Offering head-to-toe video, but stripped of a few bells and whistles, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell lets you keep an eye on both your doorstep and your budget.
Video doorbells have become a cornerstone of the modern smart home, especially over the last few years as we’ve relied more and more on home deliveries. The ability to know when someone has come to the door, even if they don’t ring the bell, is very handy when delivery people tend to drop and run.
Of course, as inflation takes its toll on Australian household budgets, it’s getting harder and harder to justify splashing cash on smart gadgets. Amazon’s new Ring Battery Video Doorbell comes in at a budget-friendly $149, making it roughly a replacement for the old discontinued Ring Video Doorbell (2nd Gen), which you might still find on sale for $99.
In the current doorbell line-up, the new Ring Battery Video Doorbell joins the AC/battery-powered $249 Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus and $349 Ring Video Doorbell Pro, along with several AC-only wired options.
Ring Battery Video Doorbell review
First impressions
The Ring Battery Video Doorbell sports a more sleek, solid and elegant design than the rest of Ring’s battery doorbell lineup, although in return it sacrifices a few key features.
Like Ring’s other battery-powered doorbells, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell offers the choice of running on its battery and connecting to Wi-Fi, or connecting to your existing AC doorbell wiring (the former of which is very handy for renters).
Ring also offers an optional $169 adhesive No-Drill Mount, which might also be handy for renters who can’t get away with drilling holes. This doorbell is also compatible with Ring’s new $79 Solar Charger Mount.
If you’re relying on your existing wiring then you can probably still use your existing in-door chime. Alternatively, if you opt for relying on the battery and Wi-Fi, you’ll want to invest in Ring’s wireless indoor Chime or Chime Pro (you’ll get a discount if you buy it with the doorbell).
Unlike the other battery models, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell’s battery is built-in rather than removable, with a USB-C charge port on the back and a short USB-A to USB-C cable in the box.
On the upside, this new design makes the unit more elegant and less plasticky, helping it look more at home alongside your front door. Keep in mind, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell doesn’t support interchangeable coloured faceplates so it’s harder to colour coordinate it with your home.
On the downside, the new design means you need to remove the entire doorbell, not just the battery, and bring it inside when you want to charge it – meaning you need to take care not to scuff up the body or scratch the lens.
That said, some people might consider this a bonus. Bringing the entire unit inside means that you don’t leave the battery-less doorbell shell on the wall alongside the door, which can confuse visitors.
The good news is that this doorbell comes with a new mount that makes it much easier to get the doorbell on and off the wall (but isn’t compatible with existing Ring doorbells). The mounting bracket screws to the wall and then the doorbell attaches with a firm click. To remove it you simply insert the supplied orange plastic tool in a tiny gap at the bottom, which lets the doorbell pop off the mount – Ring dubs it an “all-new push pin mount”.
Installing a Ring doorbell for the first time is tricky, I can tell you from experience it’s not something you should attempt after dark unless you want to search for tiny screws with a torch. Thankfully, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell’s mounting bracket is much easier to install than Ring’s previous battery video doorbells, because the bracket is very thin so you’re not hampered by narrow and deep screw holes.
The bad news for some homes is that this new Ring doorbell doesn’t come with a plastic wedge, for installing it on an angle rather than flush against the wall. Instead, the wedge is $29 optional extra. That’s a shame, because the wedge is very handy if, like me, you’re installing the doorbell in a corner and you want the camera looking off to the side rather than facing straight ahead.
Ring Battery Video Doorbell specs and price
| Dimensions | 6.19 x 2.30 x 12.65 cm |
| Field of View | 150° horizontal, 150° vertical “head-to-toe” |
| Video | 1440p |
| Night vision | Colour Night Vision |
| Audio | Two-way audio with noise cancellation |
| Wi-Fi | 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi connection @ 2.4GHz only |
| AC power | 8-24 VAC, 40VA max, 50/60Hz |
| Weatherproof | Operating conditions -20°C to 50°C Prolonged exposure to direct sunlight and other conditions may increase the temperature of your device and affect performance. |
| Body colour | Satin Nickel or Venetian Bronze |
| Price (RRP) | $149 |
| Warranty | 1 year |
| Official website | Ring Australia |
Features
Setting up the Ring Battery Video Doorbell is very straightforward using the iOS or Android Ring app to scan the QR code on the back. One shortcoming is that, unlike the Pro, it is not dual-band and only connects to 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi networks – increasing the risk of wireless interference.
As you’d expect with the budget model of the lineup, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell is missing key features compared to the more expensive models. Thankfully, Ring has retained a few of the improvements introduced with the current Plus/Pro lineup, after it revamped the old design last used with the Ring Video Doorbell 4.
The new Ring Battery Video Doorbell sees a slight resolution drop from Plus/Pro’s 1536p to 1440p, but is still much sharper than the old Doorbell 4’s 1080p. It retains two-way audio, so you can talk to your visitors via your smartphone or Alexa devices.
