For most of its history, using Adobe’s creative tools meant opening an Adobe app. At Adobe MAX 2026 in Miami Beach, the company made it clear that is changing.
Alongside a long list of new AI features for Firefly, Premiere and Photoshop, Adobe announced partnerships and integrations that put its technology inside other platforms, including AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, Google Workspace and Microsoft Windows.
Adobe CTO Ely Greenfield, who also runs Creative Cloud and Firefly, described the shift at a press briefing as “the disaggregation of creative technology and creative process”. Ten or 15 years ago, he said, removing the background from an image meant opening Photoshop. Now, with the rise of AI agents, the idea is that “creation can happen anywhere and that customers are free to combine different technologies and tools to create the workflows that they want.”
Adobe inside ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude
The most visible part of this is Adobe’s connectors for AI assistants. Adobe already offers connectors in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude that let you call on a set of Adobe tools from within a chat, and says that list will keep growing.
Deepa Subramaniam, Adobe’s vice president of product marketing for Creative Cloud, described the connector as “a subset of tools and technologies that you can invoke within the LLM directly to start your creative process”. From there, you can move into Adobe’s own apps, where the same Adobe Creative Agent powers new AI Assistants in Firefly, Premiere, Photoshop and Illustrator. These are in beta, and Photoshop’s is currently only in the Photoshop beta app.
Adobe’s Creative Agent building a mood board in Firefly Boards. Image: Adobe
The next step goes further. Adobe previewed local MCP (Model Context Protocol) integrations that will let professionals use their preferred third-party AI agent to work directly in native Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and After Effects project files on their own computer. Adobe says layers, vectors, bins and sequences stay editable, so you can step in and adjust the work by hand at any point. The integrations are due in private beta in early 2027.
“MCP is just one more way to support creatives where they’re at, how they want to work,” Subramaniam said. Greenfield expects most people to connect through the big public AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, which he described as becoming hubs for all sorts of workflows.
How much of Premiere will an AI agent get?
At the briefing, GadgetGuy asked Greenfield how capable those MCP connections will be. Will an outside agent such as Claude get access to the full Premiere toolset, or only a limited subset? And how does that compare with Adobe’s own Creative Agent?
Greenfield said he couldn’t give absolutes yet because the work is still in development, but that the intent is to open up whatever customers need. “Does that mean every single thing in our tools is available? I don’t want to make it absolute like that,” he said.
On how Adobe’s own agent compares, he drew a parallel with Firefly’s AI models: Adobe builds its own to fill the gaps that general-purpose options leave. For creative agents, that gap is judgment. Earlier in the session, Greenfield described working out whether a piece of creative content is any good as “a very hard task, which most humans aren’t good at”, and the part Adobe is investing in to make its agents smarter.
Topaz Labs joins Adobe
Adobe is also bringing more AI models under one roof. Topaz Labs, known for its AI image and video enhancement tools and now owned by Adobe, has introduced two new image models. Wonder 4 combines upscaling, denoising, deblurring and sharpening in a single click, while Image HDR uses AI to convert standard images to HDR. Topaz sits alongside Adobe’s own models and those from partners including Google, OpenAI, ByteDance, Kling and ElevenLabs in Firefly, although Adobe says the Topaz models are available to purchase separately.
Why Adobe is opening up
It is a notable shift for a company whose business has long depended on people opening its apps. Asked how the announcements help Adobe stay relevant against rivals such as Canva, Greenfield argued that a lot of AI-generated content still ends up in Adobe’s tools for finishing, and that unbundling its technology is about making sure “there’s no barrier to people using our technology where they want to.”
For creators, the practical upshot is choice. If you already work in ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude, Adobe wants to meet you there. If you know Premiere or Photoshop inside out, they are not going anywhere. How much of Adobe’s toolset outside agents will actually reach, and what it will cost, are the questions still to be answered.
What’s available now and what’s coming
Available now: Adobe connectors in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude
Available now: optimised Photoshop, Premiere and After Effects for Arm-based Windows PCs, with Substance 3D Painter in beta
Coming: Adobe Express in Microsoft Photos, starting with a Windows Insider preview
Coming: Acrobat in Gmail and Google Drive, and Adobe tools in AI Mode in Google Search
Coming: local MCP integrations for Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and After Effects, in private beta from early 2027
Adobe hasn’t detailed Australian pricing or availability for the upcoming integrations.
Valens Quinn attended Adobe MAX 2026 in Miami Beach as a guest of Adobe.
