Ring Outdoor Wi-fi Camera With Motion Activated Floodlight Review

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

• This product fits in well with the impressive ecosystem Ring is building out
• Splendid video quality
• Multiple user-divers motion zones

Cons

• Without a subscription, you can just monitor the camera in real time
• Operates only on ii.4GHz Wi-Fi networks
• You tin't control the floodlight with voice commands

Our Verdict

The Ring Floodlight Cam is like shooting fish in a barrel to recommend if you're already vested in the Ring ecosystem. Your determination will be more than complicated if you lot haven't gone down that path.

Band built a better mousetrap and quickly became the king of video doorbells. Lots of competitors followed, simply few take a truly better doorbell. Ring wasn't the outset to integrate a video camera into an outdoor light—Netatmo introduced one in late 2016, and Kuna had one before than that—but if you own one of Band'south doorbells, you like it well enough to pay for a subscription, and you want to surveil more of your yard, yous should add one of Band's other outdoor products. The Ring Floodlight Cam will make an splendid replacement for any existing floodlight.

Updated September x, 2019to add reporting on a couple of new features that Ring has released for customers with more than one Ring device. Linked Devices enables you lot to see the views from all of your Band cameras in a single dashboard. You can also create links between devices, so that when i Band device detects motion, information technology can trigger activity on some other Ring device (tape video, for case, or turn on its lite).

A new Audio Off Toggle feature enables you to disable and enable audio streaming on any or all of your Ring devices. This appeal of this characteristic wasn't immediately articulate to me, but a Band spokesperson explained that information technology volition be valuable "for customers that desire to be extra careful to avert recording miscellaneous conversations or sound that does non pertain to their abode security." And that makes a lot of sense. If you're entertaining guests on your patio, they would probably exist more than comfortable knowing that their every word isn't being recorded.

If yous oasis't committed to the Ring ecosystem, y'all'll desire to explore your options before buying this product. That subscription I mentioned is the biggest reason why. While Ring emphasizes that subscriptions are optional, you'll be restricted to existent-fourth dimension viewing of what the camera sees if you lot don't opt in to one after your 30-day gratuitous trial. You'll receive alerts when the camera detects move, simply you won't be able to run into the video that triggered the alert. All the other features (which I'll get into in a moment), will work, simply you lot won't be able to download the video clips, either. If there'south a break-in, you won't be able to provide the police with any forensic prove the photographic camera might have captured of the perpetrator.

Ring offers 2 subscription plans, both of which include cloud storage and video review with sharing (you can view recorded clips, download them, and share them on social media direct from the app). The Ring Protect Basic programme costs $three per calendar month ($thirty if paid annually) per camera. The Band Protect Plus plan costs $10 per calendar month ($100 if paid annually). It covers an unlimited number of cameras and extends the warranty from one year to the life of the product (and includes both damage and theft protection, so that if the camera breaks or someone has the temerity to steal information technology, Band will supervene upon it. Band'due south FAQ also mentions 24/seven professional monitoring, only that's for the upcoming Ring Alert.

Band

Video quality is hands i of the Band Floodlight Cam's all-time features.

Subscriptions: Go used to 'em

Subscription plans are becoming the norm with home security cameras, with Netatmo being an outlier. Its Presence photographic camera has onboard storage in the form of a 16GB microSD retentivity bill of fare, and you can download recorded video to your smartphone via the app. It has no cloud storage option unless you link the app to your Dropbox business relationship. Netgear's indoor/outdoor Arlo Pro 2 is too unusually generous, providing seven days of storage for up to v cameras. The Maximus Photographic camera Floodlight that I reviewed in earlier in 2018, which is based on Kuna's engineering science, allows you lot to await back in time two hours and download up to three videos per month without a subscription. Its least-expensive plan costs $5 per month for one camera and provides a seven-twenty-four hours history with unlimited downloads. Costlier plans increase the number of cameras covered and extend the time yous can look back at recorded events.

Band

Ring provides first-class installation instructions even if its mounting machinery is somewhat archaic. (This case shows a surface-mounted junction box, which won't be typical if you're replacing an existing fixture.)

We previously reviewed the Ring Spotlight Cam, which is designed to exist plugged into an outdoor outlet and has a single LED light. This review is of the Ring Floodlight Cam, which must be hardwired to your electrical wiring and is outfitted with 2 LED lights. Similar the same Netatmo and Kuna products, virtually people will install the Floodlight Cam every bit a replacement for an existing outdoor low-cal. That's a whole lot easier than cutting a hole in your outside wall, installing a junction box, and running Romex to it. Nigh people would want to hire an electrician to do all that. It's relatively easy to replace an existing outdoor fixture, and Band makes it even easier with excellent instructions and videos covering every step of the process that you lot can watch on your telephone. They even provide a handy multi-tool.

Every bit like shooting fish in a barrel equally the Floodlight Cam was to install, withal, I prefer the elegant locking-ring mechanism that Maximus came up with. Ring's device just mounts to a pair of threaded screws that emerge from a caryatid attached to the junction box: You push these through two holes in the assembly's chassis then anchor it down with a pair of plastic-covered basics.

Ring

The Band Floodlight Cam's industrial design is but that—industrial.

Ring Floodlight Cam feature set

The Floodlight Cam has 2 LED floodlights mounted on articulated arms that can be moved independently of each other. These lights are rated to produce a combined 3,000 lumens of effulgence, but to my eye, the dual floodlights on the Maximus covered more area. This could be due to the cone-shaped shades on the Ring product that focus the beams more than tightly than the apartment LED panels on the Maximus, which are rated to produce 2,400 lumens. And unlike that device, y'all tin can't dim the Floodlight Cam'southward brightness.

