All-new Ring Video Doorbell (2nd Gen) – 1080p HD video, improved motion detection, easy installation
[{'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': ' I asked for this as a Christmas gift. My husband said, we live in the country, nobody bothers us, yeah right.\nI was able to file a police report and send them this video. The clarity is spot on for me. I received notification that a person was detected, logged on to the device at work, shared the video with 5 minutes.\nWell worth the money I think, the battery life is good as well.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': "I don't understand why so much bad reviews ?\nI received this cam today, already installed at my front door, connected with Ring app... It was so easy !\nPicture is clear, 1080HD, wired with my previous bell switch, no worries about the battery...\nSet up with Ring app takes 10 seconds, same for Alexa, same with my Fridge Samsung Family hub... again, so easy\nOnly one thing matters, a good WiFi. It's the key ! I use 3 Eero pro so I have a strong Wifi everywhere inside and outside of my home but you can also use the Ring Chime pro, less expensive then Eero. It works well, I confirm and I was not paid for this review."}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-3 review-rating', 'review_body': 'I had the original Ring Doorbell for about a year and really enjoyed it. It was cheap but lower quality video resolution. It was fine for the time I had it. When the same thing with improved video was being released, I jumped on it. I received it today and got it installed. The video quality is night and day as shown in the photos and much better than the 1st generation. Good work ring. Unfortunately, the installation and mounting sucks compared to the 1st generation. Why they did this, I have no clue but here are the issues.\n\n1. The mounting plate on the first generation has connections for the wiring. This made it very easy to remove the device and charge, especially in the winter months where we live and the batteries lose charge. 2nd generation has a mounting plate and the wiring on the back of the unit, which was a pain especially when the existing wire is not very long. This will be a nightmare having to remove this and recharge compared to the 1st generation. I had no issues with the 1st generation. This is a failure for Ring in my opinion. I am debating about keeping my 1st generation instead of this now.\n\n2. The mounting of the device to the frame also sucks. The 1st literally had no gaps and was secure in my opinion. It had guides that made the doorbell align to the mount. The 2nd generation does not and there are gaps all the way around and loose. I mounted it no differently than before, in fact the holes for 1st and 2nd generation are identical which is a plus, but again I see this mounting as a failure for Ring.\n\nI literally just installed this, and outside of the perfect video, I can’t attest to motion and nightvision yet. I am disappointed in the execution of mounting the device. I have no idea why this changed this from the 1st generation but this was a bad move in my opinion. I still have no idea why these require a battery they never stay charged when connected to wiring, but I assume this unit will have the same issue for me as well come winter. They really need to rethink the whole battery idea and have a hardwired version and battery version or fix the way these thing function when power is applied. At this point I may deal with it and hope Ring fixes these mounting and wiring flaws. If this mounted the same way as the 1st generation, I would not be writing a review because I had no issues with the device other than the battery and that wasn’t enough for me to write a review. Excellent otherwise but seriously why did you change the way these mount?\n\n***Update 6/6/2020***\n\nSo I decided to keep it primarily because I had already offered to sell my 1st generation to a neighbor, but I did end up having to make some changes. Ultimately I bought some spade terminals and soldered them to my doorbell wire with heat shrink tubing (Ring provided in older versions, but not this one for some reason). While it was easy for me, it won’t be for others. Overall I am still upset over this mounting as it is extremely poor execution when the previous version was perfect. I guess this is Rings way to get the price down to $99 by cutting corners. The doorbell it self seems quality but mounting just plain sucks. I have no other words for it. You can see my updated photos of what I did. There are two photos that show the camera quality difference. The low quality image is from a generation 1 ring and the better quality HD is from the generation 2 ring. Night vision appears to be decent and motion the jury is still out because of the People only filter. I am still trying to tweak it. I am still leaving only 3 stars because of the mounting issues and there is still a gap between the mounting plate and the doorbell. Maybe Ring will fix and send everyone a new mount, but that is wishful thinking.