Pre-loads for Grand Theft Auto VI began overnight, letting eager gamers download the blockbuster game ahead of its 19 November launch date. According to NBN Co, Rockstar Games’ latest entry is set to break Australian internet traffic records.
With a whopping install size totalling up to 212GB, GTA 6 is expected to cause a massive spike in downloads across the country. As much as Aussies use NBN internet for work and streaming TV, it’s gaming that results in the biggest spikes in online activity.
“Gaming releases are behind some of the biggest traffic peaks we see on the NBN network, and this is expected to be one of the largest download events ever,” said Catherine Campbell, General Manager of Networks Innovation, Partnerships and Roadmaps at NBN Co.
Although NBN didn’t specify which game, a major 2025 launch set a new peak traffic record at 32.91 terabits per second. Campbell described this as “about 30 per cent above baseline traffic”, adding nearly 8Tbps of increased load during the network’s busiest period.
What impact will GTA 6 have on the NBN?
Back in 2023, Call of Duty Modern Warfare III and Fortnite’s OG update resulted in a then-record for the NBN network, which maxed out at 26.76Tbps. At the time, the large spike in download traffic stemmed from two popular games launching large downloads at the same time, which were then immediately available to play.
Things are a bit different with GTA 6, however. Pre-loading, which lets players download a game’s files before launch, more than a week before a release date is unusual. Theoretically, it means that there will be less demand on the day of GTA 6’s launch, giving networks more breathing room.
Still, there’s still a strong belief that GTA 6 will set new records for Australia’s internet infrastructure. Like other major games before it, it’s something that NBN Co actively plans for to keep up with demand.
“We work closely with the content distribution community to comprehensively model potential impact to prepare for game releases,” Campbell said. “This limits the impact of download demand on the network through pre-seeding approaches, which spread downloads over a longer period, reducing concentration at launch time.”
How long will GTA 6 take to download?
At lot has changed in gaming in the roughly 13 years between standalone GTA games. Install sizes is one of them; GTA 5 originally fit on a single PlayStation 3 disc, taking up 17.4GB. Depending on the platform, GTA 6 will take up 212GB, more than 12 times the predecessor’s storage space.
With such a large download facing many gamers, pre-loading also gives those on slower internet speeds plenty of time to prepare for launch. For Australian’s on a 25Mbps plan, one of the most affordable internet plans available, GTA 6 will take upwards of 19 hours to download.
This also has a flow-on effect to other online activities. As explained by Campbell, the longer a download takes, “the longer other online activities will be competing for household bandwidth”.
Conversely, a 100Mbps plan would finish downloading GTA 6 in under five hours, while a 500Mbps plan would take close to an hour. According to data published by Ookla, 180.58Mbps is the median download speed of Australia’s fixed broadband connections. Based on this, without factoring in other variables, the median GTA 6 download would take roughly 2.5 hours.
But advertised internet speeds only tell half of the story. Other factors play a part, like network quality, wired-versus-wireless connections, and so on. Many Australians still use older routers, limiting peak speeds and bandwidth distribution between devices.
So, if you want to be ready to play GTA 6 next week, start downloading soon, or make sure your internet connection is in order. If you wait until next week, you’ll likely join many other Aussie gamers waiting for the next big game to install.
Stepping up to 4K resolution while reducing the need for a subscription, the Tapo D260 Doorbell Pro keeps a sharp eye on your doorstep.
The jump from 2K to 4K resolution offers a much clearer view of what’s happening in your front yard, but the initial trade-off was that 4K video was limited to hardwired smart doorbells running on AC power.
Thankfully, 4K resolution is trickling down to battery-powered smart doorbells. They’re easier to install than hardwired models, which is especially handy if you’re renting. In return, you need to occasionally recharge the battery.
The new $399 Tapo D260 Doorbell Pro joins the $399 Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro (2nd Gen) and $199 Swann Buddy4K Video Doorbell in making 4K resolution available when running on a built-in battery.
First impressions
At first glance, the Tapo D260 Doorbell Pro looks a lot like a Ring doorbell, which is not a bad thing considering Ring makes great doorbells. The all-black design and large button are a little chunky, but it still looks more at home on the front of your house than some smart doorbell designs.
You’ve got the choice of attaching it to your existing doorbell wires to run on AC power, or relying on the built-in battery. If you’re not wiring the doorbell to an existing indoor chime, you’ll likely want to invest in Tapo’s indoor chime or HomeBase hub like the Tapo H500, which can also act as a chime.
