Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus (2nd Gen): two-minute review

A video doorbell is a parcel monitor, a deterrent, and a low-key surveillance node pointed at your own front step, and Ring has spent the better part of a decade making that proposition feel normal.

The second-generation Battery Doorbell Plus is the company sharpening its best idea: taking the head-to-toe doorbell and giving it the resolution it always deserved.

Where ordinary doorbells frame a visitor's torso and chin and little else, the Plus shows a tall, square 1:1 field of view — 140 degrees in both directions — that takes in the person, the doorstep and whatever's been left on it.

This generation shoots in 2K Retinal resolution (1920 x 1920) with HDR, so you can identify a courier, read a label and confirm whether the parcel is on your step or your neighbour's — and a 6x Enhanced Zoom lets you pinch in without the image collapsing. It's the spec that separates a useful doorbell from a novelty, and the upgrade that justifies picking the Plus over Ring's cheaper Battery Doorbell.

Night performance has been rethought, too. Rather than dropping straight to grey mush after dark, the Plus uses true-color low-light sight to hold onto colour in dim conditions, only switching to adaptive black-and-white night vision once it's dark.

Two-way talk with noise cancellation does the doorstep-conversation job cleanly. The other quality-of-life change is the Quick Release Battery Pack: instead of unmounting the whole unit to charge, you pop out the battery, recharge it and slot it back.

Installation takes under 30 minutes, connecting to Wi-Fi through the app and mounting with the supplied tools, then lining it up so the head-to-toe view actually reaches the floor. No hub required. If there's a grumble, it's a small one: in 2026, a $179.99 / £149.99 / AU$249 doorbell still charges over Micro-USB rather than USB-C, so you'll be hunting for the right cable.

On the upside, it runs dual-band Wi-Fi 6, so a 2K stream holds up better than Ring's older 2.4GHz-only doorbells, with Ring recommending a 10Mbps upload to keep it smooth.

Then there's the Ring tax, in two senses. Financially, person alerts, package alerts and saved recordings all live behind a Ring subscription; without one, the doorbell is reduced to real-time alerts and live view, which rather undersells a 2K camera.

Philosophically, buying Ring means accepting its history of police-data partnerships and the broader unease about Amazon-owned cameras pointed at public pavements. None of that is new, and none of it stops the hardware being good, but a review that ignored it wouldn't be doing its job.

Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus (2nd Gen): price & availability

• List price: $179.99 / £149.99 / AU$249
• Announced March 2026
• Available in the UK, US, and Australia

Sitting in the upper-middle of Ring's range of video doorbells, the Plus costs more than the $99.99 / £79.99 / $149 standard Battery Doorbell and less than the $249.99 / £219.99 / AU$399 Battery Doorbell Pro, which steps up to Retinal 4K and 3D motion detection.

With a list price of $179.99 / £149.99 / AU$249, the Battery Video Doorbell Plus isn't an impulse buy, but Ring discounts aggressively and its doorbells routinely sell well under list, so few people pay full price for long.

You should also factor the subscription into the lifetime cost. Plans start affordably for a single device and climb for multi-device households. Although the doorbell functions without a subscription, the experience is hollow: you'll be notified that something happened without being able to review what. Treat the subscription as part of the purchase, not an optional extra, and the value equation looks honest.

• Value score: 4/5

Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus (2nd Gen): subscription plans

Features such as instant notifications, Live View and Two-Way Talk are available out of the box and for free on all Ring devices. A Ring subscription (branded Ring Protect) allows you to review, save and share your videos.

With a Ring subscription, starting from $4.99 / £4.99 / AU$4.95 per month per device, you can store unlimited Ring footage in the cloud for up to 180 days, to rewatch, download to your own device or share with friends and family. Person and package alerts also require a subscription.

You get a 30-day trial subscription when you first set up your Ring device. Video storage defaults to 30 days, with the option to extend it to up to 180 days.

Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus (2nd Gen): specs

Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus (2nd Gen): design

• Well-built
• Quick-release battery
• Hub-free wireless install

I’ve never been the biggest fan of Ring’s bulky designs, but the second-gen Plus is a bit more suitably restrained: a slim, rounded slab that won't embarrass a period porch or a new-build alike.

Build quality is reassuring, and the button has a satisfying press, though for UK and Australian customers it only comes in a single Nickel Silver finish, so there's no matching it to your door furniture the way some rivals allow.

The most practical design feature is the Quick Release Battery Pack. On older Ring doorbells, recharging meant unscrewing and removing the whole device — exactly the sort of faff that leads to a flat battery and a fortnight of excuses. Here you release the battery alone, charge it and reinsert it, with the doorbell staying put.

Buy a spare — the standard pack or the new Quick Release Ultra Battery Pack — and downtime drops to seconds. If a permanent supply suits you better, it hardwires to existing doorbell wiring for continuous trickle charging.

Setup follows Ring's well-worn path through the app, and crucially needs no separate hub or bridge. The only thing to get right is the angle: head-to-toe view only delivers its full benefit if you mount the doorbell so the frame reaches the doorstep, so it's worth spending a minute on placement rather than slapping it up at eye level out of habit.

• Design score: 4/5

Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus (2nd Gen): performance

• 2K Retinal head-to-toe view
• True-colour low-light
• Subscription gates smartest features

Fitted to a typical front door, the Plus does the important things well, and the move to 2K makes the difference obvious. The higher resolution and tall, square frame capture a visitor from hairline to doormat, so you see the face and the parcel in one shot.

The 6x Enhanced Zoom lets you crop in on a label or a face without the picture completely falling apart. Motion alerts arrived promptly during testing, live view loaded quickly, and two-way talk was clear enough to hold a proper exchange with a courier rather than barking over each other.

It might split opinion, but Ring uses AI-powered features to identify and announce who is at your door. Instead of generic motion alerts, I received AI prompts such as “A person is walking in the room with a vacuum cleaner”. I loved it, my cleaner hated it, and well, I guess that’s the point.

After dark, true-color low-light sight holds onto color under external lighting, so a late-night clip is worth reviewing; only in near-total darkness does it fall back to adaptive black-and-white.

It’s worth noting that I tested this sample on an internal front door, but one with intermittent infrared communal lighting at night, so the low-light functionality became incredibly useful when the lights cut out. Being battery-powered and available with Ring’s additional adhesive stick-on mounting kit makes it suitable for rental properties, too.

Connectivity is more of a quiet improvement: dual-band Wi-Fi 6 gives the 2K stream more headroom than Ring's older 2.4GHz-only doorbells, with Ring recommending a 10Mbps upload speed to keep things smooth.

The performance ceiling, though, is set by the subscription. Person and package alerts — the difference between 'motion detected' and 'a parcel has arrived' — require a Ring plan, as does the ability to go back and watch what you missed, with recordings held up to 180 days.

Without a plan, the doorbell still rings and still streams live, but it stops short of the intelligence its hardware is clearly capable of. As a generational upgrade, it's a real one: 2K Retinal, HDR, sharper zoom and better low-light all land, so first-gen Plus owners have a genuine reason to look, even if a working 1536p unit is still perfectly serviceable.

• Performance score: 4/5

Should you buy the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus (2nd Gen)

Buy it if

Don't buy it if

Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus (2nd Gen): also consider

If you're not sure whether the new Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus is the right option for you, here are two other doorbells to think about.

How I tested the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus (2nd Gen)

• Tested at a domestic front door
• Assessed video, head-to-toe framing, zoom, night vision and audio
• Trialled the subscription experience

I used the doorbell outside to assess image quality, but mainly mounted the doorbell on an internal front door and used it as my main entry camera, paying particular attention to whether the head-to-toe view and the new 2K sensor delivered on the promise of capturing parcels and people together.

I checked live-view responsiveness, pushed the 6x zoom on faces and labels, held two-way conversations with visitors, and reviewed low-light and night clips after dark.

I've reported on Ring's privacy considerations because they're a material part of the buying decision, not a footnote.

For more details, see how we test, rate, and review products at TechRadar.

First reviewed June 2026

• Amazon-owned Ring faces a potential class-action lawsuit, $5m+ in damages sought
• Familiar Faces doesn't operate in some states due to privacy protections
• "Profound privacy failure" affects millions of Americans

Doorbell giant Ring, an Amazon company, now faces a proposed class-action lawsuit in the US over its 'Familiar Faces' feature, which uses AI to identify and label people to arrive at the door.

The lawsuit, filed by a Virginia resident, accuses the company of collecting and storing biometric information about him without his consent when he visited friends' and relatives' homes.

According to the complaint, the technology collects and stores facial biometrics from anyone who appears within the camera's field of view – regardless of whether they're visiting the house or not.

Ring accused of collecting and storing facial biometrics

Charles Sigwalt, the Virginia resident behind the class-action complaint, noted that Ring's system creates and stores so-called faceprints from anybody who comes with reach of a supported camera.

The complaint is seeking at least $5 million in damages, but this figure could rise if a larger class of affected individuals gets approved.

It's worth noting that Familiar Faces is only approved for use in some states – Illinois, Texas and Portland, Oregon are protected by stricter biometric privacy regulations.

This isn't the first time that the Amazon-owned company has faced the heat – in 2023 it paid a $5.8 million settlement to the FTC over allegations relating to employees' access to customer videos.

The company also faced recent backlash over a Super Bowl-advertised service that used its camera network to help locate lost dogs – critics warned about neighborhood surveillance.

In the complaint, the plaintiff concludes that Ring has created a "profound privacy failure for millions of people who are now being tracked by Amazon."

While I prefer the term "thrifty," some might call me cheap. I manage expenses pretty closely, which means I don't typically sign up for subscription services on various smart home devices. But that's the only way one could experience Ring's still-in-beta Familiar Faces feature, and it is kind of a game-changer.

To be clear, I still did not sign up for the necessary Pro Tier $20-a-month service to gain access to the new facial-recognition-powered feature. Ring's parent Amazon offered to give me temporary access so I could get a feel for Familiar Faces, and I'm glad they did.

How it works

As the name implies, Familar Faces can automatically identify known and unknown faces as they appear in front of your Ring camera. Since it relies in part on video resolution to generate those IDs, you'll need at least an HD-grade video doorbell. My Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 supports "HD+" (1536p). Ring actually recommends one of its pricier 4K models for the best Familar Face performance.

Nothing changes on the hardware side, but once you enable the feature in your ring app, it'll start capturing faces.

On the Ring Video Doorbell interface, the timeline shows when an unknown face appears in front of your doorbell. Click on it, and you get a handful of face thumbnails, and then you can label it.

I must admit that once I started using Familair Faces, it felt a little weird seeing all the faces it captured. There was my mailman. Then I saw the guy who repaired my door, and I saw my neighbor when he dropped by to deliver a package that was mistakenly delivered to his home. Then there were my family members. It felt like I was spying on people.

Even so, I diligently went about labeling whomever I could, even the mailman, whom I called "Mailman." Also, unless someone comes to the front door, Familar Faces won't identify them. Ring still takes note of activities, but its ability to perform facial recognition is limited to faces a few feet away from the front door.

In some instances, I noticed that when family members appeared, Familar Faces correctly identified them. Still, it could not properly reidentify the mailman.