The great news is that the new Ring Battery Video Doorbell sticks with the wider viewing angles of 150 degrees horizontal and vertical, introduced with the Plus and embraced by the Pro. This means it can see a lot more of the ground than the old Ring Video Doorbell 4, Ring dubs it “head-to-toe” video, but it’s also great when watching for parcels on the ground.
Installed about 1.2 metres off the ground, the new doorbell has a blind spot directly underneath that only extends about 15 cm from the wall (like the Plus and Pro). That’s a huge improvement compared to the 180cm blind spot with the old Ring Video Doorbell 4, which only featured an 84-degree vertical viewing angle.
This improvement makes it almost impossible for packages to hide from sight, which is important considering that the doorbell’s package detection is a bit hit-and-miss, depending on the size and shape of the package.
The more significant changes relate to software rather than hardware. The biggest frustration is that the Ring Battery Video Doorbell joins the Plus in ditching the great pre-roll feature which helps Ring cameras stand out from the crowd.
When you click on an alert to check the live feed from your doorbell, pre-roll gives you a Picture-in-Picture replay of the four seconds leading up to the event so you can see exactly what happened.
Without pre-roll, when you click on a live notification you might only see the back of someone’s head as they walk away, or a glimpse of their shoulder as they walk in the front door. You’re left to wait until the video preview is available before you can see what actually happened – even then, without pre-roll tacked on the front of the clip you might miss something important.
The lack of pre-roll on this new Ring Battery Video Doorbell is perhaps understandable considering it’s the budget model, but ditching on the Plus really felt like an unnecessary jerk move from Ring. It leaves the Pro as Ring’s only battery-powered door which offers pre-roll, unless you opt for a wired model.
With the new Ring Battery Video Doorbell you also miss out on the Pro’s 3D Motion Detection, Bird’s Eye Zones and Bird’s Eye View. To be honest this is no great loss, I found these features so unreliable on the Pro that I ended up disabling them.
Thankfully the Ring Battery Video Doorbell retains customisable motion zones, privacy zones and motion sensitivity to reduce false positives.
Subscription
Like many smart home devices that upload video to the cloud, a Ring Protect subscription is required to access many of the Ring Battery Video Doorbell’s advanced features. The doorbell comes with a 30-day free trial, after which it’s $4.95 per month or $49.95 a year for the Ring Protect Basic plan to cover the doorbell in Australia. Alternatively, you can pay $15 p/m or $150 p/a for the Ring Protect Plus plan to cover multiple Ring devices with the addition of advanced notifications.
Be warned, the doorbell’s camera doesn’t capture any recordings without a subscription, so there are no replays. Without a subscription, it’s only really useful for receiving alerts and checking the door in real-time.
Along with a press on the button, the doorbell can alert you to any motion using a different sound. In my home, a button press sets off both the indoor chime and a chime-style smartphone alert, while motion detection without a button press only sends a windchime notification to my smartphone.
This way everyone in the house knows when someone rings the bell, but only I get disturbed when something moves, such as a drop-and-run courier. If you pay for a Ring subscription, you have more granular control, such as limiting notifications to only when the camera sees a person or a package.
Ring’s high level of granular control over notifications is one of its strengths compared to some rival doorbell/camera ecosystems.
Quality
When it comes to audio and video quality, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell is about on par with the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus. It is a big step from the old Ring Video Doorbell 2, 3 or 4, but can’t match the enhanced night vision of the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro.
Like the Plus, the new doorbell offers excellent viewing angles, a decent amount of detail, good contrast in the shadows and a clear view at night.
The slight drop in resolution from 1536p to 1440p is only perceptible when looking at the pixelation in the shadows on the ground as trees move in the wind – something that can trigger an alert if your motion sensitivity is set too high.
Thankfully, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell doesn’t seem as prone to false positives as the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro, although it can take a while for such problems to become apparent.
Like all the Ring video doorbells I’ve tested, one of its strengths is that smartphone notifications come through quickly even on mobile broadband, increasing the likelihood that you can talk to someone at the doorstep before they walk away.
Who is the Ring Battery Video Doorbell for?
If you’re looking to upgrade from an older Ring doorbell to gain a head-to-toe view of your doorstep, without breaking the bank, then the Ring Battery Video Doorbell is a very tempting option.
The lack of pre-roll is the only major drawback, if you need to see the events which lead up to a notification, then consider stepping up to a Ring doorbell that features pre-roll.
That said, some rival video doorbell makers are more generous when it comes to the features that are available without a subscription. If you’re not wedded to the Ring and/or Alexa ecosystem then be sure to shop around.
GadgetGuy occasionally uses affiliate links and may receive a small commission from purchased products.
The post Ring Battery Video Doorbell review: See more for less appeared first on GadgetGuy.
0 comments:
Post a Comment