this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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It costs US$22.50 compared to US$100 for the Ring (that requires a US$10/month subscription). It's going to have some compromises and calling it e-waste for that is weird as hell. 480p is also pawfectly good-enough for the use case as well. Like, when I was growing up 480i was pawfectly cromulent, and most terrestrial broadcast channels are still only 576p50 (on DVB) encoded as MPEG-2. Your doorbell doesn't need to be 2K or 4K, and that's just going to use more drive space for no reason.
Not weird. It's ewaste. 480p in 2025 is trash. Eufy has 2k option for ~$60 on frequent sale with no subscription. So does Reolink.
So 3 times the cost? It's a fucking doorbell. Does it ding? Camera is a bonus if you want that and 480p is easily enough to see who is there. It's cheap yes, but it's fine.
480p is bad for livestreaming a sporting event.
Its fine for a doorbell
What if I use my doorbell to watch sporting events?
Aldi doesn't do sales ever.
According to who? If it's functional as a doorbell then why does it need to chase higher specs and drive the price up? It's not a movie, and you're pawbably looking at it on a 6 inch screen anyway.
If you don't like it, don't buy it, spend your money elsewhere. But asserting that no one will use it is ridiculous and more than a little bit privileged.
You can barely distinguish faces in 480p. It is useless. Technology progressed and there's no reason to continue generating ewaste. These sensors are actual trash. Aldi isn't selling old stock so this literal trash is purposefully manufactured only for people to discover it's not actually useful and immediately return it.
Oh no, I can't tell these people's faces apart because someone on the internet said I wouldn't be able too. What am I gonna do??
(the photo is 480x576 rather than 640x480 or 854x480 (16:9) but you get the idea)
Okay, to be fair to your point, I also think 480p is enough for a doorbell camera, unless you're trying to ID stuff that's far away from your door.
But also, you can't compare the quality of a still photo with good lightning, and probably some good editing as well, vs a video that mixes in compression artifacts, and also depends on how good the hardware is. That's why 480p videos taken with cameras 15 years ago look much worse than 480p videos taken with phones today.
Tl;Dr: not all 480p is created equal.
Oh yeah, absolutely. There are limitations there, and stuff like compression and format are going to make a huge difference. I just think the tradeoffs are acceptable for the price.
Who is calling this e waste? What are you an AI clanker that needs a higher res to train on? If There is no update to brick the thing in 5 years and it doesnt rely on a non-replaceable battery its not e waste.