I was surprised that even though Ring now knows my family's faces, and my Ring Video Doorbell is connected to my Alexa+-powered Echo Show, I couldn't use Alexa+ to show, for instance, all the times my wife appeared at the front door. Instead, Alexa+ just wanted to show me all the videos from the last two weeks.

Faces in the cloud

The ID doesn't happen on the Ring device or even your smartphone. Instead, face data is encrypted and sent to Ring's cloud, where it's stored for further face matching.

You can go in and delete identified faces at any time, and then they're deleted from the cloud, too.

For the faces I've captured and identified (up to 50), I can see everyone's comings and goings, including my own. It's nice to know when my wife arrived home safely (and not confuse it with the postal service showing up). But I hesitate to show this to any of my family members who might find it invasive.

In that case, they'll probably be pleased that my Pro trial will end soon, as will my access to Familiar Faces beta. I'll lose the ability to instantly identify and video people as they approach my front door. I'll also lose access to that archive of up to 180 days of video. That, I may miss the most (all those dogs and squirrels).

• Ring has released a wireless version of its premium 4K video doorbell
• It has also launched three 2K doorbells (two battery-powered and one wired)
• All the battery doorbells are compatible with a new Ring Solar Charger

Amazon has just unveiled a battery-powered 4K video doorbell for ultra-sharp images, with no wires. Like the wired version that launched last year, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro (2nd Gen) features Retinal 4K video, 10x zoom, improved night vision, and according to Ring, "installs virtually anywhere without rewiring".

It has an extra-fast charging quick-release battery pack, and with a Ring AI Pro subscription, you'll get access to features like AI video descriptions that tell you exactly what's happening before you check the footage, and let you search for specific events rather than scrubbing through recordings. The Wired Video Doorbell Pro has a list price of $249.99 / £219.99 (about AU$360).

There are also three new 2K video doorbells in the mix. If you're looking for something wireless, you can take your pick from the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus (2nd Gen) and the Ring Battery Video Doorbell (2nd Gen), which cost $179.99 / £149.99 (about AU$260) and $99.99 / £79.99 (about AU$149) respectively.

If you already have doorbell wiring, there's also a new version of the Ring Wired Video Doorbell, which is the most affordable option at $79.99 / £59.99 (about AU$120).

Want a wireless doorbell, but worried about battery life? Ring has also launched a new solar charger, which is compatible with all of its new battery doorbells. The sensibly-named Ring Solar Charger can be mounted anywhere, with the doorbell installed on top, and is priced at $49.99 (about £38 / AU£70).

The new doorbells and charger are available to pre-order now in the US and the UK. I'm hoping to put the new models through their paces very soon to find out whether they deserve a place in TechRadar's roundup of the best video doorbells. Stay tuned for more details.

This week, things were a little quieter as we await the reveals of Samsung Unpacked next week, but that's not to say it was boring.

YouTube went down, Apple teased its next product event, and Discord rivals crashed under the weight of new users fleeing to their platforms.

To catch up on this and more, scroll down for our recap of the week's seven biggest tech news stories.

7. The Discord exodus started

Discord has inadvertently spoiled its reputation over the last week, with an announcement that it will be introducing its strict age verification plans to its users globally, after the UK’s updated Online Safety Act. It unsurprisingly sparked outrage among Discord users, who fled to multiple alternative social platforms, so much so that it gave one in particular, Stoat, server capacity issues.

It comes after a plethora of users took to unsubscribing from the platform’s Nitro service, with many looking to force Discord to rethink its strategy. Unfortunately, Discord is yet to make any adjustments to its verification plans set for March, and has only issued an update to its initial press release, providing extra ‘clarification’ for those plans.

• Read the full story: So many Discord users are flocking to this alternative platform that it keeps crashing

6. We tested the weirdest e-bike so far

AI really is finding its way into everything, as this week we tried Acer’s ebii 20 — an e-bike with AI features aimed to enhance the rider’s experience.

There is something to be said for the security protection and AI pedal assistance, but the hub motor lacks the power most would expect from an e-bike in this price bracket.

It also has poor weight distribution, and made some annoying ticking and white noise sounds while we were testing it — likely because we didn’t outfit the bike with a SIM card — which led to frustrations that meant we could only award it three-and-a-half stars in our review.

• Read the full story: I tested Acer's very weird AI-powered e-bike for a whole month

5. Movie studios fought back against AI clones

Netflix and Paramount might be battling over which of them will buy Warner Bros., but for now, the trio, and some other Hollywood studios like Disney, are allies in pushing back on Seedance 2.0 — a new AI video generator from ByteDance (the TikTok owner).

That is because they all claim the platform is using their characters and IP without permission.

Several Seedance videos have gone viral recently, including one starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in a fight scene, with dialogue that sees Pitt accuse Cruise of killing Jeffrey Epstein — with the Screen Actors Guild of America (SAG-AFTRA) calling the video "unacceptable".

The Chinese company has since said it will take steps “to prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users."

• Read the full story: Netflix, Disney, and Warner Bros. threaten legal action over Seedance 2.0 videos

4. We dissected the new Game of Thrones trailer

Thankfully, this week we didn’t need AI to get excited about one major entertainment property, as the trailer for House of the Dragon season 3 dropped.

With last season's finale suggesting that the Targaryen Civil War will finally take center stage this season, its first teaser, which you can watch above, is a thoroughly explosive one.

Unfortunately, the one thing we’re still missing is an official release date. It’s coming sometime in June, but precisely when is still a mystery for now.

• Read the full story: Our House of the Dragon season 3 trailer breakdown

3. Ring defended its leaked plan to “zero out crime”

Privacy has been a huge theme this week – and Discord (see above) wasn’t the only company that shot itself in the foot. Ring also had to defend itself from accusations that it’s planning to create an opt-out system that borders on mass surveillance.

A leaked email from Ring founder Jamie Siminoff poured gasoline on a controversy that was sparked by the company’s Super Bowl ad for its ‘Search Party’ feature. That feature is designed to help lost dogs, but the email said it could lead to a “future where we are able to zero out crime in neighborhoods”.

That understandably didn’t go down too well with privacy advocates – but Ring told us that it’s standing firm, despite the backlash.

• Read the full story: Ring says its leaked plan to ‘zero out crime in neighborhoods’ doesn’t mean mass surveillance

2. YouTube went down in a very rare outage

We’re getting pretty used to outages on X, which went down twice this week – but seeing YouTube go offline is a more panic-inducing rarity. Well, that unfortunate incident happened on Tuesday night when YouTube gave millions of people a taste of what life was like before 2006.

The 90-minute outage hit every part of YouTube – from the website and app to YouTube Music and TV – and was caused by an innocent “issue with our recommendations system”, according to Google. The experience made many realize how dependent they’ve become on the video-sharing site, which is so culturally significant it’s now an exhibit at London’s V&A museum.

• Read the full story: YouTube was down – here’s what caused the huge global outage

1. Apple announced a big March event

We might currently be gearing up for Samsung’s upcoming Unpacked next week, but not wanting to be left out of the conversation, Apple has teased a showcase for March 4 — and it could be a doozy.

As ever, the company is keeping tight-lipped about what product launches we might see at the event, with nothing specific mentioned in the press invite itself; however, there are suggestions from leaks and speculation that it’ll have a wide range of products to announce.

This could include new MacBook Pros, the iPhone 17e, a new iPad Air, and possibly a new Mac Studio. We’ll have to wait and see what gets announced, but if you’re an Apple fan looking to upgrade your tech, you might want to wait a week or so to see what Apple has up its sleeves.

• Read the full story: 5 things to expect at Apple's big event on March 4

• Comments from Ring’s founder have appeared in a leaked email
• They suggest Ring wants its cameras to “zero out crime”
• Ring has hit back at claims that this could lead to mass surveillance

A commercial showing Ring’s new 'Search Party' feature hit the headlines after the Super Bowl earlier this month, when privacy concerns were raised about how it could potentially be used for mass surveillance. Now, a leaked email from Ring’s founder has added further fuel to fire – but Ring has hit back at claims that it reveals plans for mass surveillance.

The Search Party feature in Ring cameras is currently used to locate lost dogs, and it does this by harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to scan through other Ring users’ footage in order to recognize wayward pooches. But according to a leaked email seen by 404 Media, that’s only the start of Ring’s plans.

In the message sent to staff in October 2025, Ring founder Jamie Siminoff said: “I believe that the foundation we created with Search Party, first for finding dogs, will end up becoming one of the most important pieces of tech and innovation to truly unlock the impact of our mission. You can now see a future where we are able to zero out crime in neighborhoods.”

The contention from critics and privacy advocates is that by saying Search Party is designed “first for finding dogs,” the implication is that it could later be expanded to look for people. After all, dogs don’t commit crimes (unless fouling your neighbor’s yard counts), so the idea that Ring cameras will be used to “zero out crime” seems to suggest that it could be used to find people instead.

However, Ring has dismissed those claims in a response shared with 404 Media and TechRadar.

What has Ring said?

Ring has been pretty bullish in its response to the leaked email. A spokesperson said that, rather than revealing any specific plans, Jamie Siminoff's comments "were intended to speak broadly to the long-term potential of customer-controlled features and technologies working together to support safer communities".

"No single feature is designed to “zero out crime,” and tools like Search Party for Dogs are purpose-built for specific use cases – like helping reunite lost pets – with privacy and user choice at the center," the spokesperson added.

The leaked email also apparently wasn't a private one. "Jamie writes these emails knowing they may be shared externally, this isn’t the first (or last) time his notes have been shared," the spokesperson said.

While its Search Party feature is enabled by default, Ring also says it's possible to turn it off. "Ring provides relevant context about when sharing may be helpful – but the decision remains firmly in the customer’s hands, not ours," Ring's spokesperson said.

Finally, Ring was keen to stress that features like Search Party aren't designed to be broadened to identify other subjects. "Search Party for Dogs helps camera owners identify potential lost dogs using detection technology built specifically for that purpose; it does not process human biometrics or track people. Fire Watch alerts owners to nearby fire activity. Community Requests notify neighbors when local public safety agencies ask the community for assistance," the spokesperson added.

Analysis: Far from the end of the controversy

On the face of it, cutting down on crime is something most people would be in favor of. No one likes having their parcels stolen off their front porch, for instance, and the idea of using home security cameras and video doorbells to catch perpetrators – and those responsible for more serious crimes – might sound worthwhile.

But despite Ring's protestations, this controversy has arisen due to the way Ring’s Search Party feature works, as well as its future implications. Search Party is enabled on Ring cameras by default, and it uses AI to scan footage from other Ring cameras in the company’s network, thereby turning it into an automated surveillance system of sorts.

With law and order in the United States becoming heavily politicized – and with agencies like ICE drawing strong criticism for their actions – many critics are concerned that law enforcement could misuse a network like Ring’s in order to surveil the public at large.

With revelations over the size of the US government’s mass surveillance programs making the news in recent years, that might not be too far-fetched an idea. It was these concerns that arguably compelled Ring to sever its ties with the surveillance tech company Flock Safety.

It’ll be interesting to see if Ring continues to modify its stance in light of the public backlash. Ring says facial recognition data is kept private and secure, but a number of customers have been returning their cameras.

