The best video doorbells have put an end to missed packages or dealing with cold callers, as they let you see and speak to whoever is on your doorstep via a smartphone app, and now Ring has a new flagship battery-powered video doorbell that can help you identify what caused a motion alert. The Ring Video Doorbell 4 stores the four seconds of color video captured before motion detection was activated, to help you identify exactly what triggered the alert - this called pre-roll.
The Ring Video Doorbell 4 is priced at $199.99 / £179 / AU$329 and will go on sale in the US on April 28, in the UK on May 5, and finally in Australia on May 6.
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It builds on the Ring Video Doorbell 3 Plus, which only stores the pre-roll video in black-and-white. The color pre-roll feature is already available on the recently launched Ring Video Doorbell Wired. However, you will need to subscribe to Ring Protect, which costs from £2.50 / $3 / AU$4 per month, if you want to access pre-roll and other features, such as being able to review videos recorded by the doorbell for up to 30 days after they were recorded.
Handy additions
The Ring Video Doorbell 4 may not look any different from previous iterations of the video doorbell, but bumping the pre-roll feature to color will make the clips more detailed. That said, the Ring Video Doorbell 4 doesn’t come cheap and we’re not sure this minor upgrade makes it a must-have video doorbell especially if you already own the Ring Video Doorbell 3 or Ring Video Doorbell 2.
However, if you want the features found on the Ring Video Doorbell Wired but don't have existing wiring, it is an alternative, if considerably more expensive.
Irritatingly, it lacks Ring’s most impressive feature, Alexa Greetings, which sees Amazon’s voice assistant answer the door if you can’t get to it in time, and even take a message for you.
It’s currently only available in the US on the Ring Video Doorbell Pro models, but we’d like to see it extended to other Ring Video Doorbells, as it’s one of the most useful of all of Ring’s recently released features.
Built-in radar
Ring has also unveiled a top-of-the-range version of it’s floodlight camera. The Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Pro is a weather-proof security camera that records Full HD footage when motion is detected within its field of view.
It also has two motion-activated LED lights, but now also benefits from 3D Motion Detection and Bird’s Eye View features found on the Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2.
The Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Pro will go on sale in the coming months, according to Ring and will be priced at $249 / £219 / AU$379.
The Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Pro aims to reduce unwanted activity alerts with a built-in radar, which allows you to set a specific threshold. The camera will only start recording when the radar senses that a person or object has passed the threshold.
The same radar is also used in the ‘Bird’s Eye View’ feature that lets you see the exact path the object or person took on an aerial map, to give you a better understanding of what triggered the activity alert.
The Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Pro also has an array of microphones, rather than just one, which Ring says ensures a crisp, clear sound when you’re conversing with someone in the camera’s field of view.
Just like the current Ring Floodlight Cam, the new version uses existing wiring from a sensor light on the exterior of a property, so it doesn’t include a battery that needs to be recharged every few months.
If you subscribe to Ring Protect, you’ll also be able to set specific areas that you want to be alerted about motion in, as well as exclude areas in the camera field of view from capturing video for added privacy, for example if the camera takes in a neighbors property.
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