Ring’s new Battery Video Doorbell has toe to toe video, but it fails to fix our biggest complaint
New features for Ring’s £100 doorbell, but you still have to pay monthly to make the most of it
Ring’s video doorbell range has been undergoing a confusing revamp of late. A couple of models have undergone unnecessary name changes and there’s been a seemingly endless march of new models, too. The latest is the Ring Battery Video Doorbell – the “next generation of Ring’s best selling doorbell” – and it brings a host of new features with it.
To clarify (and it needs it), this is the replacement for the venerable Ring Video Doorbell 2nd Gen, which has now been pushed down the range and had its price cut in half. The 2nd Gen doorbell is now £50, while this new Ring Battery Video Doorbell takes its place as Ring’s £100 model.
So what are the new features? The main one is the introduction of head-to-toe 1440p video. Where the 2nd Gen had a widescreen 1080p view that only showed the upper half of your visitors’ bodies, this new doorbell has a 150 x 150 degree field of view so you can see a head to toe view, including most of the doorstep. Handily meaning you can now see if they’ve left a parcel on the step. This view, says Ring, is 66% taller than on the Doorbell 2nd Gen.
There’s also colour night vision, so you get a clearer view of visitors in the dark, and a simplified system for installation, with a new “push pin mount design” that makes it simpler to remove and recharge. Instead of the old method of sliding out just the battery and recharging it, you unclip this doorbell entirely from its base and take it indoors to plug in. Additionally, Ring says the battery life of its new doorbell is 23% longer than the 2nd Gen variant, so you should need to do this less frequently.
What Ring hasn’t changed, unfortunately, is its subscription system, which means certain features are locked unless you pay monthly. We love the company’s doorbells for their performance, image quality, features and general easy of use, but they’re effectively useless unless you pay for a Ring protect plan, and these start at £5 per device per month.
If you don’t pay the fee, the doorbell won’t store recorded video clips in the cloud for you, and since there’s no local storage option, it then won’t double as a security camera. It will alert you whenever someone rings the bell but you’ll only be able to access live video on it and talk to visitors through its audio system. The advanced package and person alerts are also restricted to the paid service.
If that doesn’t put you off, you can pre-order the new doorbell for £100 right now at Amazon. If you’d rather not pay monthly in addition to the price for the hardware, however, check out our list of alternatives on our best video doorbells roundup, which lists several doorbells that don’t require a monthly fee to access triggered video clips.