• Ring is severing its ties with Flock Safety, linked to law enforcement
• Critics are accusing Ring of rolling out 'mass surveillance'
• A new Search Party advert has also raised concerns about privacy

Facing increasing criticism over its policies on privacy and data sharing, the Amazon-owned Ring has severed ties with surveillance tech company Flock Safety – although it may not be enough to appease many of its critics.

"We determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated," says Ring (via The Verge). "As a result, we have made the joint decision to cancel the planned integration."

Ring also confirmed the integration never actually launched, despite being announced last October, so no data has been sent between the two companies. Flock Safety is known to work with government and law enforcement agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Ring and Flock Safety partnership was part of Ring's Community Requests feature, where users can opt to share camera footage with local police to help in active investigations. That program is continuing, and Ring points out that it helped identify a key witness in the Brown University shooting in December 2025.

"We remain focused on building tools that empower neighbors to help one another while maintaining strong privacy protections and transparency about how our features work," says Ring. "We'll continue to carefully evaluate future partnerships to ensure they align with our standards for customer trust, safety, and privacy."

With added facial recognition

A few days ago, Ring also released a new advert showing off its Search Party feature, which has drawn further complaints from critics, who described it as "dystopian" – although, like the Flock Safety integration, this isn't new and was unveiled last year.

The idea with Search Party is that if a dog goes missing, local Ring cameras are used to help spot it. It's enabled by default, so you need to opt out if you don't like it – but Ring says more than a dog a day has been found by Search Party since it launched.

Finding lost pooches is a laudable goal, but there are concerns that the same setup could easily be used to track people. US Senator Ed Markey has described Search Party as a "mass surveillance" system, especially given that Ring products can now be programmed to recognize familiar faces too.

Ring says facial recognition data is kept private and secure, and can improve security by letting you know if it's a family member or a stranger wandering about your property. It's also a feature available on other security cameras, including Google Nest Cams. However, users are far from convinced that Ring can be trusted.

The problem is not the advertised capabilities, but how they could be repurposed in the future, either with or without public knowledge – a debate on trust and privacy that will no doubt continue. It seems that plenty of people have already had enough of Ring's approach, and are returning their cameras.

• Ring cameras can now notify you about unusual activity
• The new tool uses AI to 'learn' what's normal for your home
• There are new sensors to detect safety and security problems, too

We're at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, where Ring has just announced a set of new AI-powered upgrades that should make your video doorbell and security cameras even better at keeping your home and family safe.

One of the most interesting additions, AI Unusual Event Alerts, sends you a notification when your camera or doorbell spots something that looks out of the ordinary. It uses the Video Descriptions tech that launched in June last year, which analyzes the event that's triggered your camera to start recording and sends a text description to your phone so you can decide whether it's something that needs your attention.

What's ordinary for one person's home might be unusual for another, so this isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, AI Unusual Event Alerts 'learns' what's normal for your home by monitoring everyday activity, then warns you when something happens that doesn't fit with the regular pattern.

If you currently find that you're receiving too many alerts, you can choose to only be notified when something out of the ordinary happens.

Active Warnings are another new AI-powered tool for your Ring cameras, and are intended to deter potential threats to your property as soon as they're spotted.

This feature, which is available if you're currently enrolled in Ring's Virtual Security Guard program, will deliver warnings to potential burglars or other threats through your camera's speaker straight away, while a trained security expert takes a closer look at what's happened to see whether further action is needed (such as initiating two-way talk or contacting emergency services).

Sensors and switches

Ring also used its CES stand to unveil a new set of sensors and other devices that are based on Amazon Sidewalk (a low-power network that can transfer small amounts of data much further than your home Wi-F) and don't need a separate hub.

Until now, Sidewalk was only been available in the US, but it's now rolling out in Canada and Mexico too, with the EU, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan all due to follow later this year.

The new Sidewalk-enabled hardware includes:

• Door and window contact sensors
• Motion detectors
• A panic button
• Glass break sensors
• Outside door sensor
• Smoke and carbon monoxide sensors
• Flood and freeze sensors
• Temperature and humidity sensors
• Air quality sensors
• A sump pump sensor

There's also a bundle of new controllers that make it easier to operate your Ring smart home devices manually, including a fan control, smart plug, a single light switch, and a smart light remote.

Grab some apps

Finally, Ring has thrown open the doors to a new app store, where you'll download heaps of third-party tools to help you get more from your Ring devices. It's currently only available in the US, but will hopefully roll out in other locations soon.

You'll need a compatible Ring subscription to use these apps, and depending on the tool you want to use, you might need to sign up with a third-party service and connect it to your Ring account.

The selection of apps is expected to grow in the coming weeks, so keep an eye on what's available through the Ring app or at Ring.com.

• Alexa+ Greetings uses AI to generate custom responses for callers
• The assistant will identify who is at the door, and give a suitable reply
• It's rolling out now to Alexa+ Early Access users in the US and Canada

Ring is launching a new AI assistant for those occasions when you can't get to the door yourself, but a pre-recorded message won't quite cut it. Alexa+ Greetings is rolling out today, and will give different responses depending on who's calling, and which instructions you've given in advance.

For example, if you tell Alexa+ Greetings that you want packages left out of sight behind your shed, it will relay this message when it identifies a delivery person, and even handle follow-up questions (if the package requires a signature, for example, and will have to be returned to the depot).

It can also politely (or not so politely, if you're so inclined) turn down cold callers and salespeople, or give a friendly greeting if it recognizes a friend or family member.

Alexa+ Greetings uses Ring Video Descriptions – a feature launched earlier this year that uses AI to analyze the event that's triggered your video doorbell or security camera, and generates a short text notification so you don't need to watch a video clip to understand what's going on at home. If it's something you were expecting, like the mailman or your kids arriving home from school, you can dismiss it without any further action.

Still getting too many alerts? Last month, Ring started using the same tech to group together notifications about similar events. This tool, called Single Event Alerts, ensures that your phone isn't bombarded by messages if a gardener is mowing your lawn, for example, or your kids are playing outside.

Launch date and availability

This isn't the first time we've seen generative AI in a video doorbell. Earlier this year, home security company Swann released the SwannBuddy4K doorbell, which includes a free AI voice assistant called SwannShield to communicate with callers.

During testing we thought the doorbell itself was excellent, particularly because all of its key features are available without a subscription. However, the assistant was still in beta when we reviewed it, and felt a bit like a gimmick rather than a genuinely useful feature. Take a look at our full SwannBuddy4K review for more details, and to see how it performed in the real world.

Hopefully Alexa+ Greetings will feel like a more polished product when it starts rolling out to Alexa+ Early Access users today in the US and Canada. It will be available for the third-gen Ring Wired Doorbell Pro and second-gen Ring Wired Doorbell Plus with a Ring Premium Plan and Ring Video Descriptions enabled.

Ring Outdoor Cam Pro: two-minute review

Although probably best known for its video doorbells, Ring offers a range of both indoor and security cameras, including the 2K Ring Outdoor Cam Plus launched earlier this year. However, with the Ring Outdoor Cam Pro, the manufacturer has upped its game by going full 4K for the first time.

Available in black or white (we tested the white version), this new model can be used either outdoors or indoors, with a number of different mounting options to suit your individual set up. Screws and wall plugs are provided for mounting on a wall, fence or even a celling. Alternatively, you can use the built-in stand for placing indoors on a bookshelf or a unit.

Unfortunately, unlike other models in the range, the Ring Outdoor Cam Pro is mains-powered only. There are no battery or even solar charging options available for the unit which means it will need to be located close to a power supply (Ring supplies 6m/20ft power cable with the camera). And although there is POE (Power over Ethernet) version of the camera, this will set you back an additional £100 (£279 rather than £179) – rather a hefty premium in our opinion.

While the lack of battery/solar power options will certainly deter some buyers looking for a quick, wire-free fix, the use of mains power does enable more advanced high-bandwidth features that battery power simply can’t sustain. Chief among these is 24/7 4K recording, turning the camera from a conventional security unit triggered by motion alerts into a fully-fledged surveillance system. However, this will require a Premium Ring subscription currently costing a hefty £15.99 a month. Another Premium feature is Smart Video Search. Using AI, this allows you to type in a word or phrase such as ‘man wearing a red top’ into the search bar and it will automatically scour the captured footage looking for a man in a red top.

Without a monthly subscription, the camera’s functionality is a lot more basic, restricted mostly to viewing live video streams and basic motion alerts. It’s not possible to save or review past recordings. However, it does include Ring’s Smart Responses feature which will play the automated message ‘Hi, you are currently being recorded’ to intruders letting them know they are being filmed.

Other basic features not requiring a subscription include a loud 85dB Siren option (once pressed this will sound for thirty seconds) and two-way audio so you can speak to whoever is in view. It’s also possible to set motion alerts for certain times of the day (handy if you use the camera indoors and know other family members will be back in, say, the afternoon/evening ), as well as create different motion zones so – for example – the camera doesn’t pick up passers-by walking past the house or activity in the neighbour’s garden.

Finally, motion sensitivity can be adjusted to reduce the number of motion alerts you get, as security cameras can tend to be a little over sensitive picking up the slightest movement such as a branch swaying on a tree!

Ring Outdoor Cam Pro: subscription options

Ring Home Basic (formerly Protect Basic)
Cost: $4.99 / £4.99 / AU$4.95 per month or $49.99 / £49.99 / AU$49.95 per year
Covers: one doorbell or camera.
Features: cloud storage (up to 180 days), person/package alerts, video previews.

Ring Home Standard (formerly Protect Plus)
Cost: $9.99 / £7.99 / AU$15 per month or $99.99 / £79.99 / AU$150 per year
Covers: All devices at one location
Features: All Basic features plus Extended Live View, Picture-in-Picture, Daily Event Summary and 10% off Ring products.

Ring Home Premium (new tier)
Cost: $19.99 / £15.99 per month or $200 / £159.99 per year (not currently available in Australia)
Covers: All devices at one location
Features: everything in Basic and Standard, plus 24/7 recording and unlimited video storage.

Ring Outdoor Cam Pro: price and availability

• How much does it cost? $199, £179, AU$329
• When is it available? Since November 2025
• Where is it available? UK / US / Australia

Given it’s a high-end security camera aimed at those who want the very best video quality on the market, I didn’t expect Ring Outdoor Cam Pro to be cheap. Nevertheless, its near-£200 price tag puts it at the very top of the range when it comes to price.

For example, you can now buy the Ring Stick Up Cam for under £50. And while the Stick Up Cam only offers 1080p video resolution (compared to 4K on the Ring Outdoor Cam Pro), it is – unlike its high-performance sister model - battery-powered. This gives you much more flexibility when it comes to installation, especially if you want to cite the camera a long distance away from mains power.

Nor is it just the price of the hardware you have to think about when investing in a security camera. There’s also the monthly subscription. Ring isn’t alone in charging a monthly subscription for its premium features, but with prices starting at £4.99 a month it is one of the more expensive. What’s more, if you want the most advanced features, such as 24/7 video recording and Smart Video Search, you will need to pay £15.99 a month – more than many people’s monthly mobile phone subscriptions.

