Ring Chime vs Ring Chime Pro: What’s the difference?

If you’ve ever bought, owned or installed a Ring doorbell, then you’ve probably considered purchasing a Ring Chime or a Ring Chime Pro. That’s because Ring doorbells – unlike many rivals – don’t include one in the box, so you’re going to need one if you don’t want to rely on smartphone notifications alone. If you don’t have the skills to connect your Ring doorbell to an existing powered mechanical chime, then you’re also going to need a Ring Chime.

A Ring Chime hooks up to a Ring Video Doorbell wirelessly and it makes that classic doorbell Ring chime. If you don’t like that, you can pick from a whole host of other sounds in the Ring app and adjust the volume. And if you’re having trouble hearing the doorbell in every room, you can purchase additional Chime units and add those to your system easily.

Once you’ve established you need a Ring Chime, though, you need to decide which model to buy as Ring sells two. Should you buy the Ring Chime or the Ring Chime Pro? That’s exactly the decision this guide is here to help you with.

Ring Chime vs Ring Chime Pro: Which one should most people buy?

The Ring Chime and Ring Chime Pro have the same number one job. They make a sound when someone presses your Ring Video Doorbell, so you don’t have to rely on a notification from your phone.

If this is all you need, you can make do with the Ring Chime. You may also want to consider buying two standard Chimes instead of a Chime Pro, particularly if you have thick doors or someone at home doesn’t have the best of hearing.

A Chime Pro adds a night light, 5GHz Wi-Fi and acts as a Wi-Fi extender for your other Ring devices. That may well come in handy if you use Ring cameras as well as a Ring Video Doorbell, but take note: it only acts as an extender for Ring devices, it doesn’t act as a general extender device. But if you don’t? The real-world benefits of the Chime Pro upgrade may be a little thin.

Winner – Ring Chime

The true winner of this category depends on your needs, but most people can start off with the assumption the standard Ring Chime will probably do the trick. The upgrades on offer in the Chime Pro are absolutely worthwhile, but the majority of them aren’t hugely impactful for many. They come to the fore if you’ve bought into the wider Ring system, beyond just the Video Doorbell family, or if you have a larger home.

Check Ring Chime prices at Amazon

Ring Chime vs Ring Chime Pro: Price

No prizes for guessing this one. The Ring Chime Pro costs a healthy chunk more than the Ring Chime.

You’ll pay £30 for the base Chime and £50 for the Chime Pro. It isn’t quite double the cost, but it’s close to it.

Amazon sells the Chime alongside the Ring Video Doorbell Plus, as a bundle, which saves a little money. But, as with the wares of any Amazon brand, there’s a good chance you can save even more on the standalone Chime by waiting for one of the major sales periods. Key examples are Black Friday or one of the Prime Day sales.

Winner – Ring Chime

At just over half the cost of the Chime Pro, this is a clear win for the standard Ring Chime. There’s no need to stump up the extra for the Pro Chime unless you need the extender function, 5GHz Wi-Fi or the night light.

Check Ring Chime prices at Amazon

Ring Chime vs Ring Chime Pro: Design

The Ring Chime and Ring Chime Pro are clearly siblings. They share the same construction, but the Chime Pro is a little taller than the regular Chime, which might make it easier to install, depending on where you plan on putting it.

Ring’s smaller Chime measures 62 x 25 x 77.8mm (WDH), while the Pro is 69 x 29 x 103mm (WDH). It’s the height you notice first but, as the raw figures show, the Pro is also somewhat thicker and wider.

They are both made to plug directly into a power socket, so the exact thickness dimensions in the end will vary depending on the country and the plug socket style. Not that it matters once a Chime is plugged-in.

Stylistically the Chime and Chime Pro are the same. They have a plastic body whose outward-facing part uses a grey fabric mesh, a subtle and non-attention-grabbing design that, thankfully, looks a lot less like a plug-in air freshener than the early Ring Chime models.

A small LED ring sits underneath the mesh. It shines blue when operational, but it’s actually a multi-colour light. It will flash green in setup mode, or red if there’s no internet connection. You can find the full run-down of the light-based error codes over at the Ring website.

Winner – Ring Chime

Similar but smaller than the Chime Pro, the Ring Chime takes up less space and is even more unobtrusive. There’s not much to separate these two, but as a device that’s largely there to do its job without drawing much (if any) attention, the standard Ring Chime just pips this one.

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Ring Chime vs Ring Chime Pro: Setup and ease of use

The basics of the setup process for these two accessories are the same. You find a spare mains plug socket, preferably one somewhere between your Wi-Fi router and your Ring doorbell (or camera), then you use the Ring app to start the setup and add the device.

