There comes a point in every smart home journey where you stop tinkering and start committing. For me, that moment arrived when I decided to properly secure a holiday home 70km away — a property I can’t easily check on, and one where peace of mind is worth every cable run and POE switch port.

My previous setup relied on Ring — a video doorbell and a floodlight camera. They worked, after a fashion. But without an active subscription, Ring’s recording model leaves you with nothing but live view. No clips. No history. No evidence if something happens while you’re elsewhere. That’s a fundamental problem for a property you’re not always at, and it’s what pushed me to look at alternatives for this scenario.

I’ve already been using Aqara devices here at home and am impressed by the ecosystem’s flexibility, so when the Aqara Doorbell Camera G400 and Camera Hub G5 Pro POE both became available, the decision was easy. I ran Cat 6e cable to the front and back of the house, installed a POE switch, and set about replacing the Ring hardware entirely. Here’s what I found.

The setup: Why PoE makes sense for a holiday home

Before getting into the cameras themselves, it’s worth talking about the infrastructure choice, because it shapes the whole experience.

POE or “Power over Ethernet” delivers both power and data through a single cable, which means no separate power supply to run, no battery to manage, and rock-solid connectivity. Wi-Fi at a holiday home — particularly one you may not visit for weeks — introduces real risk: router reboots, congestion, signal issues. A wired POE camera just sits there and does its job. Both the G400 and G5 Pro support POE natively, and once they’re in, you genuinely forget about them. There’s no reconnection drama, no offline notifications at 2am. Even with the low voltage trickle charging on my old doorbell, in a place that is susceptible to a lot of notifications, the battery would run down, and when you’re not there to charge or change it – you’re offline.

That’s not to say that POE is the proverbial knight in shining armour, maybe it’s not even an option for you, and in that case, you take the Wi-Fi path. Wi-Fi works just great for me here at home, but I didn’t want to leave room for error.

Before we move on, let’s talk POE installation very briefly! I purchased two 20 meter Cat6 ethernet cables, they came with cable clips (That I didn’t use) I already had a Netgear POE network switch from a previous install and I also have a Synology DS224 NAS at the property. You don’t need the NAS, but it’s a ‘nice to have’ if you want to set it up the way I did – no subscriptions, all “local”. Below is a ‘before I tidied my cables!’

Conveniently, right beside and below this cupboard, there’s a trapdoor in the floor that allowed me to lean under the house and run the cables all the way to the front and back of the house – I won’t go into detail as I will need to have this cabling done by a professional (as per Australia cabling rules (AS/CA S009) but for this proof of concept and review, my cabling was to standard, and for pretty much everywhere other than Australia, is easy to do yourself. (A small note: It is legal to run network cables and even network cables that carry POE, but the run has to be visible (I don’t recall the exact definition, but it can’t be under your house)

What’s in the Aqara G400 box?

  • Aqara 2K Doorbell Camera G400 (Wired/PoE) x 1
  • Chime x 1
  • User Manual x 2
  • USB-C Charging Cable x 1
  • Wall Screws & Anchors Kit x 1
  • Mounting Plate x 1
  • 15° Wedge x 1
  • Sealing Plug x 2
  • Detaching Pin x 1
  • Extension Wires Kit x 1
  • Mounting Hole Template x 1

Aqara Doorbell Camera G400: 2K coverage at the front door

G400 design and installation

The G400 is a clean, slim doorbell — notably slimmer than my previous doorbell. It measures 141 × 53 × 32mm, and Aqara includes an angled bracket if your mounting surface isn’t perfectly flush, which is how I mounted mine, angling slightly away from the nearest wall (which also helps with exposure in low light). There’s a circular illuminated button below the lens, an ambient light sensor on the front, and on the rear, both an Aqara QR code and an Apple HomeKit QR code for pairing. Worth noting: take a photo of those QR codes before you mount it — they’re not as easy to access once the unit is on the wall. (Ask me how I know!)