• Value score: 3/5

Ring Outdoor Cam Pro: design

• Solidly built camera
• Various mounting options
• IP65 weather-resistance

When it comes to design, the Ring Outdoor Cam Pro certainly doesn’t disappoint. Standing around 6 inches / 15cm tall, it’s a solid-enough design with a base that can be easily angled to match your needs. Various mounting options are provided for indoor and outdoor use and set up is straightforward enough thanks to an easy-to-use app and a QR code that you can scan with your phone’s camera.

Plenty of cable is provided although this is divided up with a slightly ugly power adapter (this can be screwed into the wall). On the one side of the power adaptor is the mains cable, on the other is a flatter USB-C cable that goes into the back of the camera.

Turn the camera around and there’s the 4K lens, offering a 140° horizontal and 85° vertical field of view, plus a small microphone and speaker at the bottom running along the bottom of the unit. Boasting an IP (Ingress Protection) rating of 65 – an improvement on earlier models - the Ring Outdoor Cam Pro offers protection from dust and low-pressure water jets, but isn’t suitable for submersion or high-pressure jets. It can also be used in temperatures as low as -5°F and as high as 120°F (-20°C to 50°C).

• Design score: 4/5

Ring Outdoor Cam Pro: performance

• Retinal 4K resolution
• 10x digital zoom
• Adaptive night vision

One of the first of the manufacturer’s cameras to incorporate Retinal 4K technology (3840 x 2160 pixels), the Ring Outdoor Camera Pro certainly stands out when it comes to performance. Indeed, we found that the higher pixel density, coupled with a 140° field of view and 10x digital zoom, meant it was possible to capture detail from footage filmed during the day that wasn’t previously possible.

However, night vision was a little bit more of a mixed bag. Ring advertises ‘adaptive and colour night vision’, but the colour functionality requires quite a bit of ambient light to work. Generally, we found that while it was very high quality most of the footage we captured at night was black and white, unless movement triggered one of the nearby security lights.

One area where the Ring Outdoor Cam Pro does excel is ease of use. Like many of Ring’s products, set-up is straightforward and the product’s menus are straightforward to use. Alerts are sent directly to your phone in an instant, complete with details such as ‘person detected’ (providing you subscribe to a Ring plan). It is also linked with the Alexa skill so you can activate the camera with a voice command such as ‘Alexa, show me the garden camera’.

Finally, it’s possible to reduce the number of false alerts that you get using the Ring’s innovative Bird’s Eye View feature. This works by combining 3D motion detection (with radar) with a satellite map of your property to track an intruder’s path with pinpoint accuracy! It’s also a good idea to reduce the motion sensitivity of the camera using the onscreen menu.

• Performance score: 4.5/5

Ring Outdoor Cam Pro:

Should you buy the Ring Outdoor Cam Pro?

Buy it if

Don't buy it if

Ring Outdoor Cam Pro: also consider

How I tested the Ring Outdoor Cam Pro:

• I used the Ring every day for a week
• I set it up myself both indoors and outdoors

To test this camera, I first connected it to the mains plug in my garden and placed it in various positions and in all weathers – including sunshine, rain and heavy wind! I also tested it both during daylight and at night (it was dark in London from about 4.30pm onwards). During this time, I didn’t have any performance issues, despite extremely inclement weather conditions (thanks Storm Bram).

I then moved indoors to complete the testing with the device in various locations including the kitchen and my home office. One of the great things I noticed during the testing period was just how flexible the Ring camera is. All of the fittings are provided for installing on a wall or ceiling. However, it can quite as easily be moved around for placing on a desk or a bookshelf – handy if you go away and just want to monitor a particular area for a short period of time.

• Ring is introducing Single Event Alert for Premium subscribers
• The feature uses AI to consolidate the number of alerts you see
• When there's a flurry of activity, you'll just get a single summary

One of the annoyances of setting up motion detection alerts on your home security camera is that you tend to get a flurry of unnecessary alerts all related to the same event – something which Ring is now trying to tackle with a new AI-powered feature.

It's called Single Event Alert, and as the name suggests, it'll wrap all the motion alerts from the same event into a single notification. It could be the kids playing in the garden, for example, or a delivery driver going back and forth trying to find the right address.

The AI part of it is the way your camera will be able to recognize the same thing happening multiple times – think a gardener trimming hedges – and, in theory, be smart enough to only tell you about it once.

"AI Single Event Alert addresses one of the most common customer frustrations – notification fatigue," explains Ring in its official blog post. "Constant alerts can make it difficult to focus and even harder to tell what's urgent".

'Awareness and peace of mind'

The problem with getting too many alerts from your security cameras is that you then tend to ignore them, or think of them as low priority. That means when something important does happen, it might be a while until you realize.

Hopefully, this will help to tackle that notification overload – a "balance between awareness and peace of mind", as Ring puts it. It joins two other AI features on the devices, Video Descriptions (summaries of what's happened), and Smart Video Search.

Like those other AI features though, Single Event alert is only going to be available to Ring Premium Subscribers. That will set you back $19.99 / £15.99 AU$29.95 a month, and for now it's limited to users in the US and Canada.

It's good to see security cameras getting smarter, though it's not so good that this will be yet another paywalled feature pushing you towards a subscription. You can find models with and without subscriptions attached in our best home security cameras guide.

A huge Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage broke dozens of popular apps and websites including Alexa, Ring, Reddit, Snapchat and Wordle yesterday, but it's now finally been fixed.

The problems started at around 2.40am ET / 7.40am BST on October 20 when a large spike on Downdetector showed reported problems with Amazon Web Services – which in turn took down the hundreds of services that rely on its cloud computing power.

It also had some very strange and unexpected knock-on effects, which we've rounded up in our guide to the 9 weirdest things that happened during the AWS outage.

The issues was caused by a simple Domain Name System (DNS) error, but after hours of wrangling the AWS dashboard announced at 3.53pm PDT / 6.53pm ET / 11.53pm BST on October 20 that "all AWS returned to normal operations".

The impact was massive and global, with over 1,000 businesses impacted – and many are still dealing with the knock-on effects. Here's how the biggest internet outage since the Crowdstrike debacle of 2024 played out – plus all the latest updates on the aftermath...

The latest news

• AWS says all services have now "returned to normal operations"
• The huge outage lasted several hours and impacted over 1,000 businesses
• Snapchat, Ring, Venmo, Reddit and Alexa were among the worst hit

This is an online earthquake

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage started at around 7.40am BST, according to Downdetector – and the ripple effect has taken out much of the internet.

Right now, Alexa, Snapchat, Ring, Roblox, Fortnite, Zero, Signal, Canva and countless others are showing huge spikes in reports on Downdetector.

The problems show just how many services rely on Amazon's cloud computing services. The AWS Health Dashboard is showing an "operational issue" in North Virginia that's producing "increased error rates and latencies". This is going to have serious repercussions today for millions...

This explains those Alexa issues

While it's unlikely to be the most serious issue today, the first time many saw the impact of the Amazon Web Services outage was with its Alexa voice assistant.

This Reddit thread shows many were recently reporting problems with the assistant, with some saying they "had to turn the lights off manually" and couldn't set their alarms.

Well, AWS is the root cause – and Alexa is far from the only service experiencing problems. Alongside Ring, Snapchat and Zoom, we're also seeing banking apps like Lloyds and Halifax in the UK and Robinhood in the US showing large spikes on Downdetector...

Your bank may also be hit

While the problems with our Echo devices this morning are annoying, a more serious repercussion from the AWS outage for many will be that multiple banks have been hit.

In the UK, Downdetector is showing large spikes on Lloyds, Halifasx Bank of Scotland and even HM Revenue & Customs. It just shows how deep and wide the Amazon Web Services infrastructure is, and how badly the internet is affected when it runs into rare problems.

The latest from the AWS dashboard at 1.26am PDT / 9.26am BST is that "significant error rates" are happening in the 'US-EAST-1 Region' and that "engineers were immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issue, and fully understanding the root cause". Let's hope they do that sooner rather than later...

Who is affected?

The easier question for today's AWS outage might be 'who hasn't been hit'?

Right now on Downdetector, we're seeing large spikes on dozens of services. On the more serious side, this includes Zoom, Slack, Blink Security, Venmo and, in the UK, Lloyds Bank, Halifax, HM Revenue & Customs, Bank of Scotland and more.

But the AWS earthquake is also rippling through Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, Duolingo, PlayStations Network and yes, even Wordle.

Even Downdetector is showing a rare red banner showing the severity of the Amazon Web Services outage in the US-East-1 region. We should get another update on the AWS Dashboard soon...

Ring owners are very confused right now

The AWS outage has rippled far and wide across the internet, but some of the biggest hit have been Amazon's own services like Alexa and Ring.

For many, Ring cameras have become intertwined with their daily schedule – and that's now been massively disrupted today, as TechRadar's Senior Writer AI told me.

"Every morning I go for a coffee before work, taking the dog a walk around the block before sitting at my desk for the day. Normally, my smartphone gets bombarded with Ring doorbell notifications from the busy neighbors moving in and out, as I pay close attention to the app waiting for the postman.

"Today, however, until I realized that AWS services were down I just sat confused as to why the normal morning ruckus of the school run wasn't happening. I work with headphones on and rely on Ring to know when to open the door for the postie before my dog gets alerted by their presence.

"With Ring struggling this morning, I'm going to have to stay ultra aware as I wait for the knock on my door, fully accepting that my tiny French Bulldog is going to go crazy at the thought of an intruder.

"Millions of people rely on Ring for security and safety concerns, while others just need the video doorbell for simplifying life and knowing when mail has been delivered. My Ring doorbell is one of the best tech purchases I've ever made, and that's only emphasized when it stops working and I can't go about my day the way I usually would", he said.

We may have a cause

An update on the AWS Dashboard at 2.01am PDT / 5.01am ET / 10.01am BST may have given us some good news.

It says "we have identified a potential root cause for error rates for the DynamoDB APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region".

Leaving the technical details aside, the most important part is that AWS says it's "working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery".

AWS has promised another update by 2:45am PDT / 5.45am ET / 10.45am BST. Until then, expect to see a lot more error messages on your favorite services...

Tidal is out – Monday morning playlists ruined

Ugh, when your favorite music streaming service is out for the count any way you want it (that's the way you need it) on a Monday morning.

Becky Scarrott, TechRadar's audio editor, reports: "I'm TechRadar's audio editor and the time of writing, Downdetector's list of Tidal outage reports has tipped 337 entries, with 63% listing app issues (which makes sense, because that's how most people access music on the fly – ie. their commute), 15% noting the website isn't letting them in (it isn't for me) and 22% mentioning the server connection.

"I initially got the wheel of death on the app, then a crash. And when I tried to click back into the Tidal app, a '504 Gateway Time-out' message appeared, after I was prompted to log in.

This is of course related to AWS's "operational issues", and let me tell you, my operational issues are also affected when I can't get my Monday morning playlist going…"

'Significant signs of recovery'

Some good news, potentially – Amazon Web Services has just provided another promising update.

Its latest post, from 2.27am PT / 5.27am ET / 10.27am BST, says: "We are seeing significant signs of recovery. Most requests should now be succeeding. We continue to work through a backlog of queued requests. We will continue to provide additional information".

My takeaway from that (and the evidence on Downdetector) is that we're past the worst of the earthquake, but aftershocks and problems could still continue for a while yet...

