Reviews: Ring Video Doorbell Satin Nickel

My friend liyipui123 tell us ALERT! Anybody can steal your doorbell and walk away!.

Here’s what happened in my house yesterday. Some thief stole my Ring Doorbell and did a factory reset, then put it under their account and deleted all the historical videos from there, obviously including their footprint caught by Ring.
The whole process is so easy that it doesn’t require any permission from my end. The only notification I got was an email saying, “Your Ring Device Has Changed Ownership”, after the device has been transferred to their account and I already lost access to it.
I’ve had Ring Doorbell and Ring stickup camera for over a year with their Protect Plus Plan which stated, “Your Ring videos are stored in the cloud for up to 60 days (in the USA).” However, Ring Support Team told me the videos are gone and they couldn’t recover it. They do offer free replacement on stolen device, which I appreciated, but now I’m seriously concerned with the functionality of this product.
1. As a security product, why Ring allows factory reset and change of ownership without account holder’s permission? If there’s a permission requirement sent to me (like most security system do nowadays), then I will have opportunity to deny it before they can delete the videos.
2. Since I paid the Protect Plus Plan under my account, I would assume the videos stored in the cloud are associated to my account not with the device. Even if they can delete the video locally stored on the device, why they can delete those stored in the cloud, which supposedly been protected under my account?
The logic behind security products like Ring is that you pay for emergency situations like this. If the system only works when nothing happened but failed when thief coming, I don’t think anybody should waste their money.

Review Doug Colt experience Astoundingly disappointing on multiple levels.

I am really at a loss to express how disappointing this product was.

To start off, I am extremely tech-savvy and my home is wired with a good 40+ z-wave, Insteon, Hue, and Zigbee devices. I also have extensive experience in electrical engineering.

Right off the bat, the first Ring doorbell I received would not charge via hardwire. This was a brand-new installation with a new transformer, new resistor, and all voltages confirmed with a volt meter. I spent a good 45 minutes waiting on the phone with Ring tech support to get the inevitable conclusion that this was a defective unit. But instead of just swapping it out right there on the phone, they first wanted me to send back the mounting plate, wait for a new one to be shipped, try the new mounting plate, call back if there was a problem, and THEN they would ship out a new unit. That was very disappointing customer service from the beginning.

Luckily, Amazon came to the rescue and shipped out a brand new unit overnight to replace the defective Ring unit.

One would think this would solve the problem but alas, no. TWO DEFECTIVE UNITS IN A ROW that would not charge via hard wire. Thinking that there was some freak problem with the transformer, I borrowed a friend's Ring doorbell. Boom--charged right away. So yes, I ended up with two bum units in a row. That should never happen.

Setting aside the double hardware failure, a few other major gripes:

1) The Android software for this is absolutely awful. It is incredibly slow, buggy, and crashes frequently. And good luck trying to use the "Live View" feature. It takes at least 30 seconds to connect to the doorbell and again, crashes the app the majority of the time. The frustration level is just off the charts and I cannot believe the app ever made it out of beta.

2) The Ring does not play well with two or more devices. I have an iPad permanently mounted in my living room for all types of home automation, including the Ring app. The Ring app is always open in the background obviously. Apparently if you have one Ring app opened somewhere and you then try to open it on another device (such as my phone when I'm out of the house)--crash. How is this possible?

3) This is just personal, but the actual doorbell sound on this thing is really jarring and there's no way to change it to anything else. That should be a basic feature.

4) The interface is slow, slow, slow.

This looked like such a wonderful product on the surface but was an utter disappointment. I'll be returning the second defective unit.

As Love From The Oven said When put to the test, it failed at every measure and was stolen in under a minute..

 Writing this review the morning after it took someone about 20 seconds to disable and steal our Ring Doorbell. Camera triggered too late to get a look at the person stealing it, speaker feature hung up and didn't activate (like usual) and it was gone from my house in a shockingly short amount of time.

Prior to today,I've always been a bit disappointed at the delay in the motion sensor in triggering the camera. I get quite a few packages weekly, and 90% of the time the camera doesn't activate until someone is walking away from the door. Sure enough, last night, it did not activate until the moment someone was putting their hand over the camera. When my husband tried to speak over it the app, as usual, it delayed and did not activate when it should have. Within 20 seconds the camera went dead. Doorbell gone, hole in my wall as well as feelings of security. When put to the test, it failed at every measure. Camera did not trigger in time to get any view of the person at my door, ability to speak through it didn't work (on an iPhone 7 - current phone, updated), and it was gone from my house in less than a minute. So basically my Ring Doorbell let's me know when a car drives down the street, but when I need it to do what I bought it to do, it fails.

