Ring Doorbell Review

Equipment Pricing

Ring offers a diverse range of video doorbells at various price points to fit different budgets and needs. Prices start at $49.99 for the basic Ring Video Doorbell Wired and go up to $499.99 for the premium Ring Video Doorbell Elite. That said, most models sit in the $150 to $250 price range.

Video Review

Video

A video doorbell at its core is just a camera, so clear video was a necessity. After all, we primarily used these devices to greet guests, and if we couldn’t see who they were, the video doorbell would become kind of pointless. Luckily, Ring delivered in this area, for the most part, producing a clear and beautiful image.

Quality

Watching the video doorbells’ footage on our phones, Echo Show devices, and Fire TV, we enjoyed seeing our guests and delivery people’s faces in 1080p HD, the standard that we expect from the smart security industry. All current Ring Video Doorbells offer at least 1080p HD resolution, with most models offering even better resolution. For instance, the Battery Doorbell Plus and Pro both feature 1536p while the Wired Doorbell Pro and Wired Doorbell Elite both offer 4K resolution.

Field of View

Of course, we also wanted our cameras to capture the most possible in terms of their viewing angle. When it comes to video doorbells, the widest possible field of view is 180 degrees. Any more than that and you’ll be seeing your actual front door or wall, which is unnecessary. On the other hand, if the viewing angle is less than 120 degrees, there will be blind spots wide enough for a person to hide in.

For Ring doorbells, the viewing angles typically range from 140 to 155 degrees depending on the model. However, the entry level models do not offer head-to-toe coverage. That means they only offer a 90 degree horizontal viewing angle, whereas premium models offer the same 140 or 150-degree verticle and horizontal viewing angle. This provides head-to-toe coverage which made it easy for us to keep an eye on packages left at our front door.

Storage

While we didn’t capture any break-ins during our testing, there was still plenty of footage worth saving: grandparents visiting, kids returning from their first day of school, or even that time we missed a step — because hey, we can laugh at ourselves.

Local

Ring now offers local storage through Ring Edge, though it requires specific hardware and a subscription. Here’s what you need:

• Ring Alarm Pro base station: This base station, priced at $249.99, combines a security hub and Wi-Fi router in one device. It includes a microSD card slot where Ring doorbells can store videos locally for processing and storage.
• Ring AI Pro subscription: This subscription plan unlocks Ring Edge and other advanced features. It costs $19.99 per month or $199.99 annually.

While anyone with a Ring Alarm Pro base station can use this feature, it requires some technical know-how to set up. If you want immediate video storage without the hassle, cloud storage remains the best option.

Cloud

Ring doesn’t include free cloud storage beyond a 30-day trial of Ring AI Pro that comes with each video doorbell. We opted for the Ring Multi plan. It lacks some of the advanced AI features of the AI Pro plan, but still provides 180 days of cloud storage for unlimited Ring devices at one location. Plus, it only costs $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year.

From there, we downloaded the clips we wanted to keep onto a hard drive we had lying around as a backup. This process was a bit more work than if they all saved directly on a micro-SD card, but overall, we didn’t exactly break the bank paying for 60 days of cloud storage. Ring’s subscriptions also include additional features beyond cloud storage, which we’ll cover shortly.

Smart Home Integrations

Like we said, Amazon owns Ring, so it wasn’t surprising to us that we could use Alexa to control our Video Doorbells totally hands-free. But we were a bit surprised to find out that we could also use Google Assistant, although our capabilities were much fewer.

Alexa

Here are some commands we had Alexa carry out with our video doorbells from Ring:4

• “Alexa, answer the side door.”
• “Alexa, show the front door on the Echo Show.”
• “Alexa, stop the front door camera.”
• “Alexa, show me the most recent activity from the side door.”

It was really cool to be able to see and speak to our guests without even having to push a button. Because sometimes, our phones are just too far away! In fact, to make things even easier for ourselves, we set it up so that whenever anyone was at the door, the footage automatically showed up on our Echo Show. Talk about futuristic!

Google Assistant

With Google Assistant, we could only say:

• “Hey Google, talk to Ring about starting a new recording.”
• “OK Google, talk to Ring about the health of my devices.”
• “OK Google, talk to Ring about the last time my doorbell rang.”

While we tested with Chromecast, we couldn’t display our video doorbells’ footage on it, which felt like a missed opportunity. It also lacked much compatibility with the Nest Hub we reviewed beyond basic voice commands.

Clearly, Ring’s video doorbells worked better with Alexa than they did with Google Assistant.

Third-Party Compatible Devices

Beyond voice control, we integrated Ring Video Doorbells with various third-party connected devices from brands like Dome, Ecolink, and GE. The Dome integration came in handy when we had guests who were hard of hearing. To ensure they were never surprised by another visitor, we configured our Dome siren to activate whenever our Ring Video Doorbell detected a person.

All in all, we loved integrating Ring’s doorbell cameras into our smart home, although we’d recommend it to someone in the Amazon versus the Google smart home ecosystem.

Installation

We touched on this earlier, but setting up each Video Doorbell took just a few minutes, particularly for battery-powered models. First, we downloaded the Ring app and created our account. Next, we added each device individually, naming it by location (front door, side door, etc.) and connecting it to our home Wi-Fi network. The physical installation varied by model: battery-powered units required only simple mounting with screws. Hardwired models needed connection to our existing 16-24 VAC doorbell and chime system. If you don’t have existing doorbell wiring, you’ll need Ring’s plug-in adapter.

For faster setup, we’d recommend any battery-powered video doorbell over hardwired models. Battery-powered units mount in minutes versus the hour or so required for hardwired installation.

Monitoring Options

Ring Protect Plans offer significantly more value than just cloud storage, providing multiple tiers of monitoring and protection features.

Ring Doorbell Monitoring Matrix

Again, we got a Ring Protect Multi subscription. It’s the practical choice for us because it gave all our doorbell cameras cloud storage for $9.99 a month, as opposed to paying $4.99 a month, as opposed to paying $3 a month for each camera’s storage. Also, our testing period of the doorbell cameras overlapped with when we reviewed the Second-Gen Ring Alarm, and the Protect Plus plan gave our Ring Alarm professional monitoring plus cellular backup.

Now, there is one more plan from Ring, the Protect Protect AI Pro plan for $19.99 a month. This plan works best for Ring Alarm Pro owners, as it has features built specifically for that base station, so we’ll not go into too much detail. However, the AI Pro plan does include all the features of the Multi plan, including cloud storage.

If you want to dive deeper into Ring’s pricing, check out our page on Ring’s doorbell camera costs.

The Ring App

Say we weren’t home and we wanted to tell the Amazon guy to leave the package at the door; no matter which video doorbell we had installed, we live-streamed footage and spoke through the Ring Always Home app,5 available for both iPhones and Androids alike. The app was also where we reviewed cloud storage and downloaded it to our phone for safekeeping, received person and motion-activated notifications, connected our video doorbells to our voice assistants and other IoT devices, and more.

In our experience, the app was easy to use, and it was simple to turn on those extra features we mentioned, like motion zones and person detection. Of course, we wish that we could’ve controlled all of our video doorbells like that, but with so many updates, we expect that the app will have even more functionality for each doorbell in the future.