My Experience with the Aqara G400
Background
Today marks 75 days of owning the Aqara G400 (wifi version) and I just wanted to share some thoughts on my experience. For context my journey with Aqara first began in early 2025 starting with a Smart lock U100 smart deadbolt and have since expanded my aqara home ecosystem to include a Camera Hub G3 with multiple Aqara sensors attached, a Hub M100, and a UWB U400 Smart lock. At this point I’d like to think of myself as an avid Aqara enjoyer because my experience has been overwhelmingly positive up to this point but I’ll try to set aside my bias and be as objective as positive.
Installation
- Mounting: For the install itself the real problem I encountered was figuring out how I was going to actually mount the unit for a couple of reasons. Firstly the wiring in my door frame sits very close to the hinge rail on my storm door and the actual door frame itself is both slanted inwards towards the hinge and also too narrow. What this essentially meant was that I simply did not have enough “real estate” to install the mounting bracket flush against the door frame. This is something to keep in mind if you’re planning to get this doorbell camera and you should definitely measure to ensure there’s enough clearance to actually mount it. Fortunately I was able to make it work with a custom 3d printed offset extension and a 10 degree angle shim piece. The doorbell comes with a 15 degree wedge bracket included in the box but ultimately I did not need to adjust the angle any further.
- Wiring: The electrical was very simple and easy. There are two extension wires with U-shaped terminals on one end and bare wire on the other so its as simple as securing these to the terminal block on the back of the doorbell and then making the connections with your wiring. I decided to forego using the included wire nuts and opted to make the connections with wago lever nuts. I didn’t find anything wrong with the included wire nuts, it’s just my own personal preference and I use them for almost all of my electrical work.
- Micro SD card: There is a silicon plug located beneath the wiring terminal block that you have to remove in order to access the SD card slot. I did not have any issues mounting the SD card in the slot after removing the plug.
- Overall the installation went very smoothly. Once the mounting bracket is secured to the wall/frame you simple just line up the camera body with the bracket and it snaps in to place. It feels relatively secure after its snapped in to the bracket but one thing I want to briefly emphasize is that it doesn’t actually use any physical fastener to keep it locked to the bracket. There is an internal spring-loaded release latch located within the doorbell body that clicks and locks directly to the bracket. All it takes is a sim-card ejector tool inserted into the tiny hole on top in order to detach from the bracket. I definitely believe it will hold up to strong storm winds but I’d prefer a screw or some other fastener. In my opinion it honestly seems like you could probably rip it off of the bracket with a decent amount of physical force.
Connectivity
- Aqara Home: The device was very simple to add in to Aqara Home using the Aqara app. If you have ever added any devices in the Aqara app you will know how simple this process is.
- Home Assistant: I’ve got a home assistant server running on a raspberry pi 4 and it was very easy to bring the device into HA using the homekit code located on the back of the camera body. No issues.
- Recording: I’m also running frigate NVR on a raspberry pi5 docker container and have the doorbell camera stream added there as well using its RTSP stream. No issues.
- I tested adding the G400 to my Alexa ecosystem and it connected with no issues. The Alexa integration gives you the ability to have the doorbell press notifications go to your echo devices and you can pick/choose which specific echo’s make the announcement. I was also able to confirm the doorbell camera feed works on the echo show display.
My biggest worry/concern going in was about how well the device would perform over Wi-Fi. To my surprise it has performed extremely well; much better than I had ever expected. I’ve not had any issues whatsoever with stream picture quality, device disconnections, or any other connectivity/performance issues. I’ve got numerous automations running that use the camera stream, including one which streams the camera feed on the google TV located in my living room which triggers after doorbell press so that I can see who is at the door without even having to look at my phone. It took a significant amount of work to get everything functional but all of my issues were on the home assistant side and nothing related to the device itself or Aqara. Overall the device has exceeded all my expectations by a significant degree.
Features
- Smart Detections: I spent a few weeks testing the built in AI detection functionality and overall it is reasonably decent. It is obviously extremely limited in terms of its capability and customization compared to what you can get with frigate but it requires barely any setup/configuration. The person detection does not require the paid subscription server and it works quite good for basic person detection. I don’t think I experience a single false detection throughout the entire time testing it. You can even use these detection events as automation triggers inside of the Aqara home app. For what it does offer, its actually quite nice and very simple to use.
Downsides
- My biggest con with the camera is the speaker on the doorbell really is quite bad. Even at max volume it does not get very loud. If its a windy day or if its loud outside the person at the door is going to struggle to hear you unless they hold their ear close to the doorbell. It would be one thing if this were a battery powered device but there really is no excuse to justify it having such a weak speaker. It’s genuinely unfortunate and disappointing because its such a good doorbell otherwise.
- The camera interface inside of the Aqara home app isn’t great. And to be fair this isn’t unique to the G400, its the exact same interface as other aqara camera’s but regardless the interface is quite clunky to use. And every time I open it up to look at it, I’m instantly reminded why I don’t like it lol.
- All of the settings menus are in dire need of a refresh. The layout of the settings has to be one of the worst most unintuitive layouts I have ever seen in my 25+ years of using phone/tablet/computer applications. You have a sub-menu for enabling various detections, and a different sub-menu for enabling the corresponding notifications for those detections, and a different sub-menu to enable the option to upload event video to the cloud for those same detections,
- Locally saved raw video files on the SD are not easily accessible. You have to physically remove the SD card from the device and export the files separately. You can download “clips” saved either manually or generated from detection events but you want to export the raw video files its going to be a lot more work than you would expect. The SD card slot is located below the wire terminal block so if you want to do this safely (which you always should) you’ll want to turn off the breaker that the doorbell is wired to before removing it. It’s worth mentioning that this generally wont impact you if you’re recording the video to a NAS or frigate. However its still important to know because if something happens to your recordings and you need to access the SD card files, its not just a simple file transfer over network.
- The G400 RTSP does not have native IPv6 support which isn’t a dealbreaker by any means but its definitely a little bit unfortunate for a variety of reasons. There are ways to workaround this with using a proxy or if you’re using an NVR but regardless it would have been nice for it to have native support.
Upsides
- The G400 looks and feels like a well-made and high quality device
- It is reliable
- Easy to install/setup
- Wide compatibility and not difficult to integrate into multiple different smart home ecosystems
- Extremely good value. The features it offers at only a hundred bucks is incredible and easily justifies its cost
- Video quality is very nice for this price level. Both Daytime and Nighttime quality is very good
- Built in basic smart detection features work as advertised with very consistent performance
- The included doorbell chime works great and if you’d rather disable and use your Amazon echo or any number of other devices to announce the doorbell ring it is fully customizable