The Tapo D260 Doorbell Pro has AC connectors on the back, plus a rubber-sealed microSD slot. Image: Adam Turner.
Either way, it’s best to install the doorbell about 1.2 metres off the ground, so you get a good view of people’s faces walking towards the house.
Tapo’s variety of mounting options is very impressive. Firstly, there’s the choice of mounting screws or renting-friendly adhesive pads for attaching the wall bracket to your house. The doorbell then clips onto the wall bracket, so it can be easily removed for charging via USB-C.
The mount is easier to screw to the wall than some doorbells I’ve tested. Even so, I always recommend installing a smart doorbell during the day, with something underneath to catch dropped screws. Trust me, you don’t want to hunt around for lost screws in the garden bed after dark.
Tapo provides an impressive array of mounting options. Image: Adam Turner.
Similar to Ring’s smart doorbells, there’s a 15-degree horizontal wedge in the box that angles the doorbell to one side, rather than having it face straight ahead. That’s handy if you’re installing it in an alcove, so you see less of the adjacent wall and more of your front yard.
Unlike Ring, Tapo also includes a 5-degree vertical wedge, in case you need to angle the doorbell slightly down. It’s not really designed to use both wedges at the same time, but you might manage it if you switch to longer screws.
That vertical wedge could be important if you’re keen to see parcels on your porch, because the Tapo D260 Doorbell Pro’s vertical viewing angles aren’t fantastic.
While the camera lens offers a 180-degree “diagonal” field of view, its vertical field of view is roughly 120 degrees. This means you can’t see anything on the ground closer than 60 centimetres to the doorbell. In comparison, the second-gen Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro’s 140-degree vertical field of view reduces this blind spot to around 30 centimetres.
In return, the Tapo offers a wider horizontal view than Ring for seeing what’s off to the side. So it all depends on which view is more important to you.
The Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro (2nd Gen) (right), shows more of the ground and offers much better contrast looking at the trees and sky. Image; Adam Turner
Tapo D260 Doorbell Pro specifications and price
Dimensions
140.5 x 65.2 x 36.2mm
Weight
305.8gm plus wall mount
Lens
Focal Length: 1.97mm Aperture: F1.83 Field of View: 180° (Diagonal)
Video
4K, 15 fps (H.264/H.265) 28.5x digital zoom
Night vision
Infrared Night Vision 10m Full-Color Night Vision
Audio
Two-Way Audio with Noise Cancellation
Siren
94 dB (Level measured at 10-cm distance)
Motion detection
Dual Motion Sensor, PIR Sensor1x Ambient Light Sensor1x Radar Sensor
Wireless
2.4 GHz & 5 GHz Wi-Fi
Battery
Built-in Rechargeable Lithium-ion Battery 5.0 V, 2.0 A, Type-C charging
Storage
SD card, network storage using HomeBase, or Tapo Care Premium subscription for 30-day cloud storage
Setting up the Tapo D260 Doorbell Pro is very straightforward using Tapo’s iOS or Android app. It connects to 2.4 or 5 GHz networks, with the set-up videos offering advice on the best placement.
After the doorbell is up and running, you can configure alerts, motion sensitivity, detection zones, privacy zones and facial recognition, all of which help reduce false positives and conserve battery.
Detection zones are especially useful if you only want to be notified when someone walks down your driveway, and not when people and vehicles simply pass by.
Along with detecting general movement, you can set the doorbell to watch for people, animals, vehicles and packages. It can even recognise individual faces if you upload someone’s pic from your phone, using onboard AI rather than sending it to the cloud.
There’s a lot of granular control, such as the ability to set individual detection zones and sensitivity levels for each of the different event notifications.
Enabling the onboard radar offers more precise movement detection, although this limits the range to 9.1 metres. There’s also an optional simulated top-down view which shows how a person has moved across your property, similar to Ring’s Birds Eye feature. It’s a nice novelty, but doesn’t really show you anything you couldn’t see through the camera view.
The aerial view inset overlays a visitor’s path over a satellite image of your home. Image: Adam Turner.
You can further save power by only recording video when someone presses the button, but to me that defeats the purpose.
I like to set smart doorbells so that pressing the button sets off both the indoor chime and a smartphone alert, while motion detection only triggers a smartphone alert. That way, everyone in the house knows if someone rings the bell, plus I know if a courier has done a drop-and-run on the porch.
By default, a doorbell press rings the Tapo app on your phone like an incoming call, with voice masking for answering unknown visitors. Thankfully, you can disable this in favour of just receiving a notification.
