Video doorbell stand alone vs base station

[SingletrackMind]

What are the functional differences/limitations of pair the video doorbell with a base stations versus standalone connected to my on SSID? I’ve already seen that you loose the ability to reboot the doorbell when base station attached. Are there any features that you get when connecting it to a base station or any other features besides reboot that you lose?

[jguerdat]

While opinions vary, my biggest loss if using WiFi would be that there is no way to have local recordings. As for rebooting, I just reboot the hub which generally is the same thing. Of course, sometimes it could be necessary to remove power from the doorbell but that could be true for either use case.

[jsaus63304]

I have my doorbell connected to a base with no subscription.  I have a hard drive attached and can view local recordings from the doorbell and all cameras.  You lose the thumbnail for recordings and only have a time stamp.  You lose person detection options and zones.  I do not miss any of those options in normal use.  I got just as many unwanted alerts with the subscription and options enabled.  The thumbnails were nice to have.

[SingletrackMind]

Thanks for the responses.  Definitely helpful.  As I understand it, my base station doesn't allow for remote viewing of locally stored videos (natively in the app anyway) which pretty well rules out my desire for local storage.  I have however recently learned that the only way to get Apple HomeKit support for the doorbell (once the new base station firmware is released) is to have the doorbell connected to the base station.  So I guess I'll be staying with base station paired for that reason alone.