My friend James Talk good to go right.

So got my doorbell and had it hardwired...good to go right? Well, a few months later the motion sensor and the live view
stopped working. So I called Tech Support and found out that even with hard-wiring, the battery will run out of gas and need to be recharged. This requires removing the unit and jacking in the battery with a USB cord.

Nowhere on the APP is there a indicator that shows that the battery is getting low! So we could be traveling in vacation and all of a sudden without any warning the ring doesn't work!! Imagine that?

Checked the box and couldn't find any mention of this important safety non-feature of the doorbell. I like the product but am extremely disappointed in the fact that it can stop working at anytime without pre-warning.

A review Chris Majestic said Awesome product. Easy to use and setup. Motion sensitivity needs work..

     I've owned the Ring Video doorbell for about 6 months and it has been a very pleasant experience. It was very easy to install and easy to use. It has never stopped working or had any major issues. This doorbell lets me know when I get packages delivered, when people approach my door, or ring my doorbell. It is very convenient. The only issue I've had is with motion sensitivity. I get a ton of motion notifications from cars on the road, which are about 35 feet away from the doorbell. It seems very accurate with detecting people but it has an issues with cars, especially large vehicles.

PROS:
Easy to setup
Easy to use
Reliable with good wifi signal
Convenient

CONS:
Motion is too sensitive to vehicles on the road
A bit pricey

My friend yugotec Talk Works as advertised, but not a substitute to a security cam.

 The product works as advertised. I have installed several of these at friends and family homes. For this product recording is activated ONLY based on motion detection. But in practical usage its usefulness varies.
Attached video demonstrates a shortcoming where there is a delay when the recording started after the motion was detected. Due to this delay the face of the thief is not recorded. Because of this we had to recommend one install a security cam which has always live cloud recording. This helps in identifying the culprits. None the less Ring Doorbell helps in confirming the theft recorded in other security cam.

Another practical issue is that a strong wifi signal is key for this product to work properly. If the wifi signal drops below -50dBm the notifications are delayed or never received. At some locations I had install wifi extenders or mount the Ring Doorbell at different location where signals were strong. This can also vary depending on the number of wifi signals that may interfere with speed of notifications.

While RodM tell us After the 30 day free cloud trial, there is ....

After the 30 day free cloud trial, there is NO VIDEO unless you subscribe - so this is NOT a stand alone product with even a single day of built in video memory. Interesting that when many find that out after the 30 days free cloud trial is up, that's also when you've missed your Amazon return window. The android app is buggy and refuses to provide a ring tone on my S5 although all permissions were allowed on this app. And BTW, the app even installs without any default sound selected - which in my case makes no difference anyway since choosing a ring tone or verbal announcement doesn't work. And last but not least, you must unscrew and remove the doorbell to charge it. When I turned on 'live motion detection' the battery drained to 80% in just 3 days. It's going back.......

While Shawn Williams said Awesome, and completely useless.

I have had my Ring Doorbell since November 2016. I have written very few reviews on Amazon and actually wasn't going to write one for this even though I am pretty disappointed with it. In the beginning I could have written about the horrendous customer service; the fact my original questions had to be asked several times before they decided to actually answer the questions posed to customer service and not the questions they thought I had asked. That I let slide. The amazing amount of effort it took to simply switch the doorbell from one network to another, that was a fun few hours of spinning lights and patience. It does work, I have videos and alerts and the picture quality is good for what the device is. All of the minor frustrations I was o.k with, it was a burgeoning technology and there were bound to be hiccups. However from the beginning the sensors for motion have always been a little off, cars traveling on the street would trigger it but not me or my girlfriend coming in and out of the house. I adjust the sensitivity/range and the same issue. Car 40 feet away? Video! Me on the porch with the dogs? Nothing! Again, not worth writing a review. Then the "Welcome to Our Neighborhood" sign was stolen. From our front yard, in plain view of the doorbell, maybe 15 feet away with the range maxed out. Woke up to no sign, however the doorbell had several fantastic night vision videos of several cars that had passed between 2000 hours the night before and 0700 when I looked outside. Fantastic.

