Ring Stick Up Cam Pro (battery) review: A wireless, HDR security camera with radar-powered motion detection

Ring’s product portfolio is bigger and more complex than ever but at least the naming convention remains pleasingly literal. A quick glance at the name of this particular product will tell you it’s a battery-powered Ring security camera designed to be stuck up outdoors.

The ‘Pro’ bit means it has the company’s new radar-powered bird-eye view function, where the route of a visitor (or trespasser) is plotted on a satellite view of your property, to show where they’ve been.

That Pro name also adds a hefty premium to this camera, when compared to the regular battery-powered Stick Up Cam, which is priced at £90 compared to the Pro’s £160.

Ring Stick Up Cam Pro (battery) review: What do you get for your money?

You probably know the score by now. This is a weatherproof, wireless security camera that can be used indoors or out. It can sit on its own but also comes with a plate for mounting to flat surfaces. Screws and wall plugs are included, so all you need is a drill and a screwdriver to complete the installation.

Battery-powered, the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro records through a single lens at 1080p resolution with HDR, plus there’s the option for colour night vision, and a microphone and speaker enable two-way audio. Ring says this Pro model also benefits from Audio+, which is something lesser Ring security cameras lack.

Other features include dual-band Wi-Fi, pre-roll – where buffering means you can see a recording of video from a few seconds before the camera’s motion sensors were triggered – and the aforementioned radar. The latter promises to offer more precise motion detection than the usual infrared sensor detection, and it is used to plot a person’s movements in the camera’s field of view. For example, you could see if they’ve spent time walking around your car, or peering through the shed window.

Ring also says the radar is used to more accurately plot activity zones, helping you tell the camera to only react to movement in the garden, for example, but to ignore movement on the nearby road and pavement.

A small annoyance shared across Ring cameras and video doorbells is that the battery needs to be removed to be charged, and that it uses microUSB for this instead of the newer USB-C standard.

As ever with Ring security products, a subscription is practically a necessity. If you don’t pay for Ring Protect (prices start at £4.99/mth), the camera will alert you to motion and show you a live video feed but footage is not saved anywhere. You also miss out on features like package and person alerts, and rich notifications, where a snapshot of the camera’s view is shown within the phone notification.

In short, if you don’t want to pay for a subscription you should consider an alternative such as the Yale Smart Indoor Camera or Eufy S350, where video is recorded and saved on the camera itself with no fee.

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Ring Stick Up Cam Pro (battery) review: How easy is it to install?

Installing this security camera is easy. If you’re using it indoors you can simply sit it on a shelf and follow the setup instructions in the Ring smartphone app.

For outdoor installation you just need a pen, drill and screwdriver to mark and drill holes, then insert the included wall plugs and screw the mounting plate into position. The camera then attaches to this; there are screws for fixing the adjustable stand to the mounting plate, and also for securing the camera itself to the stand.

A removable cover hides these screws from view, so if someone were to steal the camera it would take a bit of prior knowledge and some time to take everything apart. It’s unlikely someone would go to the effort, and in any case they will have been spotted and recorded by the camera as they approached.

Ring Stick Up Cam Pro (battery) review: What does it do well?

The Ring Stick Up Cam Pro covers off the security camera basis very well indeed. Its video quality is sharp and clear, with nicely balanced exposure, accurate colours and a fairly wide, 155-degree field-of-view. HDR also means the footage produced here does a better job of retaining detail in highlights and shadows than lesser Ring cameras.

Setting up the camera is quick and easy, especially if you already have a Ring security system. My iPhone failed to recognise the QR code on the back of the camera, which is used to begin the setup process. Thankfully there’s also a numerical code that can be entered instead.

Like other Ring products, notifications come through to the app quickly and the whole system feels reliable. That said, there are limitations to what’s possible. Ring says the radar can spot movement up to nine metres away, which is more than other cameras without radar (they’re typically only reliable at a distance of up to six metres), but your expectations should be kept in check. If the camera is mounted high up and is tasked with monitoring an entire garden or drive, it will still struggle to spot movement far away.

Once someone comes closer, however, the Ring tracks their movement and shows the route they’ve taken with a picture-in-picture display alongside the main video feed. This is the real reason for buying the Pro. It takes a bit of setting up, with the help of satellite imagery to help you tell the app precisely where your camera is and which way it is facing. But once you’ve done that, it clearly shows where visitors have been.

Another benefit over lesser models of Ring camera is the Pro’s dual-band Wifi, which means it’s compatible with 5GHz networks as well as the more common (but usually more congested) 2.4GHz. The former works best over larger distances but if your camera isn’t positioned far from the router, a 5GHz connection can mean quicker data transfer speeds.

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Ring Stick Up Cam Pro (battery) review: What could it do better?

I’ve already mentioned how the battery could benefit from using a USB-C connection instead of microUSB. A cable is included, however with fewer devices using microUSB these days, finding a spare in a drawer if you lose the original is starting to become less likely.

It’s also worth repeating that even clever radar motion sensors have their limits, and though Ring says it works up to nine metres away, I found the camera struggled to respond reliably to movement at that distance.

You might also need to pick up a Wi-Fi extender to ensure the camera can talk clearly with your router, or buy Ring’s Chime Pro if you also use one of the company’s video doorbells, since it will double as a range extender.

Then there is, of course, the thorny issue of subscription charges. Ring increased the cost of its Protect subscription recently, and it now starts at £4.99/mth or £50/yr per camera. If you have a Ring doorbell as well as a security camera like the one reviewed here, you’re best going for Ring Protect Plus, which is £8/mth or £80 annually and covers multiple Ring products.

Ring security cameras still work without Protect – you’ll receive alerts to your phone and you can view a live video feed with two-way audio – but no footage is saved, and that means you can’t download it later either. You might be able to live with a Ring doorbell like this, but with a security camera, you really need to be able to save the footage.

To be clear, the features of Ring Protect all work well; video is stored online at full resolution for 180 days, package alerts let you know when a parcel has been left at the doorstep and rich notifications show a snapshot from the camera right on your phone lock screen. If you are happy to pay the fee then I can recommend it – but you need to know there are no-cost alternatives available, such as the aforementioned cameras from Yale and Eufy.

Ring Stick Up Cam Pro (battery) review: Should you buy one?

If you’re already in the Ring ecosystem and happy with the subscription costs, the Stick Up Cam Pro is a great indoor or outdoor security camera. It records high-quality video and benefits from clever radar tech for more accurate motion detection and Ring’s birds-eye view feature.

Being able to see a trespasser’s route plotted on a satellite view of your garden could be useful, and there’s no denying the cleverness of Ring’s pre-roll or colour night vision features. 

However, this is a security camera only for those who want every bell and whistle, and are happy to pay a monthly subscription fee. There are plenty of cheaper, simpler, nearly as effective options from Ring’s competitors that don’t.