A box containing the camera is mounted beneath and between the floodlights, with a dome-shaped move sensor emerging from the lesser of that. The camera, which has a 140-degree field of view—slightly narrower than the 155-degree field of view on the Maximus—captures video in 1080p resolution. At that place'south a microphone and a speaker onboard, so you can have two-way conversations with people on the other side of the connection. There are no pre-recorded messages that play in response to movement, and the camera itself doesn't brand any sounds that would draw an intruder to nowadays their face to the camera when they set off the motility sensor. Those are features that I really like about the Maximus. Ring rates its production IPX5, which means it'south non rated for dust incursion, but it is protected from water sprayed from up to a vi.3mm nozzle.

The Floodlight Cam'southward movement sensor detects motility over a 270-degree radius and can exist fine-tuned to reduce or increase its sensitivity (you tin can, for example, set up information technology to reply only to humans and ignore cars or iv-legged visitors). You tin can likewise schedule the motion sensor so that it's active merely on certain days and/or within defined time windows. The Band app provides an excellent tool for creating multiple irregularly shaped motion zones, so that you can forbid objects such as shrubs and trees from triggering the lights and camera. You tin can also fine-tune the area in which movement volition trigger the lights to turn on.  And if you lot don't want the lights to come up, for whatever reason, the camera has very good night vision (a feature the Maximus lacks).

Ring

The power to plot more than than one motion zone makes information technology easy to prevent windblown copse and shrubs from triggering false alerts.

Audio and video quality

The Band Floodlight Cam records video with excellent quality, with just a fiddling barrel distortion at the extremes of its field of view. The camera connects only via Wi-Fi, which can be a problem if you're mounting it far from your abode's nearest admission point. I didn't find this to exist a problem with the Linksys Velop mesh Wi-Fi system I utilize, since one of its mesh points is in a room close to the garage where I mounted the camera. Information technology can connect but to two.4GHz networks, which can exist crowded with legacy devices and are more susceptible to interference than 5GHz networks. Band attributes this limitation to the ii.4GHz frequency band's superior range, merely the fact that it'southward equipped with an 802.11n adapter tells me the choice has more to practise with bottom-line cost. The 802.11ac routers I've tested evangelize excellent range on the 5GHz ring, and yous'll notice several outdoor cameras that operate on both bands, including the Maximus Camera Floodlight and the Nest Cam Outdoor and Nest Cam IQ Outdoor (neither of the Nest Cams accept lights attached to them, though).

Ring

Ring Neighborhoods lets you share video clips of suspicious activities with neighbors inside a 5-mile radius of your location (you can also depict the circle much tighter or in whatever abstruse pattern).

Equally with all products that upload video to the cloud, however, you'll want broadband service with relatively fast uplink service. That's something I can't arrive my rural location (the best I can purchase is almost 1Mbps upwardly and 16Mbps down). As a result, information technology takes a flake of time to found a connexion to the camera's live feed, and audio was inclement at best. You can also stream the camera's live feed (audio and video) to an Amazon Echo Show or Echo Spot, but that's dependent on having fast upload speed, too, so information technology takes several seconds for my Echo Show to institute a connection. Those aren't Ring'south issues, of course, and the Maximus can't stream to a display-equipped Echo at all, although the company tells me that's in the works. On the other hand, you can employ an Repeat to turn the Maximus's floodlight on and off, and you can't exercise that with the Ring Floodlight Cam.

While y'all're viewing the photographic camera'southward feed on your smartphone, you can button buttons to listen to the ambient audio, initiate a conversation with the person on the other side of the camera, turn the floodlights on and off, and sound an extremely loud—110dB—siren. Y'all tin can share video clips with neighbors using Band Neighborhoods, a loftier-tech video-based neighborhood watch organization that can alert people to suspicious activity well-nigh their homes. This feature tin can be customized to cover as little or equally much territory—upward to a five-mile radius—as you'd like.

Should you buy a Ring Floodlight Cam?

The answer to that question is an easy "yes," if yous've already invested in other Ring products. You don't want to bargain with dissimilar apps with different user interfaces—and dissimilar subscription plans—to keep an eye on unlike areas of your property. The Band Protect Plus program covers an unlimited number of cameras, so y'all could put i of Ring'due south doorbells at your front end door and its Floodlight or Spotlight cams at every other door and anywhere else y'all accept electrical power (or not, since some of its Spotlight cams run on battery power, and with optional solar-power recharging).

Ring

Click the onscreen icons for two-mode communication, to plow the floodlight on or off, sound the 110db siren, or share a clip with your Ring Neighborhood.

The buy-it/skip-it determination is harder if you're not already vested in the Ring ecosystem. Merely here's a conundrum for homeowners: Ring doesn't currently offer whatsoever indoor cameras (neither does Maximus). Netatmo does, but its indoor camera is relatively weak (and its Presence costs $l more than either the Ring Floodlight Cam or the Maximus Camera Floodlight). Nest has indoor cameras, also, simply information technology doesn't accept any outdoor cameras with integrated lights (although it has strong hooks into smart home systems that would enable you to tie its cameras into smart lights or light switches).

If yous don't already ain a Band production, and don't anticipate wanting the company's upcoming dwelling security system, Ring Alarm, I call up the Maximus Photographic camera Floodlight is the amend pick. You'll use phonation commands to command lights far more than often than you'll telephone call upwardly a video feed on a smart speaker's display. And while both floodlight cameras have optional subscription plans that aren't all that optional in reality, the Maximus photographic camera is much more useful without a subscription.

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Source: https://www.techhive.com/article/583158/ring-floodlight-cam-review.html

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