Offering more accurate motion detection and a “Bird’s Eye View”, inherited from Ring’s wired doorbells, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro helps you see all.
Video doorbells have taken off in popularity over the last few years, not just so people can see who’s at the door but also who’s quietly dropped off a home delivery and snuck away without ringing the bell.
Owned by Amazon, Ring has long been one of the biggest names in video doorbells. One of its strengths is that it offers a range of options to suit different budgets and use cases. This includes wired-only models that need to be connected to AC power, along with models that offer a choice of running on AC power or a battery.
Of course, the trouble with batteries is that they need to be recharged. To be fair it’s typically only once every few months with most Ring doorbells, but it’s still an inconvenience.
That’s why Ring typically reserves its most advanced and power-hungry features for the wired models. These features slowly trickle down to the wireless models, as is the case with the new Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro.
Ringe Battery Video Doorbell Pro review
Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro first impressions
At first glance, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro is all but identical to its predecessors the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus and Ring Video Doorbell 4, with a slightly different lens the only sign that something has changed.
The faceplate pops off, so you can remove the battery and recharge it via micro-USB, with Ring still holding off on the move to USB-C. The doorbell comes with a Satin Nickel faceplate, but you can buy replacement colour faceplates to match your house.
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. Removing the faceplate reveals four tiny screw holes for attaching the unit to the front of your house, but some of the holes are narrow and deep, making it very tricky to install when the doorbell is sitting upright against the wall.
Ring also includes a plastic wedge for installing the doorbell on an angle. This is handy if it’s in a corner or alcove and you want the camera looking off to the side rather than facing straight ahead at the opposite wall.
You can hardwire the Pro to your existing doorbell wiring for power and use your existing in-door chime. Alternatively, if you opt for relying on the battery, 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). The Pro also extends your Wi-Fi signal to boost the network for all your Ring video doorbells and cameras.
Thankfully, Ring tends to stick with the same battery doorbell design, which makes it easy to swap in a new model if you’re upgrading.
Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro specifications
| Dimensions | 12.8cm x 6.2cm x 2.8cm |
| Weight | 240 gm |
| Field of view | 150° horizontal, 150° vertical |
| Video | 1536p HD with HDR |
| Night vision | Colour with Low-Light Sight |
| Audio | Two-way audio with improved Audio+ noise cancellation (Pre-Roll does not include audio) |
| Motion detection | 3D Motion Detection with Bird’s Eye Zones and Bird’s Eye View |
| Wireless | Dual-band 802.11 b/g/n/ax wifi connection @ 2.4GHz or 5GHz |
| AC Power | 8 to 24 Vac, 50/60 Hz, 5VA ; or 24Vdc 420mA/500mA |
| Weatherproof | -20°C to 50°C. Weather Resistant – when hardwired, the device allows charging in the range of 0° to 45°C, otherwise charging is disabled |
| Body colour | Satin Nickel |
| Faceplate colours | Satin Nickel, Galaxy Black, Night Sky, Smooth Black, Blue Metal, Gold Metal, Silver Metal, Pearl White |
| Price | $349 RRP ($369 with indoor chime) |
| Warranty | 1 year |
| Official website | Ring Australia |
Features
Setting up the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro is very straightforward using the iOS or Android Ring app. Especially now that, unlike the Plus, the new Pro is dual-band and connects to 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz Wi-Fi networks.
It’s best to install the doorbell about 1.2 metres above the ground, so you get a good view of people’s faces. Thankfully, the Pro retains the Plus’ wide 150-degree horizontal and vertical viewing angles, to ensure it has a good view of the ground and any parcels on your doorstep.
The doorbell also features two-way audio, so you can talk to your visitors via your smartphone or Alexa devices.
Thankfully, the Pro sees the return of colour pre-roll on the live view, which is one of Ring’s standout features. It gives you a Picture-in-Picture video replay of the four seconds leading up to the event which triggered the camera, 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.
The doorbell can alert you to any motion, or you can limit notifications to only when it sees a person or parcel. I find the best settings are for a button press to set off both the indoor chime and a smartphone alert, while people/motion detection without a button press only sends a 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 someone dropping a parcel and running off without ringing the bell.
Of course, you don’t want to be bothered by too many motion events, such as trees moving in the wind. To reduce false positives, during setup, you can adjust the sensitivity and create zones to restrict the area it monitors. This is where the Pro helps, upgrading to “radar-powered” 3D Motion Detection for increased accuracy.