Strava hits the AWS wall

Fitness app Strava is also experiencing server issues. Strava users might be seeing the following message: “The Strava server has encountered an error. Please contact support if the problem persists.” Unfortunately, as Strava runs on AWS servers, contacting support won’t do very much at all.

Matt Evans, TechRadar's Senior Fitness & Wearables editor, says: "I can still look through my timeline, view my profile, and interact with friends’ posts, but the app is a little sluggish: 500 errors frequently occur when refreshing pages, and my latest activity, logged on my Garmin watch, hasn’t uploaded to Strava.

"Coincidentally, Garmin Connect also runs on AWS servers, but loading and navigating the app, I haven’t seen any problems so far. It’s hardly critical infrastructure like banks, but concerned athletes should rest assured that this isn’t an issue on Strava’s end."

The worst may be behind us...

That promising update from AWS (below) is reflected on the Downdetector graph for Amazon Web Services, which is the epicenter of today's internet earthquake.

At is peak in the US at 3.52am ET / 8.52am BST, the AWS graph had almost 6,000 reports in the US and 4,000 in the UK. But that's now down to around 2,000 and 1,500 reports respectively, suggesting that those "significant signs of recovery" are being felt in the real world.

Similarly, Downdetector graphs for other services are also showing a dip, which means the end of this major outage could be in sight...

Disaster, now Reddit's down

The place we all go for refuge when there's a big internet blackout is sadly also been hit by the AWS storm – now Reddit is showing large spikes on Downdetector.

I'm getting a "too many requests" error on the homepage and so are thousands of others, with over 6,000 reports in the US and over 3,000 in the UK.

In fact, the Reddit graph is bucking the trend of other services, which are showing a downturn in problems, whereas Reddit's continues to spike upwards. Signs of a different problem? It's more likely to be Reddit's core audience waking up to today's bad news...

Good news, everyone – Wordle is back!

If you've been worrying about getting your daily Wordle fix, then fret no more – because the mega-popular online word game is back.

The site, which lives on the New York Times' gaming site, was hit by the AWS outage earlier today, with users unable to log in. So, while they could complete the day's game, it wouldn't count towards their streak – a feature which is of vital importance to many Wordlers.

Everything appears to be working normally again now, though, so you can go ahead and attempt today's puzzle. Just be sure to you check out our Wordle today page for hints and discussion of the game first.

Any signs of a cyber attack?

Internet outages on the scale of today's AWS one usually spark concerns about cyber attacks. But once again, a more boring, infrastructure-related issue appears to be to blame.

The Amazon Web Services dashboard says that "the issue appears to be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1", which in simpler terms means a problem between the 'domain name servers' (which translate IP addresses) and the interface that sits between clients and servers (APIs).

As Rafe Pilling (Director of Threat Intelligence, Sophos) commented: "When anything like this happens the concern that it's a cyber incident is understandable. AWS has a far reaching and intricate footprint, so any issue can cause a major upset. In this case it looks like it is an IT issue on the database side and they will be working to remedy it as an absolute priority."

That appears to be the case, with the AWS dashboard stating "we continue to observe recovery across most of the affected AWS Services". Many sites and services, like Reddit and Ring, do continue to experience major issues.

One of the worst Reddit outages for a while

So, what's the state of play in The Great AWS Outage of 2025?

While many services appear to be recovering, with Downdetector graphs moving in the right direction (including Snapchat, Ring and AWS itself), Reddit is bucking the trend by continuing to spike upwards.

The homepage is now completely down for me in the web browsers (showing a "too many requests" error) and the mobile app similarly borked showing a "your request has been rate limited".

A Reddit post on X says "we're experiencing an elevated level of errors and are currently looking into the issue". There's no comment on a cause, but it must be AWS-related surely...

Duolingo streaks are at risk

Among the apps hit by the AWS outage is Duolingo, and Senior Staff Writer Hamish Hector is worried this outage could end his longrunning streak if it goes on for too long.

The slight silver lining is he can continue his lessons with offline mode, and if the outage does end soon his offline learning should count towards his once-a-day target to keep growing his lessons counter.

With possible causes being investigated, it sounds like the outage might not last too much longer – and unlike Reddit, Duolingo's outage graph is fortunately now trending in the right direction on Downdetector...

Reddit is behaving very strangely

Reddit is turning into one of the major casualties of the big AWS outage – not only is the website down, the app is also doing some very strange things (in between not working for us at all).

TechRadar Managing Editor Matt Bolton says the most unusual part is that that it keeps popping up messages saying it’s rate-limiting him for increasingly long periods. Rate-limiting is something services do if they think they're being DDoS attacked – they see an abnormally high number of requests coming from one device or IP address, so they create a big delay in how often that device is allowed to access their servers.

We're guessing this means the Reddit app is struggling to connect to the service due to the outage, and is making lots of calls to the service in an attempts to fix it, and Reddit is viewing its own app as malicious actor. That would also explain why the app is struggling to find subreddits like Sonos (above).

Still, white the homepage is down for us, we have been able to get to posts by Googling a term with Reddit results, which at least means the website is still working behind the error messages...

An update from AWS

There's been a slightly less confident-sounding update from the AWS dashboard on today's outage.

At 4.08am PDT / 7.08am ET / 12.08pm BST, a new post says "we are continuing to work towards full recovery for EC2 launch errors, which may manifest as an Insufficient Capacity Error". It adds that "additionally, we continue to work toward mitigation for elevated polling delays for Lambda".

EC2 is short for Elastic Compute Cloud, which provides virtual servers (otherwise known as 'instances') in the cloud for running apps and hosting data. That'll explain why so many apps, like Snapchat, are continuing to report issues. Similarly, Lambda hosts a service's source code, only running it when there's a request made for it.

In short, we can expect the impact of this to run for a little while longer...

All is well again – Reddit is back

It's been a hard enough morning for us all without Reddit also going down, but fortunately the self-style "heart of the internet" appears to be back to full health.

It's now working for us in web browsers and the app has spring back into life. This is also reflected on Downdetector where reports have dropped to well under 1,000 in the US and UK, from a peak of 12,000 in the US at 6.12am ET / 11.12am BST (a time which will henceforth be marked with a minute's silence).

The Reddit Status account on X (below) has also said that "a fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results". Now we just need engineers to fix the likes of Ring, which is spiking again – alongside (gasp) the Starbucks app...

Ring problems are spiking again

Now that Reddit is fixed, Ring appears to have taken the baton and started spiking again on Downdetector – it's now at almost 4,000 reports in the US and 2,600 in the UK, one of its biggest outages this year.

There's been no official response or update from Ring on social media, but it's probably fair to say the Amazon-owned security company has caught the same AWS flu as dozens of other services today.

The app still isn't working for us, showing a "connection error" with a message saying it "couldn't load our locations". That's a problem for the many who now rely on Ring doorbells and security cameras for safety. AWS, meanwhile, says it's continuing "to work to fully restore" the services that much of the internet relies on...

Snapchat is still struggling

Snapchat has been, in pure numbers on Downdetector, one of the worst hit by today's big AWS outage. At 3.44am ET / 8.44am BST, it hit over 22,000 reports in the US on Downdetector (and over 7,000 reports in the UK).

Thousands of users were hit by the error message "Due to repeated failed attempts or other unusual activity, your access to Snapchat is temporarily disabled. Please try again.”

While it's now working fine for some of us on TechRadar, others are reporting that they can't even log into the app. There also appears to have been another spike in problems according to Downdetector (below).

It's now back up to over 8,000 reports in the US, suggesting the issues could run for a little while yet. There's been no official comment from Snapchat, but I'll update this liveblog as soon as there is.

Ouch – more than 1,000 companies hit today

Time for a little context on the enormous scale of today's AWS outage. Downdetector has told the BBC that the total number of reports on issues has risen to over 6.5 million, with more than 1,000 companies hit. That will have some serious financial repercussions.

In the UK, where reports have been particularly high due to timezones, the site has apparently received over 800,000 reports, which is five times the number it usually sees on the average weekday.

In terms of scale, the closest thing I can remember to this AWS earthquake is the great Crowdstrike outage of 2024, which was estimated to have caused upwards of $5 billion in damages. Let's hope those AWS engineers can work through that backlog of issues sharpish...

Chime and Starbucks on the rise

Two services that have gone a little under the radar during today's AWS outage, but are now spiking considerably, are Chime and Starbucks.

The good news if you use Chime's mobile banking is that it's now marked as "all systems operational" on its status page, despite previously reporting a "third party outage". The dashboard now says, "this incident has been resolved", so that Downdetector graph should (in theory) start coming down soon.

Equally serious for coffee lovers, though, is that the Starbucks app has also been, shall we say, burnt by today's AWS issues. Right now on Downdetector, over 1,500 people are reporting that they can't use the app to pre-order their drinks or get reward points – and that's something we've also discovered (below).

For a Monday morning, that's incredibly harsh news – but that Downdetector graph is now at least moving in the right direction...

Wordle has log-in issues

We may have spoken too soon about Wordle being fixed earlier – some fresh issues with the New York Times' gaming site are causing problems for some, and those are being reflected on Downdetector.

As some users (below) have reported, logins for NYT Games appear to be impacted – and that's backed up on Downdetector, where 73% of the reported issues are about logins.

There's been no official update from the New York Times yet, but those with lengthy streaks to protect will be hoping it gets fixed soon.

AWS is making slow progress

The latest update from the AWS dashboard is that the engineers have "applied multiple mitigations across multiple Availability Zones (AZs) in US-EAST-1", which is the region hit by the problems.

While that sounds good, the update adds that AWS is "still experiencing elevated errors for new EC2 instance launches" and that it is "rate limiting new instance launches to aid recovery".

In other words, the 'instances' (or virtual servers) that have been spun up to replace the problematic ones are still hitting problems, so Amazon is throttling them to prevent its platform from being overwhelmed.

We'll have to see what impact this has, but it's likely to mean further issues for many apps and websites that rely on AWS – and as we've seen today, there's a lot of those. AWS says it'll provide another update at 7.30am PDT / 10.30am ET / 3.30pm BST.

How rare is today's outage?

While the scale of today's AWS-related issues are unusual, with over 1,000 businesses hit by the knock-on effects, it certainly isn't unprecedented.

Steve Sandford (Partner – Digital Forensics and Incident Response at data protection consultants CyXcel), told us: "While AWS outages are relatively rare, they are not unprecedented. Historical data shows that major outages occur several times a year, often concentrated in high-traffic regions like US-EAST-1".

"There is no clear evidence that the frequency is increasing, but the impact is growing due to the expanding reliance on cloud infrastructure. This vulnerability is compounded by the fact that the cloud market is dominated by a select few players – with AWS and Microsoft Azure commanding the largest share across the world outside China," he added.

Questions about this over-reliance on a few players will be asked after today, but easy answers won't be forthcoming – after all, only a handful of companies can provide this infrastructure on this kind of global scale.

Tidal is back – or is it?

Tidal appeared to be back in business earlier, but we're now seeing another big spike in issues.

Many on social media are reporting problems with the app, and that's been reflected on Downdetector. Over 1,000 people in the US are saying they have streaming and login issues with the Spotify rival, which is bad news for those who were looking for a nice soundtrack to get them through this very turbulent Monday.

