got it facing the other

32:31way. The same goes with the up and down wedge mount. Now I think a lot of people are going

32:36to

32:36want to kind of point down. So, uh, you know, that's, that's what I'm going to do in that direction.

32:43So my, my doorbell is going to be facing a little bit down. That's because I've got steps,

32:48but of course you can flip it around and then you can do it that way too. So you can

32:53even

32:54face it a little bit up and all of the little screw holes are going to line up for you

32:59nicely.

33:00Now you can do it without a mount at all. That's important to know as well. And if you'd like,

33:07you can even just stick it to your wall. So you have a couple of these three M sticker tapes,

33:14uh, and I'll show you, I mean, you could, you can see the pattern right there.

33:21Okay. It's just going to fit in there like that. It's on the back of all of these. And if

33:28you'd like,

33:29this is just a little foam pad that can go on the very back. So against your home's wall,

33:35you're going to put that there and you can see again, all the screw holes line up for you. Okay.

33:43So this is an optional piece, but you may want to have a look at all these different options

33:50before you head out there, kind of make some of your decisions. Forgive me for how this looks,

33:56but this is what your doorbell transformer looks like. At least this is what mine looks like. I'm

34:03just putting a spotlight on it here and you can see the ratings on the top of that. So that's

34:08what you

34:09want to be confirming. Uh, and then you should have your panel, my panel, you know, as I read it,

34:17it's always hard to tell. Okay. And I, I can never find the right one that does my video doorbell.

34:25So

34:26you know what I do full master gone, everything's off. Now with lots of these doorbells, you know,

34:35you're basically going to undo the, the screws. Okay. So, um, and then you're going to be able to

34:41get to them. Now I have to take off the poles here that are already attached. So for a lot

34:49of you,

34:49what you're going to find is your doorbell is just sitting there. Uh, you've got the two wires in

34:56behind it and it's still connected. Okay. So I turned off the power fully in my home,

35:03but you still want to use a pen tester and check out those cables before doing any of this.

35:21I just took off the physical components of my previous doorbell,

35:26and I'm left with two cables sitting here because this is a battery doorbell,

35:33as well as a wired one. What you can now do is basically check your viewpoint. Okay. Look in the

35:41app, take a couple minutes, make sure all of that is looking right to you. So if you're going to

35:46angle

35:46it down a little, you can even put it on this mount, just have a look, don't let go. Um,

35:54just hold it

35:55here against your wall and you can see the angle in the app with tap. Oh, here. Uh, first of

36:02all,

36:02I put the sticker on the back. I just want to stick it to my wall so it's not going

36:05to move. And then

36:06I'm actually only going to put in probably one of these screws. I'm going to go about there. And, um,

36:15so I'm just going to get it prepared and test that my, my mount is going to fit. And then

36:21we're going

36:22to go, we've made all of our decisions. We have one more thing to kind of look at here. Okay.

36:27So this

36:28is a six millimeter drill bit. And, uh, you know, I kind of buy these in like packs of two

36:34because I,

36:34I lose them so often and every smart home device, I swear, uses six millimeter drill bits. So, uh,

36:43you know, you have that guide and yeah, it's showing you right there, six mil.

36:49So in case you ever forget or you, you know, you, you don't have the drill bits, just go out

36:54and buy

36:55one of those and make sure that's on a drill for you. First of all, this is your six millimeter

37:01drill

37:02bit. Now I happen to be lucky here. I don't need to drill a hole, a hole. I have a

37:07pre-drilled one. If I

37:08wanted to do my second one, I would get that yellow sticker, put it here and, uh, drill my two

37:15holes through that. Okay. The good news is a lot of these are, uh, these video doorbells are very

37:23similar in terms of the screw size and everything. So this is just going to go right into here.

37:30So I've got my two pieces of my mount. This is what I've decided to use. I was kind of

37:35telling you

37:35that. And now I'm just going to line things up, make sure that the cables are pulled through

37:42all the way, uh, or through the middle here. I'm just going to rest it.

37:46Let's see if I can line up my hole. There it is. Oh man. Okay.

37:54And who is hammering back there? Somebody hammering something.

38:04Don't strip your screw. Not a super strong screw here. Okay. You can strip that one pretty easily.

38:11Get it locked down. Do your second screw screw. If you're going to do that one, obviously you have

38:16to have your holes pre-drilled before this point. Uh, but now you're basically ready to connect.

38:24Now you shouldn't have to do this, but I have to this time. I actually broke one of my, uh,

38:33cables here

38:33when I was taking off, uh, my original doorbell. So I've just got to strip a little cable here

38:41and you can buy some of these for pretty cheap. And I'm just going around. You don't want to cut

38:49off

38:49for strip too much, but, uh, these ones work really easily. You can just basically

38:55crimp down to the size. The tricky thing here is you have to open up these. These are called

39:02poles. Okay. And that's, that's just electrical term for where you're sticking the wire. Uh,

39:08you have to open these up with a small Phillips screwdriver. Don't open them too far because those

39:13screws will fall out. What's nice about these setups is it doesn't matter which one

39:19you connect, uh, to which when you go to connect this, basically you're just hooking it on there.