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-1 review-rating', 'review_body': "Buyer beware! There is a subscription fee this device. And it is tiered based on the number of devices you have. I bought our first one without seeing the subscription fee. Bought the second one seeing that there is a subscription fee but thought the original subscription would cover the second door bell. IT DOES NOT. I pay 36 dollars a year for the first device and now will need to pay 100 dollars a year for two. We are going to sell these off and go with Nest or another door bell. Motion detector doesn't work well and the night vision is not great. I do not recommend this door bell or service."}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-1 review-rating', 'review_body': "I've been using the ring doorbell for about 6 weeks now. Overall, the performance is very poor compared to other ring devices.\nI use the ring security system and monitoring inside of my home, and figured adding the doorbell would be a good addition based on my success with their other products. However, the doorbell all around is ineffective and an embarrassment to the company.\nInstalling and setting up with the instructions is pretty straight forward. It took three separate attempts to connect to my phone and app before it finally did though.\nThe picture quality is good for both day and night.\nThe doorbell DOES NOT pick up on most motion though. It DOES NOT even pick up my mail carrier putting mail into my mailbox, which is directly next to the doorbell on my porch. Not only does it not register motion, but it sends NO notifications to my phone. I've tried reconnecting the doorbell to my app and wifi, tried downloading the ring app again, changed settings in my phone, done everything I can think of but still cant get it to work.\nOverall - the doorbell doesnt register motion, doesn't record motion, and doesnt give notifications.\nSO IT IS USELESS."}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-4 review-rating', 'review_body': 'Well where do i begin? I thought i was ordering the one with the removable battery but it was this one instead. I guess i\'ll hard wire it so i don\'t have to babysit my doorbell battery wise. Good 1080p Hd Video. good sound that comes put of the door bell (your voice). I also ordered the "All new ring chime pro" Only because it doubles as a door bell & a router extender. Have fun with it & stay safe.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-2 review-rating', 'review_body': "***UPDATED 08/18/2020***\nAfter leaving my original review, I promptly received a contact from a Ring Community Support Representative. The representative was very professional, polite and knowledgeable. He was able to address most of my issues, which I will address. But I want to address the connection problem first.\n-You should know the recommended minimum requirements, which at the time of my purchase were not listed. This would have saved me a lot of time, troubleshooting, frustration and money. It is recommended your Wi-Fi internet connection have 2 MB/s download and 2 MB/s upload speeds. The way to check is using your cell phone search the internet for an internet speed test. Go outside where you’d like to connect the Ring camera and run the test. If you do not meet the minimum requirements, you may experience similar connection problems. I have over 30 MB/s download but 1.90 MB/s upload speeds. This is the fastest speed from my provider in my area. I experienced long wait times for the camera to load, camera cutting out and connection error messages. I thought I had good internet speed because I can telework from home and stream video content with no issues, but apparently my internet is not fast enough for the camera. Ring support kindly offered a refund. The installation process does not seem difficult, but I personally cannot install or uninstall the camera. I had to pay someone to install the camera and will likely need to pay someone to uninstall the camera. This sucks because I needed the camera for safety purposes.\nISSUES RESOLVED:\n-The rep was knowledgeable in troubleshooting the following issues. In the Ring app setting you can select to have a live view option in the dashboard. Even better, ther is the Rapid Ring app. This app only shows your cameras with a one touch button for live view. This app is great if you miss the notification, or quickly want to see your cameras and live view. There was also less connection issues with the Rapid Ring app.\n-You can link and answer your Ring camera with your echo device. Uninstalling and reinstalling the twice fixed the connection problem I was experiencing.\n-The rep adjusted my camera’s sensitivity and other tweaks to my liking.\nAmazon listing the minimum requirements would have saved me a lot of trouble. I do not know why this was not listed. As mentioned, the Ring Community Support rep was excellent, and I appreciated his effort.\n---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\nNo problem with picture quality or night vision. Too many bugs with the camera and app. I constantly receive the activating device notice when going into live mode. I have good Internet and the camera is about 8 feet from the router so there should be no connection problems. P If I miss a notification for answering the door and have to tap into the app there are several taps to get to live view. Why isn't there a live view button on the dashboard? Also, the Alexa skill does not work. I will get a notification on my Dot stating there's a person at the front door. When I say Alexa answer the front door it does nothing. I may send the camera back and look at other options."