Night vision includes the option to trigger on a built-in spotlight when someone rings the doorbell, although that’s not necessary if you have a porch sensor light. You can also trigger a siren to scare off people lurking in the shadows.
While it’s a little chunky, the Tapo D260 Doorbell Pro is packed with features. Image: Adam Turner.
Like the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro (2nd Gen), the Tapo D260 Doorbell Pro’s pre-roll feature is only available when running on AC power. It adds an extra four seconds of video leading up to an event, so it’s easier to see exactly what happened.
It’s frustrating that there’s no option to enable pre-roll with warnings that it will shorten the battery life. To be fair, the Tapo D260 Doorbell Pro seems to react quickly to events.
It’s great to see that the doorbell takes an SD card for storing videos to watch remotely, or you can use the $79 Tapo H200 hub or $249 Tapo H500 hub for local video storage.
Alternatively, you’ll need to pay for Tapo Care Premium if you want to watch video replays from the cloud and access some advanced features. The doorbell can also connect to the Google, Alexa and Samsung smart ecosystems.
The Tapo Care plan structure has changed; now AI-powered detection of motion, people, faces, animals, vehicles and packages is included with the free plan. Stepping up to Tapo Care Premium adds 30-day cloud video storage and thumbnail previews in notifications.
While extra free features are appreciated, normally it would be unlikely to make a difference, considering that most people would still want to pay in order to see video replays and not just a live view from the doorbell.
The fact you can avoid this with the D260 Doorbell Pro by using an SD card or Tapo hub for video replays is great when money is tight these days. That said, thumbnail previews on your smartwatch are also very useful for checking at a glance.
It’s worth mentioning Tapo offers a very wide range of smart home gear that can be covered by your Tapo Care Premium plan. It starts at $5.99 p/m ($55.99 p/a) to cover one device and goes up to $18.99 p/m ($189.99 p/a) to cover 10 devices.
It’s something to consider if you’re looking to simplify your smart home and reduce your number of subscriptions. That said, the Tapo Care tiers and pricing structure are different in the US, charging extra for AI featues. There’s no indiciation of if or when this change might come to Australia.
Quality
The Tapo D260 Doorbell Pro is quick to deliver notifications to your phone when you’re away from home, which is important if you want to talk to someone before they walk away.
The lack of pre-roll video on battery mode is frustrating, but thankfully the recording kicks in immediately when someone walks within range. The lack of lag means you’re less likely to miss something important.
While people and vehicle recognition seems reliable, AI facial recognition is a bit hit and miss. That would partly come down to the quality of the image you supply and partly to how good a view the camera gets of someone’s face as they walk towards the door.
The 28.5x digital zoom is available during live view and when watching replays. At full zoom, it offers a slightly clearer picture than the 4K Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro (2nd Gen), if you’re trying to make out blurry faces at a range of nine metres. In return, the Ring offers much better contrast in difficult lighting conditions.
The Tapo’s 4K video with full digital zoom (left) is clearer than Ring’s 4K battery-powered camera. Images: Adam Turner.
Who is the Tapo D260 Doorbell Pro for?
Sharp 4K resolution when running on batteries, along with flexible mounting options, make the Tapo D260 Doorbell Pro a great way to keep an eye on your doorstep from afar.
The number of advanced features included in the free plan is a real bonus, especially when you can invest in an SD card or Tapo hub rather than pay the ongoing subscription just to access video replays.
Tapo D260 Doorbell Pro
4K resolution and plenty of free advanced features make the Tapo D260 Doorbell Pro a solid upgrade for your doorstep.
Over the years, I have tested dozens upon dozens of robot vacuum cleaners, with my standards for them steadily getting higher and higher as time goes on. While I have only tested half a dozen robot lawn mowers, given it’s a newer category, a lot of the same principles apply: does it navigate well? How’s the battery life? Does it try to eat things it shouldn’t?
Right now, I have three robot lawn mowers maintaining much of my father’s garden, and it’s been really interesting seeing the different ways they act. The longer I test them, the more I’m certain they’re just robot vacuum cleaners but with knives instead of mopping feet.
While, same as with robot vacuum cleaners, none of these robots have been flawless or entirely hands off, I have been blown away by the Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD. It’s so capable, and while it has required the occasional rescue, it’s the mower I’m most confident in being able to handle just about anything.
First impressions
This is just an absolute unit. He’s a chonky boi. This thing is built like a tank.
Like the Ecovacs robot lawn mowers I was reviewing at the same time, the Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD talked a big game about being able to map by itself using LiDAR. In other words, no need to install annoying RTK base stations or boundary wires.
