Brand new Ring doorbell...Battery dead in less than 3 weeks

This is a copy of the email I just sent to Ring:

I just installed my brand new Ring doorbell within the last 2-3 weeks. I wired it with the 2nwires that fed my old manual chime doorbell. The weather here in Southeast Michigan has been extremely balmy during that time. We have had very few hours of below 30 degree temperatures.

I just received an email from Ring saying that the Ring battery was near or completely dead. The doorbell now only rings outside…not on my phone or in my house.

I had fully charged the battery prior to installation per instructions. Even if it was not wired…the battery should last much much more than 3 weeks!!! But it is wired!!!

I am recharging said battery as I compose this message.

Do I have a defective battery or unit?

Jim O

Did you ever get this figured out? This is my second ring doorbell 2 to do the same thing, but my batteries are charged but on the app it said battery is dead and it’s off line. My batteries work in my son’s doorbell.

Never got a response from RING…and you were the first to respond to my post. I recharged the battery and reinstalled it yesterday. Curious to see if the battery drains quickly again.

Same issue. Installed brand new doorbell 15 days ago, fully charged and hardwired. Granted we have had only a few days with the temp above 40. It seems to discharge twice as fast as it recharges, even with the temps in the 60’s.

I removed the doorbell today and fully charged indoors. Battery went from 100% to 91% in the 3 minutes it took me to reinstall it.

I love the idea and concept, but I can’t get the motion zones to work properly with my front door location and if I’m going to have to bring it inside to charge every two weeks it will not be reinstalled.

Our ring is 2 months old the batteries says dead. So I charged it and it still says dead and offline. I ordered two new batteries and it says the same thing. How do I fix this?

Hi @TINAPRIOR! After inserting the newly charged battery please give the app some time to report the new battery level. If it does not update on it’s own try ringing the Doorbell or causing a motion event. For the best life span between charges, please ensure to charge the battery to 100% each time. I hope this helps! :slight_smile:

Ring, markets these batteries with a claim of almost a year before a recharge. That maybe true if you minimize it’s use to well under the daily normal mAh operations of users in the real world.

I have minimized my usage of the Doorbell 3 to an end user minimal which is not really beneficial to me and I have been lucky to extend my battery to about 4 weeks. That also meant that I have missed important motion events that I really need and eventually, had to re-enable them which then reduced the battery life.

In all, with my average use of the doorbell, my battery lasts about 2.5 weeks which is horrible in comparison to the original battery from the Doorbell 1 or 2 and coincidently before Amazon bought Ring.

I believe after Amazon took over, they started cutting costs and going from a more expensive better battery to a cheaper one that does not last as long.
They should inform consumers that the lithium batteries now require more recharging then they did years ago and they should no longer state that a single charge can last several months. That to me, is sort of false advertising.

Lithium batteries are great when barely used or not in extreme cold or heat.
However, in real time applications, they are far better than alkaline but, in some examples they are subpar.
One example would be:
On a game controller with daily use of 4 hours.
The energizer lithium’s do not outlast their alkaline counterpart, but there is a caveat. The lithium batteries fail to work for the controller when they fall under a certain mAh rate and fool you into thinking they are completely dead. Really, the batteries still have more capacity and work in other devices such as remotes and flashlights for many more weeks, even a month or two.
When I tested using the energizer alkaline, under same hours of use. The alkaline outlasted the lithium and had a far less battery waste after it fell under the mAh threshold for the device to work. The alkaline was completely drained.
For the game controllers, that meant alkaline is a better option. However, the lithium life continued in remote controls and flashlights and outlasted the alkaline in usage overall.

Finding the same issue and very disappointed.

Bought a Doorbell 2 and official mains transformer and basically the battery was dead last week (down to 3%) HAD assumed it would keep it topped up. Recharged it last weekend and already down to 50% which is ridiculous, wish I had not bothered spending the £20 on the mains transformer as it is a waste of time if you need to take off the bell to plug it into an external charger !!!

These doorbells are trash… The doorbell literally doesnt charge. After a year and a half. Definitely not worth the money