Today we’re going to tell you about one of our all-time favorite smart home devices – the Ring Video Doorbell. In case you’re not familiar with it, this is the first entirely battery-operated, Wi-Fi enabled high definition video doorbell on the market. There are a number of reasons why we love it that we’ll be getting into in this post. The most basic function of theRing Video Doorbell is the ability to get a live video and audio feed of the front of your home from your smart phone or tablet – even when you’re not at home.
Let’s start with installation. The box comes with everything you need for set up – the doorbell itself, the other necessary installation parts. You can hire someone to connect the Ring Video Doorbell into your home’s existing doorbell wiring, or you can mount it to the door and operate it completely over Wifi with the rechargeable battery with the kit provided in the box. The battery is supposed to last up to a year, but we found that we have had to recharge it every few months. This probably depends on where you are and what kind of activity is in front of your house. We’ll get into options for this further down in the post.
The Ring Video Doorbell has a 180 degree lens and is capable of 720p video. With the original model doorbell, you had to select the color you wanted on purchasing it – satin nickel or Venetian bronze. With the newer model, the Ring 2, it comes with both colors in interchangeable faceplates, which is a great bonus. The doorbell has a button which lights up with an LED light around it when it is pressed, and you can set up the type of chime you would like to sound on ringing the bell.
During installation you will get the app on your smart phone, and the orange button on the back of the Ring Video Doorbell will connect the device to your wireless network. The app also contains full installation instructions and operation tutorials to help you with set up. Some of the features you might select will include the range the camera reaches to capture motion, and there are tutorials for this. For example, we purchased the kit that included two additional stick-up cams that we installed at the side of our house under our carport and at the back of the house where our boat is docked. Originally the setting we chose at the side of the house was extended too far and kept picking up our neighbors dogs walking around in their yard, so we adjusted it with the recommendations from the tutorials. By the way, you can buy additional stick up cams separately if you want to use the Ring Video Doorbell as a full security system, or you can get some value by selecting the same package we did, which includes the doorbell and two cams.
Now, if you’re at all as suspicious as we were when we first purchased this device (even though we live in a relatively safe neighborhood), you might wonder how secure your doorbell will be when it is just screwed on to the front of your house. Luckily, Ring Video Doorbell has a policy that they’ll replace your device free of charge if it’s ever stolen. That is an excellent feature to provide, and heaven forbid it did get stolen, you would have the video feed saved in cloud storage of whoever was at your door trying to remove the device.
Now, a bit more about the video feeds and cloud storage. Your Ring app can notify you when there is motion picked up by your doorbell or other stick up cams you have installed. If you have access to your phone at the time of the notification, you can get a live few of what is happening there. Even better, there is two-way audio so you can speak to whoever is in front of your house. For example, if UPS is ringing the bell and you’re not home, you can talk to the delivery person through the app and tell them where to leave the package. I also (accidentally of course!) scared the stuffing out of someone putting flyers on our car one evening. I couldn’t really tell what he was doing at first, so just spoke through the stick-up came and asked, “Can I help you?” and the poor man jumped a mile not knowing where the voice was coming from! Once he composed himself he answered back pleasantly enough. (Side note – you can adjust the volume on the audio to avoid causing similar frights for your visitors!)
Now it you don’t happen to see the motion detector notification at the moment it happens, you can go into the app later and watch the video feed. The Ring Video Doorbell provides you with a free 30 day trial of the Cloud Video Storage, and then you can pay $3 per month or $30 per camera per year if you would like to continue to have your video feeds stored, as well as the ability to download the feeds. We highly recommend going with the yearly package and will tell you in a bit how that was super valuable to us just recently. It’s a very reasonable price compared to the cost of other home security systems. If you do not use the Cloud Storage you will still of course be able to use the live feed.
A bit more about battery life. As mentioned above, you can adjust the settings so that the motion sensor is more or less sensitive according to your needs. The more motion it picks up, the faster the battery will drain. We have had this issue in our backyard when the device picks up the branches of one of our trees blowing on windy days. Since we did not want to reduce the sensitivity based on the extension we wanted for that camera, the battery was having to be recharged quite often. We purchased a Ring Solar Panel that is compatible with the device and keeps it charged all the time without our having to plug it in.
Another excellent feature of the Ring Video Doorbell is the night vision. You get a great picture in the darkness, providing your home with extra security. We have personally benefitted from this of late. As we mentioned above we live in a reasonably safe area, but there is always the potential of crimes of opportunity. Not long ago we were woken up in the middle of the night by a notification of motion on the side of our house. The live feed showed a man trying to break into the car! He was unsuccessful, but we called the police anyway and were able to download and provide them with the video feed, which was high quality even in the darkness, to help with their investigation. It turned out there had been other reported car break-ins in the area recently, and our video was instrumental in finding the culprit. We’ve had some other less dangerous night visitors as well, including a young barn owl who sometimes sits on our porch, and we enjoy watching those video feeds to see what he’s up to!
Having the Ring Video Doorbell and additional stick up cams has provided us with so much peace of mind, we really can’t recommend it highly enough. It is still the highest attainable standard Wi-Fi doorbell camera on the market.
Let us know in the comments if you have the Having the Ring Video Doorbell or have any questions about this product!