Also like the Ecovacs lawn mowers, my dad’s garden was just a bit too complicated for the Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD to nail that. So, I used the app like a game controller to manually map the areas I wanted it to mow. What I really appreciated was an indicator on the screen that told me how much area I had already covered, so I knew how much of my 2000m² budget I had left. It was a mostly great experience.
Screenshot: Alice Clarke.
However, be careful where you end the map. I had some trouble with the mower not being able to dock itself the first week I had it. It kept saying it couldn’t find the dock, despite being less than one metre away from it. So, I spent 40 minutes remapping the area, with the plan to end it back at the dock in case the was the problem. The moment I parked it back at the dock, it deleted the map and said I had to start again. I hated that a lot and had to waste basically another hour.
Turns out the problem was that there were some plants 1.5m away from the dock that the mower found upsetting. Once I cut back the plants, the mower could dock just fine. After that, I’ve had almost no navigation issues.
Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD specifications and price
Cutting width
40cm
Cutting height
3-10cm
Mappable area
Up to two 2000m² maps, divided into up to 150 zones
Navigation technology
3D LiDAR and AI camera dual vision
Built-in security features
4G service free for three years, location tracking, off-map alarm, notifications, AirTag compatibility and TrueGuard live video.
Battery
36V 7.5Ah battery gives 150 to 170 minutes per charge, recharging from 15% to 95% in 65 minutes.
Drive system
AWD, 4 × 116W hub motors, independent suspension, omni wheels for near-zero turning radius
Price
$3,999
Warranty
Three years in addition to your Australian Consumer Law rights
My favourite thing about the Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD is that it’s all-wheel drive, which means it handles mud and slopes with no issues. The unusual shape of the front wheels gives it great grip without chewing up the lawn.
The battery life is also really good. Technically, it doesn’t really matter how long the battery lasts, given it just resumes the job after charging. But getting more than three hours at a time is fantastic, given the battery life of the other mowers I’ve tested. The charge time to get another three-ish hours is just 75 minutes, which is quite impressive.
It doesn’t have the same whipper snipper edge clearing system as some (cheaper) competitors, however its edge mowing is better than nothing. It doesn’t eliminate the need for me to whipper snipper, but it still looks neat enough that I can get away with putting off the whipper snippering longer before it becomes an issue.
Mowing performance
I’m extremely impressed with the Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD’s mowing performance. The grass is mown evenly and largely without my input. On a good day it’ll take around 10 hours to mow 1,641m², including charging time.
What I really appreciate about the mower is that it can handle anything but medium-sized twigs and the concept of nearby foliage. It’s totally fine with the many slopes in my dad’s hilly garden, and it can go over the many wombat-made holes on the lower lawn that the Ecovacs Goat A2000 LiDAR Pro just wouldn’t be able to attempt.
A neatly mowed lawn in between plenty of obstacles. Image: Alice Clarke.
Compared to the Ecovacs model, the Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD is a robot lawn mower that can handle more complicated gardens and situations. I’m tempted to try mapping the aggressively hilly nature strip out the front to see how it goes with that, too.
You can customise how it mows the lawn, too, as in which angle it approaches from, what patterns it makes, the length of the grass to within 0.5cm, and obstacle avoidance settings.
While other robot lawn mowers I’ve reviewed have run over my feet, the Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD has kept a respectful distance, going around me and just taking a photo of the obstacle to let me know why it missed a bit.
Maintenance
Maintenance is the part where I get a little frustrated with this mower. After a month of use, the app tells me that it’s almost due for new blades. Granted, you only need to replace the blades every 80 hours of use, but since this mower is specifically designed to mow areas larger than the one I’ve set it up in, that’s pretty poor.
Screenshot: Alice Clarke.
Surely there are harder metals these disposable blades could be made out of to increase their lifespan? A single new set of four tiny blades retails for $38. That’s a lot to spend on upkeep every six weeks if you’re mowing a large area every 2-3 days in spring and summer.
Other than that, I like the periodic reminders to wash the mower’s undercarriage. It’s annoying to have to do, but also essential. I find that less mud gets caked in the wheels of the Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD, so it’s less annoying to de-grass it, since you have to do that to normal mowers, too.
Navigation
In my first week of reviewing the Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD, it just couldn’t find its way home, ever. It could navigate the complicated garden extremely well, but then it would get lost within a few metres of the dock and cry plaintively until I called my dad to rescue it.
