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MyQ Garage Video Keypad: Read the Fine Print I Skipped

2023 · From the Tech with Asher channel · Watch below or read on

Two days before this review, I was scrolling online and an ad stopped me cold: you are watching the wrong door. The pitch was a video keypad for the garage, and it is a fair point, because for many families the garage door is the real front door. It seemed so simple and so obviously right that I ordered it on the spot. Which is exactly how I made a mistake you can avoid in thirty seconds.

What it is

Possibly the first product of its kind I have seen: a garage door keypad with a 1080p camera inside, night vision, two-way talk, and a 160 degree field of view wide enough to see the whole driveway approach. The keypad is a little thick because it houses its own battery, charged by micro USB, and it comes with an angle mount so the camera points where you need it.

Setup goes beautifully, until it doesn't

The MyQ app handles everything: tap plus, add device, video solutions, video keypad. Slide the charged battery in, watch the light blink, pair over Bluetooth, join Wi-Fi, name it, set your entry code. Smooth the whole way. Then comes the final step: pairing the keypad to the garage door opener itself. The app shows you a row of colored learn buttons and asks which one matches the opener on your ceiling.

I climbed up, looked at my opener, and its learn button matched none of the colors on the screen. I tried anyway. Enter the code, press home, the app cheerfully reports the door was accessed, and asks: did your garage door move? No. Retry. I did that loop ten or fifteen times before surrendering to the website.

The sentence I should have read first

On the MyQ product page, below the marketing, in small print: compatible with five listed opener brands, and, smaller still, openers manufactured after 1993. Here is the trap: my garage already runs other MyQ equipment perfectly. Compatibility with one MyQ product does not mean compatibility with all of them; each device checks the opener's brand and era on its own terms.

The verdict

Mine went back in the box, and honestly, reluctantly, because the feature set is right and the test footage I shot looked genuinely good. If your opener is on their list and newer than 1993, I think this is a smart addition to the most-used door of the house. Just do the thirty-second homework first: opener brand, opener year, compatibility page. Learn from my return label.