Rant incoming. If you already have one of these, I’m sorry. If you’re thinking about buying one, I hope this helps steer you in a better direction.
I can’t speak for all Ring doorbell cameras, but the Ring Video Doorbell 4 underdelivers on just about every ‘feature’ that it claims to provide.
I live in a city on a somewhat busy street. I want to see who’s coming to my front door before they get to the front door, but don’t want to be alerted by every person or car that goes by the house. Well great, that’s what the Ring doorbell camera is designed to do, right? Wrong.
I’m not alerted about a person coming to my door until they are at the door. I have Alexa alerts turned on, and I can hear the announcement, “someone is at your front door”, when I enter my house. So, not only am I not alerted until it’s too late, the doorbell doesn’t even pick up the person coming to my door until they are often out of site of the camera. This is the exact reason I upgraded to the Video Doorbell 4 from the Video Doorbell 3- because the 4 has “pre-record”. That’s the only way I can catch even a glimpse of who walked up to my door, and that footage is low quality and almost entirely useless. To put answer connectivity questions- I have 1GB up & down fiberoptic internet, a mesh wifi system, and a router less than eight feet from the doorbell. There is no connectivity issues with any other devices outside of my house, and I have a lot.
With Ring, you can set up a “motion zone”, however this feature is broken. The motion zone doesn’t work consistently. I find that the motion zones might work for a few days or even weeks, but randomly it’ll start alerting me by people on the sidewalk which it previously hadn’t picked up… with nothing changed in the settings. Have fun with Alexa alerting you every three minutes when someone drives by.
You can also set up “person detection”, however this feature is also broken. I don’t want to be alerted every time a car drives by. It happens every thirty seconds. However, similar to the motion zones, this feature will just randomly stop working. So, in addition to being alerted every three minutes by people walking by, now you’ll also get alerts every 30 seconds when a car drives by. To be clear, I have regular motion detection alerts turned off. I’m alerted, “there is a person at your front door” by a car driving by, which is also almost 30 yards outside of the motion zone.
I’ve called customer support about these issues several times, but it’s been fruitless. Go through all of the standard troubleshooting steps that I’ve already done on my own, and end in frustration with something like, “call back if the issues persist”. It’s a waiting game- they’ll repeat the same thing over and over until you give up.
If I could go back in time I’d avoid the whole Ring ecosystem. Maybe the wired cameras don’t have these issues, but if you live in a busy area or generally just want to know who’s coming to your front door, I’d avoid the wireless cameras.