It turns out that while the instructions say to make sure there is 1.5m clear around the dock, it really wants more like two metres. Sometimes it would get its sensors caught in the nasturtiums that grew nearby, sometimes their mere existence would cause it enough consternation to just give up on life. I can relate. Once I cut them back with a whipper snipper, the Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD suddenly had no more navigation issues.
Make sure you allow more space so Mova’s mower can find the dock. Image: Alice Clarke.
Every now and then the Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD will need rescue mid-mow, but usually just because it ate a stick, rather than because it tried to drive off a cliff. Given experiences I’ve had during past reviews, I appreciate that.
The 6cm obstacle avoidance estimate quoted I think is an underestimate. I’ve seen this thing navigate fresh wombat holes that looked to be closer to 8cm. I’m extremely impressed.
Who is the Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD for?
There’s no getting around the fact that the Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD is an expensive robot mower, but it is absolutely worth the money for people with large, complicated lawns. It’s so good at obstacle avoidance that I’m not too worried about it being in gardens with children or pets — I still let my toddler out to play while it mows.
It would be overkill for people with flat, simple lawns. But for those with lots of trees, fixtures, slopes, multiple areas, or anything else along those lines, the Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD is a great choice. Hands down, this is the best robot lawn mower I’ve ever reviewed. If this is how good Mova’s mowers are, I can’t wait to check out the company’s other robots.
Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD
Hands down, the Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD is the best robot lawn mower I’ve ever reviewed for complicated gardens.
Features
9
Value for money
8
Performance
9.5
Ease of use
9.5
Design
9
Positives
Excellent navigation
Long battery life
Can handle slopes and wombat holes without issue
Negatives
Blades need replacing more often than is ideal
Needs more clearance around the charging station than quoted
Ring is one of the best-known names in smart home security (it’s been part of Amazon since 2018), with a range of video doorbells and security cameras that send what they see to the Ring app on your phone. A Ring Protect plan feature called Ring Video Descriptions is one of the newest ways Ring helps you make sense of all that footage. With Video Descriptions, you see a text description of the motion activity your Ring doorbells and cameras pick up, which Ring says gives you smart, real-time details on what’s happening. That’s more specific than the usual ‘person seen’ or ‘package seen’ notifications.
AI smarts in Ring’s ecosystem go a lot further than that, though. We’ve already looked at how a Ring Protect plan curates your security feeds, but that’s just scratching the surface. Now, Ring is using what it calls ‘real intelligence’ to work out the context of what your doorbells and cameras see, through four features: those Video Descriptions, Video Search, Unusual Event Alert, and Single Event Alert. Together, Ring says, they help you tell the urgent from the everyday.
That matters more than it might sound. You probably know the drill: your phone buzzes, you see a stack of security camera notifications, open the app to check, and it’s a family member watering the petunias. Or a car pulls up on the street, nothing to do with you. If you have a smart doorbell, a camera on the driveway, and another out the back, you could be getting literally a dozen notifications a day or even more, and most of them aren’t even worth the flick to dismiss.
So Ring’s doorbells and cameras are getting smarter about what they tell you, and when.
All four are Ring Protect plan features, and there are two ways to get them. You can purchase the Pro Intelligence add-on for $5 per camera, per month, on top of your Ring Solo ($4.95 a month) or Ring Multi ($14.95 a month) plan. If you have three or more cameras and want them all to have these features, just go for the Ring Pro plan ($29.95 a month), and no add-on is required. Here’s how they work.
How Ring Video Descriptions tell you what happened
Ring Video Descriptions sit at the heart of it all, because Single Event Alert and Unusual Event Alert both need them turned on.
You’ll get a notification whenever one of your Ring devices detects motion, or someone rings the doorbell. Without Ring Video Descriptions, that notification will be generic. With Video Descriptions, however, the notification is more specific. Instead of ‘person seen’ you’ll get something like ‘a person is walking up the steps with a black dog’ (that’s Ring’s own example).
Ring records activity as ‘motion events’, and each Video Description covers the first few seconds of an event rather than the whole thing. Ring says the reason the description is kept short is so the app can notify you quickly, rather than waiting for the event to end first.
So you get a quick and informative note about the event, and these descriptions are saved in your Event History. This lets you catch up on a day of recordings by reading down a list, rather than opening one video after another to find which ‘person seen’ was the one who knocked over your bins.
Ring’s Video Search works the other way round. If you want to find a clip you’re sure is there (say, the neighbour’s dog got in), you can type in up to 200 characters to do a Video Search. Describe what you’re looking for, and the app goes through your recorded events, and pulls out matching clips. ‘A small brown dog running around the backyard’ should bring up any clips of said dog, from the backyard camera.