While Monica said Cold weather beware!!.

If you live anywhere that the temp ever gets down to freezing or below - read this! I used to be the BIGGEST supporter of this device. I told everyone about it. Showed videos all the time. Talked about how great it was. Then winter came.

Let me first say that I purchased this device so I would know who's around my house when I'm not home. That was my first priority. The novelty of not needing to get up to see who's at the door when I AM at home was just a secondary benefit. The cute videos of my family and friends making jokes was of course a close third.

Now, let's get back to the cold weather. I live in Wisconsin. What do we do in winter when it's zero degrees out? We go on vacation to somewhere warm. That said, on a recent vacation to a warm climate I attempted to view my videos from Ring. I was prompted by an alert when I clicked on the app, it was warning me my battery was critically low. How could that be? I wondered. My device is hard wired. I hard wired it so I would never have to worry about charging the battery. Charging the battery would require using the special tool to remove the device and then bringing it inside, charging it and then taking it back outside. Hard wired was definitely the way to go. Or so I thought. Anyways, I clicked on the warning and then realized not every video had footage or they were "frozen", kinda like everything else outside.

Being concerned about the poor quality and the lack of a charge on a hard wired unit I sent an email to Ring. I've actually exchanged several with them. I've gotten a few different responses, lots of misunderstanding from them and no resolution that is satisfactory.

Bottom line is this:
They aren't meant for cold weather, even if they are hard wired. So, if you're going to go on vacation or ever leave your house in cold weather don't expect to count on this device as your eyes and ears while you are away.

It's unfortunate. I otherwise really (did) like this. Thankfully I hadn't yet purchased the stuck up cams that I was going to use for each side of the house.

I've included pics of one response from them on the topic as well as the faq from their site. Yes, the FAQ should have been a warning to me before I purchased it. The performance though seems to be even less than expected the email also gives lower expectations.

While Munchiniwa Talk Cool but three problems.

First off, the Ring is very cool. I really like it and many people that come to my front door (salespeople) know what it is immediately and don't bother me. There are three problems however, one very serious (in my opinion).
1 - The motion function engages when people are walking away, not when they walk up. MANY of my videos are of people's backsides. I don't know if this is a software issue or what. Tried increasing the sensitivity to the point where I was grabbing cars driving down the street but still only got people leaving my front door. Weird.
2 - This kind of goes along with #2. You cannot access the doorbell with security software like Blue Iris,et.al. Now, I get that they want to sell you their Cloud service and I'm ok with $30 / year to have an off-site backup. But if you could link the doorbell into your security system you would have an actual video of everything in your possession and you could access it from any computer in the world. That would be REALLY handy for police investigations and any legal hassles that may come your way.
3 - If you do not answer the alert fast enough, you are locked out-- even though someone is standing at your front door. You cannot "turn on" the camera from your phone or tablet. If someone is there and you do not have an "ACCEPT" button on the screen, there is just no way to see or talk to them. This is obviously a software flaw. You should always be able to "wake" a camera remotely and talk to a person at your front door. Or maybe you just want to see the view outside your front door. You should be able to access the camera / microphone and enjoy your front yard.

Hopefully these issues will be addressed in the future.

Update 1/24/16 - I have found a fantastic use for the Ring Doorbell and Chime. My mother-in-law, now in her 90s, lives by herself. She has become hard-of-hearing and often does not hear the doorbell. By installing the Ring on her door, she now is bothered much less (solicitors tend to recognize it and don't seem to like it) and when someone rings the bell, the Chime, placed by her favorite chair, gives her a better chance of hearing someone at the door.
I think the Chime would be MUCH improved if it had an ultra-brite LED on top (that you could turn on or off) that would flash when the bell rings. In addition, I REALLY like that I now know when people come to her door and I can talk to them before she answers the door. It gives me a much stronger sense of security for her.

Update 3/24/16 - Ring has added “Live View” to their feature set. It allows you to access your Ring Doorbell any time you wish. This solves the problem with #3 as long as you are not on battery power. Obviously, it also lets you “dial in” any time you wish to check out your front or back yard (where ever your doorbell is). This is a feature that I like as every once in a while I just like to see if its raining or foggy at the house.