This could be related to a rather worrying spike for Amazon Web Services on Downdetector, which has been joined by an update about "significant API errors" on the AWS dashboard.

Now Venmo is down

It's only been a few days since Venmo and Paypal were both down in a fairly sizable outage, and now the former is again seeing a huge spike on Downdetector – presumably again due to the AWS outage.

At the time of writing, over 5,700 people have reported problems with the payment platform on Downdetector. A significant number (42%) are saying they can't log into the app, while 52% have reported app problems in general.

The Venmo Support account on X is responding to users having issues, but is simply asking them to contact the support team on the Venmo site. Let's hope this one is resolved as quickly as the outage on October 16, which only lasted a couple of hours...

This doesn't look good...

After some promising updates earlier, it seems that Amazon Web Services has taken a turn for the worse – and that's continuing to cause knock-on effects for several services, with Venmo and Pinterest the latest to join the party.

As you can see above, reports of AWS issues are spiking again on Downdetector – in fact, those numbers are now higher than the peak earlier today at 3.52am ET / 8.52am BST. At the time of writing, the number of reports stands at over 6,700 in the US, a long way above its typical weekday baseline.

Those issues are hinted at in a number of updates on the AWS dashboard. The latest one, at 8.43am PDT / 11.43am ET / 4.43am BST, says "we have narrowed down the source of the network connectivity issues that impacted AWS Services. The root cause is an underlying internal subystem responsible for monitoring the health of our network load balancers. We are throttling requests for new EC2 instance launches to aid recovery and actively working on mitigations".

While "narrowed down" is promising language, the throttling of requests for new EC2 instances (in other words, new virtual servers to to take the place of troubled ones) probably explains the rise in issues we're seeing on AWS, and anything that uses its cloud computing services. Which, as we've seen today, is much of the internet...

Pinterest is completely down

It's been an apocalyptic day on the internet – just as one app or service seemingly recovers from the AWS flu, another one goes down to replace it.

This time's Pinterest, which is completely down right now – go to the homepage and you'll be greeted by an error message reading "upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. reset reason: overflow". Not quite as appealing as it's usual homepage.

Strangely, the Pinterest Status dashboard hasn't got the memo, and is currently not reporting any issues. Either a quick recovery is coming, or that will change very soon...

Venmo, Alexa and Reddit are now spiking

In today's not particularly fun merry-go-round of AWS-related outages, the latest spikes in the US are with Venmo, Reddit, Alexa and Pinterest – with Snapchat rumbling away in the background, as it has been for over nine hours now.

The grid above from Downdetector shows you the reason why. In between all of those services, AWS (Amazon Web Services) is spiking higher than at any point in the day so far. It's the foundation for all of those services and countless others – so when it catches a cold, much of the internet sneezes.

It looked like Reddit had largely recovered earlier and both the homepage and app are working okay for us. But the Reddit Status pageis still showing "elevated errors" and over 4,000 people are now reporting problems with the app (56% of reports) and website (33% of people).

Strap in, folks – this one is going to run a while yet...

Students and schools have been hit, too

While today's AWS nightmare has largely been an inconvenience for many, it's had more serious impacts elsewhere – notably on businesses, but also schools and students.

Many college and K-12 students use Canvas by Instructure(above) to access their course materials and assignments, but the learning platform has been seriously hit by the AWS outage – as you can see below at its status page.

The Canvas outage first spiked at around 2.30am ET / 7.30am BST, before hitting a more sustained peak in reports at 10am ET / 3pm BST. TechRadar staff know students affected by the issues, which are continuing to be reported by thousands on Downdetector.

At 12.31pm ET / 5.31pm BST, Canvas engineers said they were "still working to resolve the ongoing outage affecting Canvas, Mastery Connect, and other Instructure products", though there's currently no estimated time for the fix.

Amazon.com is now a photo of a dog

Amazon's own store hasn't escaped from The Great AWS Outage of 2025, of course – and a big spike in reports on Downdetector shows that the shopping giant is now one of the worst hit by the problems.

Over on Downdetector, the reports are currently at over 12,000 in the SS – not far off its earlier peak at 3.50am ET / 8.50am BST. The outages are intermittent, but are but still pretty serious and also affecting Alexa.

On the plus side, Amazon.com is showing many people a photo of various dogs, including Hunter (above), on its "something went wrong" error page. While dog photos are always welcome in any crisis, many shoppers would likely still prefer the option on continuing with their impulse buys...

How much is this costing?

It's hard to comprehend exactly how much money an outage like today's can cost global businesses, but Tenscope has had a crack at putting it into hard numbers.

The headline guesstimate is that $75 million per hour is being lost every hour that major websites remain offline, with Amazon accounting for much (around $72 million) of those losses. That will particularly be the case right now, with reports of issues with Amazon.com spiking.

The analysis goes on to break down much it might be costing for each of the major sites hit today:

• Amazon: $72,831,050 per hour 
• Snapchat: $611,986 per hour 
• Zoom: $532,580 per hour 
• Roblox: $411,187 per hour 
• Fortnite: $399,543 per hour 
• Canva: $342,466 per hour 
• Slack: $194,064 per hour 
• Reddit: $148,402 per hour

Naturally, insurance will likely kick in for many cases – but, as always, that isn't always straightforward.

Ryan Griffin, US cyber practice leader at McGill and Partners told us: "For major businesses, hours of cloud downtime translate to millions in lost productivity and revenue. Yet many policies don’t trigger unless an outage lasts eight hours or more," he said.

"We’re seeing a gap between operational exposure and insurance response and it’s the same pattern that emerged after CrowdStrike. The market is experimenting with parametric options, but adoption remains low," he added.

AWS issues have hit a new peak

Earlier today, it looked like the AWS issues had hit their peak when a post on its status dashboard said the "underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated and most AWS Service operations are succeeding normally now".

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Amazon hasn't yet revealed a full cause of the issues, though it has released a fairly vague statement saying that "some customers still continue to experience increased error rates with AWS services".

That's a slight understatement, looking at Downdetector. With over 9,300 reports in the US at the time of writing, the ripples are going to be felt for many hours yet. Still, at least Wordle's back...

A fix on the horizon?

The Amazon Web Services dashboard isn't exactly written for the layman, but we've at least got another promising-sounding update.

At 10.38am PT / 1.38pm ET / 6.38pm BST, a new post stated that "our mitigations to resolve launch failures for new EC2 instances are progressing and the internal subsystems of EC2 are now showing early signs of recovering in a few Availability Zones (AZs) in the US-EAST-1 Region".

Translation: AWS servers are now slightly less broken and there are some positive signs inside the epicenter of today's internet earthquake, the US-EAST-1 Region. The post goes on to say that AWS is applying fixes to the rest of the data centers, after which "we expect launch errors and network connectivity issues to subside".

There's no estimate for a timescale, but we might just have a light at the end of this very long tunnel...

Will there be compensation?

Today's AWS outage has hit over 1,000 businesses – and the impacts are going to be felt for days, even if it does look like a recovery is (slowly) materializing.

So will those businesses get fully compensated? Legal experts aren't so sure. Ryan Gracey, technology lawyer and partner at law firm Gordons, told us: “AWS customers typically operate under standardized service level agreements, which define uptime commitments and remedies for service failures like today’s outage. While AWS offers service credits for downtime, these are often nominal and do not compensate for losses such as reputational harm or lost revenue. Ultimately, customers will be left with limited recourse," he said.

Commenting on the UK impact, Henna Elahi (Senior Associate at Grosvenor Law) agreed that getting compensation will be complex, particularly when it comes to impacts like reputational damage. "The impacts on Lloyds Bank, for example, could have very serious implications for the end user. Key payments and transfers that are being made may fail and this could lead to far reaching issues for a user such as causing breaches of contracts, failure to complete purchases and failure to provide security information," she said.

"This may very well lead to customer complaints and attempts to recover any loss caused by the outage from the business," she added.

A quiet Monday for Hinge fans

Dozens of apps and websites have been hit by today's AWS nightmare – you can read full list here – but the latest to adds its name to that list is Hinge.

Yes, it's going to be a very quiet day on the popular dating app, if more people get the error message above. Right now on Downdetector, over 600 people are reporting issues with the app in the US, with over 350 people in the UK also unable start matching.

Still, at least you can blame Amazon Web Services for the tumbleweed this time rather than worrying about your profile...

Reddit users know how this dog feels

Reddit is no longer having as many problems as during its peak earlier today, but thousands are still reporting buggy behavior in the app on Downdetector – and we're finding it to be temperamental, too.

While the app works fine sometimes, at others it won’t reload fresh stories – and pelts us with the "sorry, please try again later" error message above. Fittingly, on this occasion, it also coincided with a photo of a very sad dog.

As you can see below, Reddit is aware that it isn't yet fully fixed, with its status dashboard reporting "elevated errors", despite a fix being rolled out earlier. So we can expect to see more error messages (and sad dogs) on Reddit for a few more hours at least...

Latest update from Amazon Web Services dashboard

Hi everyone, Marcus Mears III (TechRadar's Computing Reviews and Buying Guides Editor) here to keep coverage rolling on the AWS outage that continues to impact countless users.

Now, a new update from the Amazon Web Services dashboard about 15 minutes ago states: "We continue to observe recovery across all AWS services, and instance launches are succeeding across multiple Availability Zones in the US-EAST-1 Regions. For Lambda, customers may face intermittent function errors for functions making network requests to other services or systems as we work to address residual network connectivity issues. To recover Lambda’s invocation errors, we slowed down the rate of SQS polling via Lambda Event Source Mappings. We are now increasing the rate of SQS polling as we experience more successful invocations and reduced function errors. We will provide another update by 1:00 PM PDT."

In other words, the situation is improving but some of us will still be affected by bogged down performance and connection issues at this time. Another update is expected in under an hour from now - we'll keep you posted.

Reports on DownDetector appear to be dropping steadily from the highest peak of 9,666 at 1:15PM EST, and the severity tag on the AWS dashboard now shows "Impacted" rather than "Degraded" with 30 AWS services fully resolved and 107 still impacted.

Many services appear fully restored, others are still down

Important players like Snapchat, Amazon, Reddit, and Netflix appear to be working properly at this time, though some users may still be partially affected on a few outliers like Ring, and Ancestry.com is still fully unavailable at this time.

We're expecting another AWS service health update shortly - hopefully we see a full restoration sooner rather than later.

Amazon's own site is still showing a banner at the top of the page that reads:

"We're sorry if you're currently experiencing issues using the Amazon site. We're working to fix this as quickly as possible."

Though all of the typical functionality such as searching, adding to cart, checking out, and video previews all seem to be working properly for me at this time. My colleague Jacob Krol mentioned his Orders page was loading slowly, though this is still an improvement over not loading at all as was the case earlier.

So far, the last update from Amazon on its services reads as follows:

"Service recovery across all AWS services continues to improve. We continue to reduce throttles for new EC2 Instance launches in the US-EAST-1 Region that were put in place to help mitigate impact. Lambda invocation errors have fully recovered and function errors continue to improve. We have scaled up the rate of polling SQS queues via Lambda Event Source Mappings to pre-event levels. We will provide another update by 1:45 PM PDT."