The descriptions don’t stop at your phone, either. Connect your Ring devices to an Amazon Echo Show 8 or Echo Show 11 (Amazon’s smart displays, with Alexa built in) and the descriptions are there on screen when you review your Ring events. You can even ask Alexa to keep watch for you. Ring’s example is ‘Alexa, tell me when the pizza is delivered’, and the Echo Show announces it when the pizza turns up. It means you don’t have to keep your phone on you all the time at home.
Unusual Event Alert: flagging what’s out of the ordinary
The first of Ring’s smarter alerts, Unusual Event Alert, cuts down those notification stacks by deciding which events are normal and everyday and which are, well, unusual. It lets the normal events pass without a notification and buzzes you for the out-of-place or unexpected.
Ring says the feature analyses the motion patterns in your recent history, along with the type of activity, and only sends a notification for events that differ from those patterns. It takes some time to learn what normal looks like at your place, and in the meantime your notifications arrive as usual. When an Unusual Event Alert does come through, Event History shows you why it was marked unusual.
The everyday comings and goings, like the family out in the backyard on a Saturday, are routine, so they don’t trigger notifications (though the footage is still recorded, so you can still review and search for it in the app). An unusual event is something like a big gum tree limb coming down in the wind one night, right beside the front door. Your video doorbell sees something it doesn’t usually see, at an hour when normally nothing happens. That’s the kind of thing Unusual Event Alert could flag as out of the ordinary, and having part of a tree on your porch is definitely the kind of thing you want to be alerted about right away.
Single Event Alert: one notification instead of a stack
Single Event Alert also cuts down the number of notifications you get from the Ring app, without losing any awareness of what’s happening around your property.
Picture a typical Aussie weekend. The backyard is in full use by multiple family members. The Ring camera you’ve got set up is angled to cover the gate and the access to the side path, so people are wandering in and out of its view all day. A gardener here. A budding cricketer there. Someone yelling at that dog to go home. And most importantly, these three events cycling over and over for two or three hours. You don’t need a huge stack of notifications on your phone to tell you Johnno goes over to the side fence to retrieve his cricket ball once every eleven minutes, or that you’re putting weeds in the green bin every half an hour.
Single Event Alert, says Ring, combines similar alerts from the same camera, so a run of related events becomes one notification rather than a stack of them.
There is a small trade-off. Ring says to expect a brief delay on these notifications, because the app needs a moment to check whether a new event belongs with something it has already told you about. That’s the whole point, though: the short wait is what saves you from a flood of alerts about the same thing.
Smarter alerts from Ring, and more time back
So you can see how these smart features work to make your Ring doorbell and cameras even more effective at keeping an eye on everything that’s important to you. Ring Video Descriptions, Video Search, Unusual Event Alert, and Single Event Alert combine to give you the gist of what happened at a glance, and fewer notifications about things that you don’t need to worry about. All without reducing the amount of footage the camera captures or limiting how you can review it.
Your Ring doorbell and cameras do the sorting, and you get the time back for the rest of your day.
“There’s a robot for that” is swiftly becoming the new “there’s an app for that” when it comes to home maintenance. First it was vacuum cleaners, now mowers, window cleaners and pool cleaners. Of course, being a well-known brand in the robotics space, Ecovacs was among the first to launch a mower. Now, a few years on, the brand has a range that extends from the simple Goat O600 RTK (which uses real-time kinematic positioning to know where it is, guided by base stations and satellites), to the LiDAR-enabled A2000.
I’ve been trialling the two robots for a few months now, and the Ecovacs Goat O600 RTK is by far my favourite for smaller, more simple lawns.
First impressions
The Ecovacs Goat O600 RTK is much easier set up compared to previous generations of the brand’s robotic mowers. I constructed its little charging house, followed the instructions to prepare and set up the mower, put the RTK station in a spot where it could see the sky, but not get in the way of the mowing, and then started mapping.
Image: Alice Clarke.
One of the big headline features of the new Ecovacs Goat mowers is that they can do the mapping themselves, much like a robot vacuum cleaner can. I set the Goat O600 RTK to map my dad’s small, enclosed courtyard. It’s a very simple yard with two lawn patches, a BBQ on the pavers, and two trees.
The Goat O600 gave it a red hot go. I was impressed by how hard it tried. But it was far too timid to get up close to the bricks of the raised garden beds, so I ended up having to map manually using the app as a remote control. Not the most painful experience ever, just not as frictionless as I had hoped.