I mentioned that it helps with low light, that’s because most cameras like these ones will auto-expose based on the scene, so if they’re seeing a whole light coloured ceiling or wall they will lower the exposure so it’s not too bright, but then anything beyond that ceiling or wall has the potential to be darker, so angling the doorbell to see away from the wall helps with that. Some cameras have a half decent HDR (High Dynamic Range) mode, meaning they do better at having lights and darks in the same frame, but a lot don’t, especially while using IR lighting at night.

You can set the G400 to either auto or manual brightness, and as per many doorbell cameras, you will tend to get a bright (blown out) sky when the camera is under eaves or a verandah, as it’s exposing the shadowy area and not the sky – which is exactly what it’s supposed to do, right! Show you who’s at the door – We’re not making award-winning landscape images with the G400. 😉

Power arrives via the Cat 6 network cable I’d already run, and the POE connection handles everything. No wiring adapters, no transformer compatibility issues. The chime unit connects indoors via USB-C and handles alerts, two-way audio, and quick replies.

I will note that we had a little trouble getting notifications pushing to my iPhone, but after some assistance from the Aqara support team, we’re up and running! In tests with my neighbour, it’s a couple of second delay between her pressing the doorbell and the notification ringing on my phone 70km away. I realise this isn’t a limitation of the G400, but rather the networks between it and me! For almost everyone else, it’ll be almost instantaneous, as it is with my local Aqara doorbell.

G400 image quality and night vision

The camera captures 2K resolution in a 3:4 vertical aspect ratio with a 165° field of view — a genuinely smart design choice. Standard 16:9 widescreen doorbells are great for landscapes but terrible for doorsteps: you see the street but miss the parcel sitting at someone’s feet. The G400’s vertical orientation captures head-to-toe, making it easy to see faces at the door and packages on the ground in the same frame. (Thank you to my neighbour, Suzy, for her button pressing assistance!)

Night vision is handled by 940nm infrared LEDs, which are effectively invisible (unlike the harsh red glow of conventional IR), and performance in low light is solid. The ambient light sensor handles the transition between full-colour and night vision automatically.

G400 local recording without a subscription

This is the point that matters most for my use case. Out of the box, with no subscription whatsoever, the G400 records motion-triggered clips and stores them on a microSD card (up to 512GB, inserted in the doorbell unit itself). Every notification comes with a snapshot. Every event is logged. You can also enable an RTSP stream if you want to pipe footage into a NAS or NVR.

For those who want more — cloud storage, AI-powered face and package detection, up to 90 days of encrypted cloud history — Aqara’s optional HomeGuardian subscription adds all of that. But the key word is optional. The camera functions fully without it. (You do get a trial of HomeGuardian with the G400, so you can try it out)

G400 smart home and platform support

The G400 works with Apple HomeKit (including HomeKit Secure Video), Alexa, Google Home, SmartThings, and Home Assistant via RTSP/ONVIF. For HomeKit Secure Video users, the resolution is capped at 1080p — a limitation of Apple’s platform, not Aqara’s hardware. In the Aqara app, full 2K is available. (1536 × 2048)

One note: IP65 weather resistance and an operating range from -20°C to 50°C make it genuinely robust for outdoor use, which I appreciated given the property sits unattended through winter.

After our initial hiccups with notifications, the G400 has worked floorlessly! Great image quality and the audio quality despite me mostly using it from my iPhone a whole city away is clear and easy to understand what the door knocker is saying! I can recommend the Aqara G400, a great smart-home doorbell.

Now, Let’s take a look at the G5 Pro POE

Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro PoE: More than an outdoor security camera

G5 Pro smart home hub features

The G5 Pro was Aqara’s first dedicated outdoor camera, and they’ve made it do a lot of heavy lifting. At its core, it’s a 4MP (2.6K, 2560 × 1520) outdoor security camera with a 133° field of view. But it’s also a Zigbee hub, a Thread Border Router, and a Matter controller — meaning it can bridge outdoor smart home devices into your existing ecosystem. Whether that matters to you depends on your setup, but it’s impressive that Aqara packed all of this into a single outdoor unit. I’m currently NOT using those features as I don’t have a whole lot of ‘smart’ equipment at that location (yet!)