All of which is to say, they're working on it, and things are progressing slowly but surely.

As you can see above, there are still a massive number of reports of service outages across AWS, though the situation is slowly improving.

A new AWS update from Amazon:

"We have continued to reduce throttles for EC2 instance launches in the US-EAST-1 Region and we continue to make progress toward pre-event levels in all Availability Zones (AZs). AWS services such as ECS and Glue, which rely on EC2 instance launches will recover as the successful instance launch rate improves. We see full recovery for Lambda invocations and are working through the backlog of queued events which we expect to be full processed in approximately in the next two hours. We will provide another update by 2:30 PM PDT."

To see the extent of the problem with the AWS outtage, you only need to look at the Down Detector reports for Netflix, which hosts a good bit of its infrastructure on AWS, and it's down report graph looks nearly identical to that of AWS itself.

Are things getting better? For most site, it seems the Amazon Web Services issues are being resolved, but a few standouts remain troubled. Netflix users are still reporting massive outages, and the situation is improving slowly. We're also seeing reports from Twitch users that the streaming service is having problems, and those could also be related to AWS woes (isn't everything?).

The AWS outage is still ongoing, though the number of problems being reported are a small fraction of what they were at the peak this afternoon. The Down Detector site lists about 10% of the complaints currently that we saw at noon here on the East Coast of the US.

Some networks relying on AWS services still seem impacted, including Netflix, the Playstation Network, and Twitch. Other services, like the Ring video doorbells and Venmo's payment system, seem to have mostly recovered.

Amazon has not commented further on the AWS outage today on its company newsroom site, so we are still unsure exactly what happened or how many sites were impacted globally. Our friends at El Reg speculate that this may have been an ongoing result of Amazon's brain drain problems, and this may not be the last AWS outage we see in the near future.

Welcome to the morning after

Good morning, and welcome to the aftermath of the biggest internet outage since a faulty Crowdstrike update caused a global IT meltdown in 2024.

The good news is that AWS says the problems that caused yesterday's tech nightmare have now been fixed. A post on the AWS dashboard yesterday at 3.53pm PDT / 6.53pm ET / 11.53pm BST said that "all AWS returned to normal operations".

Looking at Downdetector, that does indeed seem to be the case for most apps and services, with little sign of huge spikes that made yesterday feel like an internet apocalypse.

I'll be monitoring for aftershocks and will update this liveblog with any updates, but let's keep our fingers crossed that it's a comparatively quiet Tuesday following a rather black Monday for many.

An AWS hangover or fresh problems?

After yesterday's day of AWS-related stress, the graph above isn't really what we want to see – reported problems on Downdetector for Amazon Web Services have risen again, up to over 1,400 reports in the US.

That's some way short of yesterday's peak of 9,600 outage reports, but still a cause for mild concern. Right now, there doesn't seem to be any major knock-on effects – and the AWS dashboard isn't showing any new incidents or statements.

We'll be keeping an eye on this, but at the moment there's no real cause for alarm or concern.

The strangest moments of the AWS outage

When the internet breaks like it did during this week's big AWS outage, strange things can sometimes happen.

Fortunately, everything seems to be running smoothly again, but on Monday chaos ensued with some odd and sometimes amusing results. We've rounded those up in our guide to the 9 weirdest things that happened during Amazon's huge AWS outage.

Yes, smart beds got stuck in an upright position, Slack users were trapped in endless huddles, and the Premier League even lost its virtual referees – here's what happens when much of the internet stops working and the digital world turns into jelly.

• Read more: The 9 weirdest things that happened during Amazon's huge AWS outage

AWS reveals more about what went wrong

We're officially into the 'aftermath' and post-match analysis phase of the AWS outage, and more details are emerging about exactly what went wrong.

“After resolving the DynamoDB DNS issue, services began recovering but we had a subsequent impairment in the internal subsystem of EC2 that is responsible for launching EC2 instances due to its dependency on DynamoDB,” Amazon’s status page later confirmed (via The Register).

In other words, not only did a DNS issue stop services from reaching a key AWS database, an internal EC2 (or Elastic Cloud Compute) subsystem also failed due to its dependency on that serverless resource.

With so many services dependent on AWS, this was something of a perfect storm. “When more than half of the Fortune 500 depend on the same provider, a single glitch can echo through the economy,” DesignRush’s Anonta Khan noted.

• Read more: AWS reveals more on just what went wrong in major outage

Amazon showcased all kinds of new and upgraded hardware at its fall event this year, but the common theme running through almost every reveal was the enhancement and integration of AI, namely Amazon's new Alexa+ assistant. Though AI permeated the whole event, here are five of the most striking AI features discussed that might entice you to buy Amazon's new lineup.

New Echos, new Alexa+

The centerpiece of Alexa+ and Amazon's AI upgrade is the new Echo Dot Max and Echo Studio smart speakers, as well as the Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 11 smart displays. The Echos are built to run Alexa+, with enough power to even handle some tasks without relying on the cloud.

It's more than just raw power. The new Echos can track conversations more deeply, remember past interactions, and sustain a more natural back‑and‑forth. You won’t feel like the AI rebooted its brain each morning. Instead, the assistant can carry threads forward and act from a more informed vantage. Alexa+ is built into the devices, too; no setup gymnastics are needed.

TV brains

Alexa+ is also coming to Fire TV, making the smart TVs a lot more like their smaller Echo Show cousins. The AI assistant adapts to more of an entertainment focus, though. The scene search feature lets viewers ask Alexa+ to skip to specific moments in a movie or show with vague references like "the big fight" or "the dating montage" without navigating manually. The Fire TVs can also use Alexa+ to follow conversations, with natural follow-ups better when asking about performers or trivia related to what's on-screen. The new AI features will be available with the new Fire TV Stick 4K Select and Fire TV Omni QLED displays, as well as for users enrolled in Alexa+ early access.

Kindle's AI secretary

The new Kindle Scribe lineup comes with its own set of new AI tools for both reading and writing on the device. The AI can read handwriting without you needing to convert it to a digital format. The device translates the handwriting into text before encrypting and processing the notes. That means you can search across any handwritten notes. For instance, you might ask the Kindle, “Where did I mention my spouse in my notes?” and see the relevant notebook entries appear.

The Kindle can also summarize your handwritten notes, find important themes, and compare across different categories. And if you need more from the notes, you can send them to Alexa+ as the basis for additional requests.

Doorbell chats

Amazon is unsurprisingly weaving Alexa+ into its other product lines, including Ring and Blink. In particular, Ring doorbells are adding the Alexa+ Greetings feature, which will allow the AI to speak directly to visitors at the door, explaining where to leave packages and even deciding if the solicitor at the door warrants letting the homeowner know about the visit. The Familiar Faces feature uses AI facial recognition to identify people you know, so your friends aren't dismissed with the Amway salesman.

And for pet owners, the new Search Party feature uses AI and the neighborhood to find lost pets. If a dog goes missing and you report it in the Ring app, participating neighborhood cameras will analyze footage with AI-based object recognition to see if the dog has walked by and report possible sightings.

Agent Alexa+

This range of services points to how Amazon is pushing Alexa+ to act more proactively and go beyond a single action to complete a larger goal. This includes capabilities such as booking appointments, organizing calendars for multiple people, and even following up on uncertain plans.

Amazon suggests you could ask Alexa+ to "find a restaurant for dinner Friday near me, make a reservation, and schedule a ride,” and have the AI check your availability and confirm details through connected apps. The AI can personalize the process too, using past interactions, preferences, and ongoing tasks when making decisions.

The more powerful hardware makes these upgrades possible and makes Amazon’s push to unify its ecosystem under Alexa+ entirely feasible. But Alexa+ isn't operating in a vacuum. The new devices and AI features face formidable AI competition from Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Meta, and others. Keeping "Alexa" the default term for a smart home AI is far from assured, no matter how clever the Echo gets at running your life.

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There was a time when you bought a gadget with a laundry list of features and capabilities, and they were available for the lifespan of that product. Today, you buy a tech gadget with the potential to do many things, but sometimes only if you pay an additional recurring fee on top of the original price.

Welcome to Technology Subscription Culture.

In this new world, we pay annuties for services that are usually tied to our favorite devices. The best iPhones, for instance, are made more useful through access to a growing number of Apple Services, including Music, Fitness+, News, and Apple TV+. While the prices for these services are on the rise, I can more or less get behind this strategy because the iPhone is perfectly fine without access to any of them. You can, for instance, always pay someone else (hey, Spotify) for access to their music library, or a different media company for access to its streaming content.

Many of our wearables, like my Oura ring will only provide so much information without a subscription. At least Oura does a decent job of delivering a lot of health and fitness tracking for free, but the personalization and analysis you may want are hidden behind a $5.99 a month fee.

There is, however, another class of subscriptions where you only get the full benefit of the product if you pay for another related but not necessarily desired service.

I have a very recent example.

During Amazon's huge devices event on September 30, 2025, the company introduced roughly a dozen new products across multiple brands. Included among them was Blink, which sells affordable smart home security cameras and services. It also introduced one of the day's most interesting and coolest products.

Blink Arc is a home security camera mount that takes two $49 Blink Mini 2K wired cameras and, working in concert with Blink's app, delivers a high-resolution, seamless, 180-degree panorama view of, say, your backyard. The entire rig – two cameras and the mount– costs just $99.

A true bargain.

The frustrating caveat is that the cameras will not deliver that panorama view unless you are paying $11.99 a month for Blink's Subscription Plus Plan.

Without that plan, you just get the two separately stored video feeds, and I guess you can cross your eyes a bit to blend them into one.

In all fairness to Blink, the subscription strategy is one shared by most other home security cam companies, including its Amazon cousin, Ring.

I have some Ring cameras at home and, while I get the regular Ring neighborhood alerts about things like lost dogs and suspicious characters, I have zero cloud storage for my porch camera video because I'm not paying $19.99 a month for video recording.

Want smarter? Pay more

Still, it irks me that the Blink Arc feature Amazon touted during this big product event is nothing but a come-on to sell more subscriptions. I mean, what's the point of buying the Arc if it doesn't, by default, deliver that combined panoramic video?

My frustration with subscription culture extends beyond Blink and other security cam recording plans.

These days, every tech company has its hands in my pockets long after I've paid for their hardware. I have cloud storage accounts with Microsoft, Apple, and Google. In the case of Apple, I long ago had to upgrade to a 2TB drive and the costs associated with it. In the case of Google, the 200GB plan I have is fitting me like a very tight pair of pants. The account fills up almost daily, and Google reaches out, offering the $19.99 monthly 2TB plan.

In the world of AI, the best intelligent features are almost invariably hidden behind subscription plans.

Google recently announced that Gemini will be in virtually all of its new home devices, and while you will get the conversational aspects for free, you won't get things like video event descriptions and daily summaries unless you pay for a premium Gemini plan.

Amazon used to sell Echos to non-Prime members and still give them access to Alexa. Alexa+ is far more powerful and intelligent. It will require a Prime Membership or a seperate plan just for Alexa+. This means that if you covet, for example, one of these new Amazon Echo Dot Max speakers, be prepared to also adopt an additional monthly Prime access fee.