39:28Okay. And the one thing you don't want to do is leave too much cable. You don't want it coming

39:36out too

39:36far. Once you get it hooked on there, you kind of crimp it down a little, uh,

39:43uh, just cause it could move inside of here. So there, I like it like that. That's pretty good.

39:52And I can kind of wrap it more. So I'm going to tighten this one down, get it on there.

40:05That looks pretty good to me. This is a little bit extra that I probably don't need.

40:10And, uh, you know, I don't want it to move too far. So I'll show you how to handle that

40:15when we're done.

40:16But this, yeah, we actually have to deal a little bit with the white cable.

40:22So what I've done is just created a curve. Okay. And now I'm going to do the same process.

40:29Go from the other direction. If you want

40:34my doorbell, my white is definitely better than my red. Uh, this is a much better connection.

40:40It's going to hold longer. I'm able to tighten down a little harder. You don't want to tighten

40:45down too much. Okay. Just make a good connection. And, uh, now what you've got to do is essentially

40:52push these wires back into here. Uh, you can go down a little bit cause this mount creates a little

40:59bit of space. You can go up a little bit too, depending on your setup, but what you got to

41:04be careful with here is that you don't pop off your cables.

41:13Okay. So you straighten it along the edge, then you push down and now we just have to screw this

41:20in look super good on here. So there we go. We're all connected up. Let's go turn on the power.

41:28See

41:29what happens inside of your box is this two little pretty little clips. Okay. And before we turn on the

41:38power, let's look at our physical chime. Now, this is where you can bypass. If you're going to be using

41:48your, uh, always on mode. Okay. This will stop your chime from ringing. So I'm not going to put that

41:55in right now. You've got the power off test these spots, of course, with your electrical tester, uh,

42:01open them up, put this on, clip this on, on both of these two. Okay. And you can consult the

42:08manual

42:08for this. And then you've created your bypass. Make sure you tighten them down. Of course.

42:14Now I've turned the power back on. I just want you to go into the settings and check things. Okay.

42:20So it took a few minutes to get my wifi back up in my home and things like that. I

42:26want you to check

42:26your power options right away. Make sure that you're, you're charging or it says power supply,

42:34hardwire powered. If you go into this screen and you try to click battery powered, look what it says.

42:41It says, no, we're already working. Okay. So we're not going to battery power you. If you want to turn

42:48on always on mode, this is where you do it as well. Wake up settings, you know, event detected in

42:55general

42:56is what you're going to want. So that's what you're going to start with. And the sensitivity is,

43:01you know, it's kind of telling you how far out your video doorbell is going to see.

43:08Now, obviously you want to check where you're looking. Okay. So, you know, for me, obviously,

43:15I'm seeing quite a bit of the wall, but I'm happy that it's pointed down and out into my pathway

43:22up

43:22here. The other section you'll want to head into is the doorbell section inside of the settings.

43:29Now you can check your doorbell ring. First of all, you can press that. It's actually playing on the

43:35doorbell outside. You also have your paired chime. So I have my H500 and you can set an effective time

43:42with that. So it doesn't have to happen all the time. Doorbell video call. You're going to want the

43:47doorbell call for most people. I think not the push notifications, uh, that puts you right in auto

43:53response. You can turn on automatic responses. So basically set the response time. If nobody's

43:59kind of said anything, let's say in 15 seconds, you can have that set. Okay. You could pick that

44:08and you can even edit the voice response. You can create custom ones. And finally, you probably want

44:14to turn on the anti-theft alarm now. So if someone tries to take it, yeah, they're getting a big

44:21alarm.

44:21Okay. There are a number of ways that you can automate your home with this. And obviously being

44:27automate your life, I need to show you these things. Now, the first thing is how you can start an

44:32automation in the TAPO app. So this is without having any other platform at all. Right there,

44:40you can see, uh, any different type of event being detected, motion, person, animal, vehicle, package

44:48detection. You could start an automation. If you have other TAPO products like their lights or smart

44:54switches, you could turn those on for people as they're detected coming up. Now you've seen how

45:00fast the detection happens. You're going to add another quarter to half a second delay to have a

45:06light come on. So you might want to extend the sensitivity to get that to really start. One of the

45:12options I really like are detect unknown faces and known faces. Plus the doorbell is pressed so you can

45:18make things happen when the doorbell is pressed. They have similar, but less options when you go out to

45:28Amazon, Google, and Samsung smart things. Those are platforms that this directly, uh, integrates with.

45:38Well, let me show you some of the capabilities with Amazon. It's actually quite impressive.

45:43Show me the TAPO D260. Okay. First of all, that was incredibly fast. Now, of course we have the

45:53ability to speak through the microphone to this. You can hear it actually, but, uh, I'll open the door here.

46:00I'm locked. Hello? Okay. Hello? I'm ruining the surprise.

46:09Look at that. Now, let me show you what happens when I go to the door as a visitor. So

46:17I rang the

46:18doorbell. Okay. Someone is at TAPO D260. There you go. Pocked up instantly. Okay. Someone is at the TAPO

46:26front door lock. What happened here is two things happened and you can basically make it announce

46:34whether, uh, someone's just walked up to your home. You can make it announce even vehicles arriving.