Aqara Camera Hub G5 Pro POE

G5 Pro image quality and colour night vision

This is where the G5 Pro genuinely impresses. The sensor is a 1/1.8″ unit with an f/1.0 aperture — that’s four’ish times more light capture than a standard f/2.0 lens. Pair that with graphene cooling (which manages heat from the sensor and preserves image quality in demanding conditions) and True Color Night Vision, and the result is footage that stays in colour well into the dark. Where most security cameras switch to washed-out greyscale infrared, the G5 Pro maintains natural colour rendering using its built-in spotlight, making faces and objects far easier to identify. I will say, the ambient light out in the country is a LOT less when compared with where I live in Melbourne, the back yard at night where the G5 Pro lives is black black dark… So while I do get an image, the night vision colour is pretty grainy! That, when the light comes on, daytime footage is crisp and consistent. The 133° field of view covers a backyard comfortably without the edge distortion that plagues cheaper wide-angle cameras.

G5 Pro local storage and NAS support

Like the G400, the G5 Pro doesn’t require a subscription to be useful. It includes built-in eMMC storage, supports RTSP for local NVR streaming, and can back up clips directly to an SMB NAS. The Aqara HomeGuardian subscription adds cloud storage and extended AI detection, but the baseline experience — motion-triggered recordings, notifications, live view — is fully available without spending another cent after purchase.

G5 Pro PoE connectivity and reliability

Powered by my POE switch via Cat 6e, the G5 Pro’s connection has been faultless. Response times are near-instant, and scrubbing through the event timeline in the Aqara app is noticeably snappy compared to cameras I’ve used previously. Events load quickly, even when accessing footage remotely.

IP65 weather resistance and a rated operating range down to -30°C mean it handles whatever the backyard throws at it.

Living with the Aqara security ecosystem

Using both cameras through the Aqara app has been a smooth experience overall. Motion detection is handled on-device using local AI, so alerts arrive quickly and without relying on a cloud round-trip. Person detection, zone customisation, and two-way audio all work well.

I do wish zone customisation was a little finer, the squares you choose to turn on or off detection in that zone could be much smaller, like 4 squares rather than one so you had much more control over where your detection started and ended. (My excellent artist’s impression below!)

Managing multiple homes in the Aqara app

There is one aspect of the Aqara ecosystem that caught me out, and it’s worth flagging for anyone in a similar situation. Because I already had Aqara devices at my primary home, I had a “home” configured in the Aqara app. When I added the holiday home cameras, I set them up under the same home in different “rooms” — which works, but means you can’t switch between the two locations unless you’re physically present at one of them to reconfigure. If I’d known from the start, I’d have set the holiday property up as a separate home within the app. As it stands, removing and re-scanning the devices is the only way to organise them. It’s a one-time fix, but worth doing properly from the outset.

Verdict: Aqara G400 and G5 Pro PoE

Replacing Ring with Aqara wasn’t just a hardware swap — it changed what I expected home security to actually deliver. The G400 at the front door gives me 2K vertical coverage, Almost instant motion notifications with snapshots, and locally stored clips, all without a monthly fee. The G5 Pro out the back gives me true colour night vision, wide-area coverage, and the same no-subscription-required reliability.

For a property you can’t always be at, that matters enormously. You want to know that if something happens at 3am on a Tuesday, you’ll have footage of it — not a notification telling you that you need to subscribe to find out what triggered it.

The Aqara system delivers on that promise, and then some.

The Aqara 2K Doorbell Camera G400 (Wired/PoE) has RRP A$199, and the Aqara Security Camera Hub G5 Pro (PoE) has RRP A$399, both are available from the Aqara website.

Highly recommended!

DRN would like to thank Aqara for providing the review units.