This is relatively simple – just find the Devices section, hit the Plus icon, tap Chimes, then, when prompted, scan the QR code on your Chime using the camera on your smartphone and follow the instructions. These take you through adding your Wi-Fi network and password details (when required), testing the strength of the connection and choosing which events you want to trigger a Chime alert. A little-known fact is that a Ring Chime is not just for doorbell presses; you can also get it to alert you when one of your Ring cameras detects motion.

There are a couple more steps to setting up the Ring Chime Pro, but only because of its extra features. For example, you have to manually select if other Ring devices should use the extended Wi-Fi network a Chime Pro can create. You can also toggle the nightlight on and off but this should be a one-time choice as the light comes on automatically when it gets dark and switches off when it gets light.

The one possible ease-of-use win for the standard Chime is that its smaller size means it’s more likely to fit in small spaces. It’s a bit of a hair-splitting point, though.

A draw

If you have the ability to set up a Ring doorbell, you should have no trouble getting a Chime or Chime Pro to work. They use the same system and have largely the same setup process. Both are super simple and you should be able to get up and running in less than ten minutes.

Ring Chime vs Ring Chime Pro: Features and performance

You may be surprised by how much we’ve favoured the standard Chime so far, but the Chime Pro clearly has the upper hand on features. There are three key extras.

The Chime Pro can function as a Wi-Fi extender, bridging the signal gap between your Wi-Fi router and your Ring camera or Ring doorbell. It can really help with video quality and break-up, but you can’t use it to solve wider Wi-Fi signal problems across your home as you can’t connect non-Ring devices to it. You can’t stream Netflix on a PlayStation 5 through a Chime Pro.

The Chime Pro also supports 5GHz wireless, while the standard Chime only has 2.4GHz. This may be less essential than you’d guess, though.

It does not give the Pro model longer range – 2.4GHz, typically, has longer range anyway – but it may help if you’re having trouble connecting over the 2.4GHz spectrum, for example due to congestion.

Last, and most useful, the Chime Pro has a night light. A warm-hued LED shines through a diffuser on the bottom, providing a nice gentle glow.

It’s a simple take on the night light, though. You can’t control its brightness or set a schedule, only turn it on or off. And it turns on when the ambient light level hits a suitably low level. There’s a chance the Chime Pro’s night light may become more a nuisance than a boon for some. But you can turn it off using the app, so it’s absolutely not a net negative.

Winner – Ring Chime Pro

The Chime Pro’s entire reason to exist is it provides more features than the basic Chime. Just make sure you will actually benefit from them before buying, as for some the standard Chime will do its job just as well.

Check Ring Chime Pro prices at Amazon

Ring Chime vs Ring Chime Pro: Power consumption

This one is a very minor point, even more so than it may appear on the surface. A Chime Pro uses a little more power than the Chime.

The standard Chime is rated for 0.63W power use when in “networked” standby, the state it reverts to when left idle for 15 minutes, whereas it’s 2.57-2.95W for the Chime Pro. It has more networked features, after all, and uses an ambient light sensor to judge when to turn the night light on. Everything’s going to sip a little juice.

How much does that equate to over a year? At the time of writing, based on the UK energy price cap, a Chime in standby will cost at least £1.35 to run a year. A Chime Pro will cost at least £5.52 to run.

These aren’t figures to take as gospel, just a sign as to how much more efficient a standard Chime is. The real-world figures will also be impacted by how much the Chime is actively used, and whether you use the Pro’s Wi-Fi extender feature. I measured standby power draw at a smidge over 31W when extending the network to a single Ring Indoor Camera, which works out at £6.44 per year of constant use and that rises to 3.4W with the night light on.

Winner – Ring Chime

It’s no great surprise the simpler Ring Chime uses less power when idling, but it’s quite surprising how much less power it uses. If you’re concerned about such things, the standard Chime is the clear winner here.

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Ring Chime vs Ring Chime Pro: Verdict

The big question here: do you need the Chime Pro’s extra features? If your Ring doorbell or camera is far enough away from the router that it has Wi-Fi signal issues, you do. However, in this case, it’s also worth asking if your network wouldn’t benefit from a regular wireless extender. That would be more complicated to set up but would at least work with other devices, such as phones and laptops.

A night light is another nice extra, but isn’t worth paying the extra for on its own. And while 5GHz connectivity sounds like an all-round bonus, it only really affects the Chime Pro’s Wi-Fi extender feature. All of which means the Ring Chime is the sensible place to start for most people. It’s cheap, simple to set up, runs efficiently and does the job well.