46:41You have all the different kinds of announcements. So even though it doesn't show the vehicle

46:47announcements, any motion announcement actually comes out as vehicle. It's quite interesting.

46:51The second thing is you can run routines. So I ran a simple routine that when the doorbells rung,

46:58I show the feed here and that you saw how fast it came up and then the announcement happened after

47:05that.

47:05So there's actually two actions going on. You probably only want one of those, but you get to pick

47:10press. Look at how fast that is. Someone is at the TAPO front door lock. Unbelievably fast. I'm just

47:18letting my Google Nest Hub Max boot up and Google does very similar things and you can just use the

47:25speakers and it won't obviously show the display, but we can show the display on here. So show me the

47:32TAPO D260.

47:41TAPO C260 is unavailable. Yeah. Google's stupid. Can't help stupid. I could of course fix that problem by

47:50changing the name of this inside of the Google app. So partly my problem, partly Google's problem.

47:56But, um, you know, what I don't have here versus Amazon is I, I don't have the ability to speak

48:04through the microphone on the TAPO D260. Unfortunately, I can hear the feed and I'll go out

48:11there right now. You can see how fast it is. So I, I'm going to raise

48:19TAPO D260. Now there you go. So Google, look at, pretty aggressive actually.

48:29It can make all kinds of announcements. Uh, it's making multiple announcements. It's not changing

48:35the feed. Uh, I will say I turned up the brightness too much in the TAPO app. That's,

48:40this is my fault. Um, let me go press the doorbell button.

48:51Perfect. It sure does announce it a lot.

48:58So it's announcing too much, obviously you're just going to turn that way down.

49:08So, and it is still ringing on my phone. It's not like Google is stopping this from happening

49:13through the TAPO app. It does announce a number of times, like three, four, or five times it

49:18announced something going on at the doorbell. So it will be quite aggressive if you're doing

49:24something with Google. Now in terms of automation options, you don't have so many options. You can

49:29just kind of get these reports coming out. It's a little harder to bring up the feed. It's a little

49:35harder to, to get these things to happen through automation. You know, you're not going to be using

49:40it as an automation tool as much with Google. And just to show you with Samsung smart things,

49:46you know, there's some basics of automation, you know, you're going to get things like a basic motion

49:52detection and you're getting doorbell presses as well as a battery status. Now you get to integrate a

49:59lock if you'd like. So you just heard it go locked and yeah, that's my feed in Samsung smart things.

50:08It's letting me lock and unlock and I can see that there were motion events. I don't have any

50:13recording inside of the smart things app, but you know, it's pretty good in terms of speed and in

50:22terms of automation. So you could do automation just based off of motion detection and get lights

50:27out there working with Samsung smart things. One more option here. Home assistant is obviously one of the

50:35most important smart home platforms. And traditionally it's been a little difficult to get

50:41TAPO cameras and their video doorbells integrated into that platform. However, there is an option.

50:50Now there's, there's a couple of requirements here. This feature is only available when always on mode is on.

50:58So that means you have to be recording 24 seven. It means you have to be hardwired into your home.

51:05So it's got to be powered and then you can create what's called a camera account. Now from there,

51:10you have some options. There's a custom component with TAPO. It's not created by TAPO, but it's custom.

51:19You can install it through HACS and then you can actually get some, some triggers, some more

51:28automation options inside of home assistant with this video doorbell. TAPO does have their own

51:36specific integration with home assistant, but I haven't had it be really useful with this. But what

51:43this does is it turns your TAPO video doorbell into an RTSP camera essentially. And that does mean you

51:52can access it with lots of other systems and see what's going on and use other systems with it. Like

51:58home assistant, for example, that option really opens up a lot for, I know my hardcore automation

52:06fans out there. So I hope you'll explore that a little bit. If you get this video doorbell and it

52:12is an option for you. The TAPO D260, this has been a fantastic addition to my home. I really

52:20didn't think I was going to replace my previous video doorbell for a long time, but this is something

52:26I'm going to use on the front of my home. It's got those great local features, local storage, local

52:33detection. These are really important things in 2026. You don't want some company with all of your

52:40footage and using that footage and all your information to their benefit. So I really appreciate

52:46what TAPO has done here. So all the links are down below in the description for the TAPO D260. You've

52:53seen the H500 a few times on this video today. The link for that one is down below if you're

52:59considering

53:00that. And we have a review for that one. Now TAPO usually gives us coupon codes. So if we have

53:06one of

53:06those, they'll be in the description for you. Once you start with kind of one TAPO product,

53:12you're probably going to want a couple. So I made a playlist of all of their video cameras,

53:18their hubs, their other products that we have on the channel in the last couple of years.

53:22Check it all out there, including their less expensive D225. If you're looking at the price of

53:29this thinking maybe you want a little bit less, that's okay. Check out the D225. Great video

53:34doorbell. That's all on screen right there. Otherwise, thanks for watching today, guys. And of course, live smart.

The NEW Tapo D260 Review - Install, Setup and Guide!

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