Getting an accurate map takes a bit of initial effort. Screenshot: Alice Clarke.
Ecovacs Goat O600 RTK specifications and price
Navigation technology
RTK + Camera (TrueMapping 2.0: Multi-fusion RTK Navigation)
Obstacle Avoidance
AI Camera
Cutting height and width
Height: 30mm-80mm Width: 19cm
Battery
4,000mAh Lithium-ion (works out to around two hours working time before it returns to charge)
Station dimension (mm）
706 x 430 x 285mm
Mowing area
Up to 600m²
Water resistance
IPX6
Price
$1,299
Warranty
Three years in addition to your Australian Consumer Law rights
I really love watching this little mower work. It’s just so cute. It’s relatively quiet, and it just goes out and does its thing. I had (incorrectly) assumed it would just focus on mowing the grass and would be able to sense when it was transiting across paved pathways, but it cannot. The mower’s blades keep spinning, even when on pavers, which doesn’t cause any issues; it just takes a bit longer to complete mowing while it moves up and down the paved areas.
It takes around 2.2 hours to mow 226m², which is pretty good.
Image: Alice Clarke.
While it is able to get quite close to the edges of raised garden beds and whatnot, it still can’t get quite close enough to eliminate the need to whipper snipper, which I can live with.
The Goat O600 is hardly an all-terrain vehicle, but it does do quite well with the uneven ground near the large tree roots, which is nice. I also really appreciate the rain sensor, and it’s great that it’s able to go back to its little house and wait out the rain before going out again. I wish it also had a moisture detector for the ground, so it could get less grass caught in its undercarriage.
Image: Alice Clarke.
It’s also really annoying that there’s no capacity for the charging dock to get mud out of the wheels. It would have been nice if there was some more corrugation on the base to get the bulk of the mud out of the tread of the wheels for when it does mow wet ground.
Maintenance
This is where things get a bit annoying. While the Ecovacs Goat A2000 LiDAR in the back garden is constantly throwing up errors and needing assistance, the O600 quietly drowns. It’s gotten caught on a few fallen sticks and plaintively called for help, which is good. But there have been multiple times where it’s needed a PIN after a software update, or needed a PIN after having a mow ended early (via the app, which shouldn’t require a PIN input), and it just hasn’t told anyone.
Screenshots: Alice Clarke.
I have these mowers helping my 80-year-old dad maintain his property while we wait for it to sell, so I’m not always there to check that they’re doing their job. I imagine a lot of adult children will be buying these mowers for their older parents to help. Checking in the app and discovering it hasn’t mowed for more than two weeks because it didn’t tell anyone it wanted a PIN input is just annoying. Forcing a PIN input after an automatic software update (without a notification) is also annoying.
Aside from that frustration, the main maintenance required is to occasionally remove grass and mud build-up from the undercarriage (which you can use a hose to do), and replace the blades as needed (roughly every 85 hours of mowing). Replacement blade packs cost $29.90.
Reliability
In a simple, flat yard with minimal obstacles, which rarely has small children running around in it, the Goat O600 RTK is excellent. I like it so, so much more than the A2000 LiDAR, even though the A2000 can do more and is more powerful.
Is it because the O600 RTK is better? Or because the A2000 is in a more complicated operating area (there’s a wombat that’s put some dents in the lawn and there are some gentle slopes), which it struggles with? I have no doubt that the O600 RTK would also struggle in a more complicated lawn environment.
Image: Alice Clarke.
But, because it’s in the least complicated lawn, and has a good view of the sky, the O600 RTK is the second most reliable mower I’m currently testing (with the $3,999 Mova LiDAX Ultra 2000 AWD being the best).
Who is the Ecovacs Goat O600 RTK for?
This is such a great, simple mower for people with simple lawns (up to 600m²), who do not want to mow them. In this situation, the Ecovacs Goat O600 RTK is the absolute best choice of robot mower available.
The Ecovacs Goat O600 RTK thrives when presented with a flat lawn, and given access to humans willing to clear branches and put in the PIN when required. Those with more complicated lawns, or who are surrounded by high rise buildings, would do better with a more high-tech option.
It’s not quite set and forget; however, with occasional input from you, it means you’ll never have to manually mow again, and that’s the dream.
Ecovacs Goat O600 RTK
It’s not quite set and forget, however with occasional input from you, the Ecovacs Goat O600 RTK means you’ll never have to manually mow again, and that’s the dream.