}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-2 review-rating', 'review_body': 'Don’t get involved with ring, I have no experience with other systems, but I think it would hard to be worse in the long run. I now own 2 door bells, a spotlight camera and a chime. Each time I buy, it’s because I already own equipment and want to keep everything uniform, but regret each purchase.\n\nNot a single ring item I have owned has set up on the first try, I’m pretty average on tech in 2020 but it just isn’t as easy as it should be, and tech support by phone is sub par. Expect an hour of setup up time the first time as you wait on the phone, if you can get through. After you own some equipment expect an hour setup for new equipment as you update your app and each piece of equipment., seriously, I own two properties and spent most of my time with my hand on my forehead.\n\nAfter your equipment is set up and working, get ready for the real let down. Imagine you are at work, you get an alert that your doorbell has been pressed, you respond to the alert, 30 seconds later after watching a wheel spin you get to view nobody there. They left, long gone, but that’s how long it takes. Furthermore, since you responded to the promp, it doesn’t start recording until you can see it live. And it takes at least 30-60 sec for it to see live. So someone has pressed your doorbell, it takes 30-60 sec for the ring doorbell to establish a connection, if they haven’t already left already, that’s a long time waiting staring at you phone, they gave up and walked away. When you check your recorded events (at a monthly subscription price), all you get is the “live video recording” but since it took up to a minute to connect ( if it does, many times it won’t) they have left and all you have is a recording of absolutely nothing.\nAlso, video recording is for only 14 seconds for motion alerts. So someone comes up to your driveway or front yard and scopes out you property for a bit. Then they wreck, vandalize, steal or whatever to your property. It won’t be filmed ! Let me say that again, 14 seconds of recording that you pay for, per motion alert.\n\nAnd my spotlight has been connected for 2+ years, it sucks, I can rarely get a live view to work in my own home. It suddenly disconnected from my home network, looking forward to spending an hour plus getting a previously working piece of equipment to work.\n\nDon’t do it\n\nUPDATE 7/22/20\n\nAfter having this for a while, some additional observations:\n-hardwiring this device solves none of the issues I mentioned above, but I guess I don’t\nHave to remove it to charge it now.\n-it takes a few seconds for this to start recording in 1080. It starts recording well after someone enters the activity zone , so they are usually pretty close by the time it wakes up. For a few seconds it records at a very low resolution, somewhere around a 7 year olds sketch and recording with VHS. Expect most recordings to have low resolution when it would help identifying them, and by the time 1080 finally sets in, they have moved out of frame.\n-After 30 days you have to pay for recording service, the app will tell you that you need to subscribe, but will not provide a link in the app to allow you to Sign up, also you can’t sign up within the app. You have to go to the website log in and do that. Have fun searching around the app for a while, only to realize you can’t sign up for the service using the interface that you use 99.999% of the time'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2022', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': ' We caught a thief in the action. We were able to have a crystal clear video and the police department was able to track her down in less than 30 min and recover our items!\n\nThe police immediately knew who she was with these great quality images.\n\nI highly recommend all ring products and am so thankful we got one.\n\nBUY ONE NOW!'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-3 review-rating', 'review_body': "Great product. Clear real time wide angle video. Motion filming and notifications work. Be aware you have to pay a monthly subscription about the cost of a cup of Starbucks coffee each month or a yearly fee for a cheaper price to allow you to save videos. This is important if need the video to report a crime. You get the first month for free. Still I would buy this product again. Install tip drill shank wide holes in your Hardy Plank to prevent cracking and/or stripping of the durable mount screws. Put them in by hand. If they're too tight your pilot holes are too small in the Hardy Plank. UPDATE 4/9/2021 Be AWARE! you will NOT be able to use any function including live stream if you don't subscribe to a monthly or yearly plan. In other words the Rind will notify you of motion but you will have to go to the door to see who it is. No video will be accessible. I was Just forced to subscribe in order to see video feed after my trial period ended. This detail is not made very clear. I was under the impression you wouldn't be able to save video events but not that the camera would be disabled if you do not subscribe. Very sleezy!!!"}]