Eye in the sky
To be fair, the old Plus’ motion detection and false positive rate were already very good. The key benefit of 3D Motion Detection with the Pro is an improved sense of depth, which underpins the Bird’s Eye features previously limited to Ring’s wired cameras.
Bird’s Eye View provides a simulated top-down view of your front yard, so you can see how people are moving across your property. Meanwhile, Bird’s Eye Zones are a top-down equivalent of standard zones, letting you instruct the doorbell to only trigger alerts if motion occurs in a defined area.
When you set up Bird’s Eye features in the Ring app, it calls a map of the area so you can pinpoint the exact location where the doorbell is installed on your property. Next, you align the doorbell’s orientation with the actual view from the camera, so it knows what it’s looking at.
When setting up Bird’s Eye view you can switch from map view to satellite view. Unfortunately, the resolution is terrible, at least in the suburbs of Melbourne, where it’s very blurry compared to Google Maps. From what I’ve seen online, it’s much clearer if you live in the US of A. In Australia, it’s difficult to accurately configure Bird’s Eye Zones when the picture is so blurry that you can barely determine where your driveway stops and the road begins.
With Bird’s Eye View enabled, you can opt to see it Picture-in-Picture instead of pre-roll when you tap on an alert to view a live event.
The Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro’s other key improvement is Low-Light Sight, which offers improved colour at night if you’ve got enough ambient light.
Subscription
It’s important to note that, like most smart home devices that upload video to the cloud, a Ring Protect subscription is required to access many of the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro’s advanced features. This includes specific “smart” alerts when the camera detects people or parcels.
The doorbell comes with a 30-day free trial, after which the price has risen: it’s now AU$4.95 p/m or AU$49.95 p/a just to cover the doorbell, or else AU$15 p/m or AU$150 p/a to cover multiple Ring devices.
Be warned, the camera doesn’t capture any recordings without a subscription, so there are no replays. At this point, it’s only really useful for receiving alerts and checking the door in real-time.
Quality
Bird’s Eye View works as advertised, displaying a Marauder’s Map-style trail of dots on the satellite image so you can see where people have walked across your property. It doesn’t just work with people, it even tracked the neighbour’s dog coming up to the front door.
It’s worth noting that the dots do jump around sometimes as the camera struggles to determine the exact distance to a moving object.
While it’s a neat trick, Bird’s Eye View’s usefulness is questionable considering that it can’t track someone if they walk out of sight. You’re merely seeing what you can already see from the camera, just from a different perspective.
What’s perhaps more useful is that, like video pre-roll, Bird’s Eye View can give you a glimpse into the past and show the path your visitor took to get to where they are right now.
Unfortunately, when watching live video you’re forced to choose between Bird’s Eye View and pre-roll, and you can’t switch between them. If you tend to rely on pre-roll to catch a glimpse of someone’s face, you might find it more useful than a virtual view from above.
That said, Ring’s cloud processes video so fast that the replay is often available immediately after you press the red End Live button. Watch the replay and you’ll see the full clip, including pre-roll, with Bird’s Eye View in the corner so you get the best of both.
Surprisingly, you don’t see Bird’s Eye View when playing a clip from your Event History. Instead, you need to tap on the view from the doorbell in the Ring app’s home screen, then scroll back to see previous clips complete with pre-roll and Bird’s Eye View.
As for improved night vision, you get significantly better low-light colour performance – although you might not find it all that beneficial depending on what you need to see. Perhaps as a trade-off, the Pro seems to chew through the battery a bit faster thanÂ
It’s also worth noting that the doorbell totally missed me coming in the front door a few times after dark. It’s a surprising glitch from the typically super-reliable Ring doorbell range. I’m tempted to blame it on the fact Bird’s Eye View doesn’t seem to be as accurate at night, but that’s little excuse when I stood right in front of the doorbell with my dogs as I unlocked the front door to get inside.
Who is the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro for?
While the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro’s Bird’s Eye View is impressive, for some people it will be little more than a novelty and much less useful than pre-roll. Considering that the Pro is on the expensive side for a video doorbell, you need to give it some thought.
Whether you’d benefit from Bird’s Eye View depends on how you use your video doorbell and whether seeing a visitor’s path is actually useful information. It doesn’t help that Bird’s Eye View satellite images are so low-res in Australia.
That said, the fact that the Pro returns video pre-roll, which was lost on the Plus, might be reason enough to upgrade. Also, the 150-degree viewing angles are attractive if you’re upgrading from the older Ring Video Doorbell 4.
If you need to see what’s happening at your doorstep right now, and the events that lead up to it, then the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro might be a great fit for your front porch.
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