Ring Spotlight Cam Pro review: A capable, flexible spotlight security camera

The Spotlight Cam Pro is Ring’s flagship spotlight security camera and, like the recent Ring Video Doorbell 4, it comes with a host of advanced motion detection features, including “3D Motion Detection” and “Bird’s Eye View”.

It doesn’t just claim clever camera and motion sensing features however. There’s also HDR video recording and enhanced audio, plus spotlight and siren functions. For the same price as the original Ring Spotlight Camera Battery (£120) it’s an impressive-looking upgrade.

Ring Spotlight Cam Pro review: What do you get for the money?

The Ring Spotlight Cam Pro costs £200 and comes with a powerful combination of features. It records video at 1080p with advanced motion detection, includes a microphone and speaker to enable two-way communication and it has a manually activated siren and dual LED lighting as well. It connects to your home network over dual-band Wi-Fi and, like other Ring products, you will need to pay extra in subscription fees for access to recorded video clips, which are stored in the cloud.

The camera unit itself is well made. The tough plastic body contains the camera unit and sensors, which work to automatically activate the light at night. Above the camera a small blue status light comes on when motion is detected and there are also two small microphones. There is a PIR (passive infrared) sensor underneath the camera and at the very bottom is a speaker with a grille over it.

Like the original Ring Spotlight Came (£120), this new model is battery powered so it doesn’t need permanently connecting to the mains. It comes with a 21Wh lithium ion battery that’s easily accessible by unscrewing the speaker base and there is space to double the battery capacity with a second vacant slot should you wish to.

Note, however, that you actually have four options when it comes to power supply. You can buy the camera as a battery only model (as tested here), with a battery and solar panel, and with kits that let you plug it into a mains socket or hard wire it to your mains electrics.

On all models, the camera and associated features remain the same, it’s just the power supply that differs. What’s more, you can retrospectively switch the power supply method by purchasing the relevant accessories.

The hardware is good but it’s the software that’s the most impressive part of the package and it has recently been upgraded with a new look and features as well. It works largely as you’d expect it to, however: the home screen provides quick links to all your devices and lets you quickly disarm your cameras or switch between Home and Away modes and the History button allows you to view recent events from all cameras.

Once you select a camera or motion triggered event, you’re whisked through to the timeline view, which lets you quickly swipe between recorded events or tap to view the camera’s live view if you want to see what’s happening in the camera’s field of view right now.

The new Birds Eye View is described by Ring as allowing you to “see precisely where someone has been and how they got there” as if a camera had been placed several hundred feet above your house. In fact it’s a software feature that simply combines its data from its own motion detection sensors with publicly available satellite imagery.

Another new feature compared to older battery-operated Ring Cams is Pre-Roll, something more usually found on hard wired surveillance devices where power saving is not required in the same way. This shows a few seconds of activity that occurred before a motion alert is triggered, a feat achieved by retrieving the stop motion type images the cam captures continuously. It allows you to see a bit more of a person’s approach to the camera and could come in useful on those occasions where the PIR sensor triggers the camera a bit too late to capture useful footage.

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Ring Spotlight Cam Pro review: How easy is it to set up and how does it perform?

I found app installation and setup pretty straightforward. As long as you’re in range of the Wi-Fi signal the camera will be connected to, it’s simply a case of following the on-screen instructions to set up an account, or add the camera to an existing one.

I wanted a single camera to cover two sides of a house measuring about 11 x 8m and the 140-degree horizontal-angle and 80-degree vertical-angle lens just managed that when mounted 3.5 metres away at a height of 2m.

In testing, the app picked up all people approaching the house from any angle, although the optimum angle of the camera for viewing meant pointing the PIR sensor down more than I would have liked, reducing the distance at which the camera picked up motion from people.

After a fair bit of trial and error a motion trigger distance of around 11m was the longest distance I could achieve without the camera view taking in too much sky and not enough of the ground.

Ring Spotlight Cam Pro review: Is there anything it could do better?

Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the Ring Spotlight Cam Pro although I have a few grumbles and a couple of slightly bigger concerns.

The concern was the quality and longevity of the ball and socket mounting system. The ball on the camera unit is pushed into the socket on the mounting plate and the tongues of the socket grip the ball once you tighten a small alloy collar by means of a small machine screw. This works fine but if you are going to be moving the camera about a lot, it doesn’t look like it would last long.

On a similar note, the Pro doesn’t appear to have any IP rating so although it’s designed for outdoor use, I would wonder about longevity if mounted in an exposed position.

Operationally I felt there were a couple of shortcomings as well. First, the siren is plenty loud but it can only be activated manually, not automatically by motion detection as a conventional burglar alarm would.

Second, the light, which has a pleasant yellow cast, only comes on when triggered for around twenty seconds. You can switch it on manually but, again, it turns itself off after twenty seconds.

The quality of the 1080p footage looked fine, too, and I was especially impressed by the colour footage at night. However, if you want the sharpest possible detail on a high quality screen – perhaps for picking out car number plates at distance – a 4K-capable model may be a better option.

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Ring Spotlight Cam Pro review: Should you buy one?

I was impressed with the camera’s core technology. It proved effective and reliable for informing me when anyone was in the monitored area and the recorded footage was good quality and easily accessible in the app. It’s also easier to set up than most floodlight cameras (including our favourite, the Nest Cam with Floodlight [£270]).

However, there are few aspects that might put people off the Ring Spotlight Cam Pro. First, you need to subscribe to store your video clips in the cloud (subscriptions start at £3.49 per month) – where rivals like Eufy offer the option to store them for free on an inbuilt SD card. Second, is that lack of 4K. And, third, is that it doesn’t have an official IP rating, which is a worry for an outdoor security camera.