Subscription culture sometimes means that what you paid for and were receiving before might not remain in the future.

The streaming mess

I'm an Amazon Prime member, and I used to enjoy ad-free Prime Video content. Then Amazon changed the rules and added commercials. Now my The Boys viewing is far less enjoyable – not to mention that it takes a lot longer to get through an episode.

Virtually all streaming subscription-based services are doing the same thing, taking the basic plan and adding in ads, even if that wasn't part of the service people originally selected.

The reasons for these changes are obvious: hardware is a one-time purchase. Even with planned obsolescence, these products can last for years. Services promise monthly revenue and leave open the possibility of future rate hikes.

In such circumstances, companies often raise prices with little notice and, seemingly, no remorse. They know they have you. Look at Netflix. Look at Apple TV+. Look at Disney+. Each has consistently raised prices and, as far as I can tell, none are suffering significant subscriber losses. Our desire to enjoy their admittedly excellent content is too strong.

So subscription culture prevails.

However, in the case of Blink Arc, we see, perhaps, the start of a more worrisome trend, one where an awesome new feature is teased and then it's quietly revealed that there's an admission fee to board that particular ride, and it might be one they ask you to pay almost every time the ride starts spinning.

Yep, subscription culture makes my head spin.

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• Amazon has unveiled four brand new Ring cameras, including the Outdoor Cam Pro, Spotlight Cam Pro, Wired Doorbell Pro, and Floodlight Cam Pro
• One of the biggest upgrades to the new Ring cameras is its retinal 4K vision, which offers up to x10 zoom
• Additionally, the new Ring 4K range has also got new Alexa+ smarts, which includes Familiar Faces and a clever Search Party feature for lost pets

Amazon’s huge hardware event has kicked off, and we’re covering all of the company’s exciting new announcements in our live blog, and first on Amazon’s list is its brand range of Ring smart home products – welcome the new signature line of Retinal 4K smart home cameras.

Starting with the new Ring video doorbell, which is the company’s first since 2023, Amazon’s smart home security range has received a handful of much-needed upgrades, most notably its 4K vision which is a first for Ring.

“Ring Retinal 4K is powering our most advanced lineup yet with Wired Doorbell Pro, Spotlight Cam Pro, Floodlight Cam Pro, and Outdoor Cam Pro. Plus, for those who want Power over Ethernet devices, we are also introducing Spotlight Cam Pro POE, Outdoor Cam Pro POE, and Wired Doorbell Elite”, shares Amazon. But behold, there’s more.

As well as 4K vision, Amazon is improving Ring’s capabilities with the addition of AI smarts to reveal the tiniest of details. This includes a new x10 zoom and improved low-light performance, allowing you to clearly view your surroundings in poor conditions. However, it wouldn’t be an Amazon launch without mention of Alexa+, and you’re in luck.

Ring gets Alexa+ smarts

“Sharper vision is only the beginning”, Amazon says, and the other side of Ring’s new functions can all be attributed to Alexa+, starting with Alexa+ greetings.

Essentially, Alexa+ can act on your behalf as a doorbell assistant. For example, if someone arrives at your door, Alexa+ can talk to them and ask their reasons for visiting, and will keep you informed as the interaction progresses. It’ll even be able to assist with deliveries and provide instructions for visitors.

Another smart function coming to the new Ring 4K line is Familiar Faces, a feature that can identify familiar visitors and thus reduce notifications that are triggered by familiar people. Amazon delves into the feature even more:

'The feature enriches Ring notifications, video events, and timeline with personalized context of who is detected, eliminating guesswork and making it effortless to find and review important moments involving specific familiar people across the Ring App experience'.

Search Party joins Ring’s AI circle

Just when we thought that was it, Amazon hits us with another new AI feature – here’s Search Party.

This new addition to the Ring ecosystem aims to help reunite lost pets with their families following Amazon’s report that over a million posts about lost or found pets were shared to the Ring Neighbours app last year. It’s about to get even smarter.

When you report a missing pet in the Ring app, a Search Party will start with those nearby who have Ring outdoor cameras. From there, the new Ring cameras will use AI to identify possible matches, and notify camera owners if it detects the missing pet may be near one of your devices. A picture of the missing pet will then be sent to your Ring app as well as any relevant footage, which you can then report to your neighbors.

The first Philips Hue video doorbell is here, but how does it compare to the best-selling Ring Video Doorbells, and which one should you screw onto your wall?

The Philips Hue Secure Video Doorbell is wired rather than battery-operated, so you can't simply stick it on your wall. So, for the purposes of this article, I'll be comparing it to the Ring Video Doorbell Wired and Video Doorbell Wired Pro.

When it comes to camera quality, Philips Hue definitely has the edge. Its doorbell records at 2K and has a 180-degree field of view horizontally and vertically, which is superior to both of Ring's wired offerings.

The Philips Hue doorbell is good value, too (which may be surprising considering its reputation for premium pricing). The Hue Secure doorbell sits in between the two wired Ring doorbells in terms of price, despite having a better camera than either.

If you opt for the Philips Hue doorbell, you'll be able to review videos from the last 24 hours for free. If you choose a Ring doorbell, your videos aren't stored at all unless you pay for at least a basic subscription plan. If you skip the paid plan, you can only watch live footage from your doorbell.

However, Ring's premium tiers can store your footage for much longer than Philips Hue Secure, and offer extra security features such as 24/7 video recording, and calls to your phone when someone presses the doorbell (not just an app alert).

Of course, one of the main attractions of the Philips Hue doorbell is that it's controlled through the same app as any Hue lights you own, making it easy to create automations that will activate your lights if motion is detected, for example. You can create similar automations with a Ring doorbell, but it's not quite so straightforward.

Want to know more? Read on for the full lowdown on both brands' doorbells so you can make an informed choice between the two. I'll also be testing the Philips Hue Secure Video Doorbell very soon to see whether it can earn a place in my roundup of the best video doorbells.

Hardware specifications

• Philips Hue doorbell is wired, with a 2K camera and 180-degree field of view
• Neither of Ring's wired doorbells can match those camera specs
• Both brands offer plug-in chimes to provide audible alerts in your home

There is only one Philips Hue Secure Video Doorbell at the time of writing. It's a wired doorbell with a 2K resolution, infra-red night vision, and a 180-degree field of view. There's an optional plug-in chime that lets you hear callers from elsewhere in your home.

Ring currently sells two wired video doorbells, but they both have lower-spec cameras than the Philips Hue Secure doorbell.

The Ring Video Doorbell Wired has a 1080p resolution, and a narrower field of view (155 degrees horizontal, 90 degrees vertical). It has infra-red night vision, and can be paired with an optional chime.

The next model up, the Ring Video Doorbell Wired Pro, also has lower resolution than the Hue doorbell (1536p) and a smaller field of view (150 degrees horizontal and vertical). It does, however, offer 3D motion detection, and can estimate distance so it can give a bird's-eye view and alert you when someone has stepped on your property.

• Winner: Philips Hue

Prices

• The Philips Hue Secure Video Doorbell costs more than the Ring Video Doorbell Wired but less than the Ring Video Doorbell Wired Pro
• The Philips Hue and Ring chimes cost about the same
• The Philips Hue doorbell isn't yet available in Australia

The Philips Hue Secure Video Doorbell will launch in the US and UK in October 2025, though we don't yet have an exact date. The doorbell will cost $169.99 / £139.99, and if you want the additional chime – so you can hear callers from anywhere in your home – this will be an additional $59.99 / £49.99. No prices or release dates have been announced for Australia yet.

Ring's video doorbells are available globally, including the US, UK, and Australia. The Ring Video Doorbell Wired is $49.99 / £49.99 / AU$89, while the Ring Video Doorbell Wired Pro is $229.99 / £199.99 / AU$349.

Ring also sells a separate Chime, which has a list price of £29.99 / $34.99 / AU$59.

• Winner: Philips Hue

Subscriptions

• No paid subscription is necessary for Philips Hue or Ring doorbells
• Free Philips Hue Secure plans offer 24 hours of free video storage
• Ring Home subscribers get more advanced security features

You can use the Philips Hue Secure Video Doorbell and any Ring Doorbells without paying an additional subscription fee, but you'll get considerably fewer features.

The biggest difference is video storage. If you have a free Philips Hue Secure plan, your video clips will be stored for 24 hours (starting later in 2025). If you don't buy a Ring subscription, your videos won't be stored at all, and you can only watch footage from your doorbell live as it's happening.

Both Philips Hue and Ring offer different subscription plans, with higher tiers offering longer video storage, support for more devices, and extra security features. You'll find a complete comparison of all the plans in the two tables below.

Philips Hue Secure and Ring Home Premium plans aren't available in Australia.

• Winner: tie

Philips Hue Secure Video Doorbell vs Ring Video Doorbell Wired / Wired Pro: early verdict

I can't give a definitive verdict on how good the Philips Hue Secure Video Doorbell is until I've put it through TechRadar's exacting testing process, but the early signs are that it should offer a serious challenge to Ring's dominance of the smart doorbell market.

It has some impressive specs, with far superior cameras that can record in higher resolution and with a wider field of view. It's also cheaper than the Ring Video Doorbell Wired Pro despite that camera advantage, and integrates nicely with Hue's smart-home ecosystem.

Against that, Ring has arguably better subscription options, plus you can opt for the much cheaper (but basic) Video Doorbell Wired if you don't want to spend more than $50/£50 on a doorbell.

I'll be able to say for sure which you should buy once I've finished my review, but either way the Hue looks like being a worthy addition to the smart doorbell market, and that's never a bad thing.

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Whether you want to up your security measures or check your cat hasn’t completed its plans for world domination, the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam can help you keep an eye on the goings-on at home.

Indoor security camera footage comes in useful for all kinds of scenarios. Say one wants to establish precisely who scratched the paintwork after trying to jump through a closed skylight – it’s great for that. Just keep in mind that the audio and visual quality of recordings can vary vastly between security cameras, so it’s important to look for one that offers the best specs within your budget.

In terms of recording quality, videos are satisfyingly clear thanks to the 1080p HD resolution, and visuals play smoothly without any major pixelation or lagging. And, aside from a bit of tinniness, the sound quality is good too; recorded words are easy to distinguish, and I haven’t encountered any issues with the sound not aligning with the video.

The Ring Home app is both responsive in use and in keeping me well-informed with notifications. Privacy and activity zones were easy to set up and shape, as there are six points I could adjust to create each zone. Both features work well, and save me from constant notifications from high-traffic areas in my home.

While it may not be the cheapest on the market, the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam’s features, specs, and app make it worth the $79.99 / £69.99 / AU$129 price tag. Having said that, there are often offers to be found either directly from Ring or Amazon. And, most importantly, as Ring is an Amazon brand, it’s bound to see some decent discounts come Prime Day. Last Cyber Monday, I saw the price drop to just $49.99 / £44.99, so there could be some serious savings to be had this Amazon Prime Day.

It’s worth noting that, while you do still get instant notifications, can access the live feed, and use the two-way talk feature, a subscription is required if you want to review or store footage after an event has occurred – there’s no option for local storage here. For more details about pricing, take a look at our guide to Ring subscriptions, which breaks down what features are available in each of the Ring Home Basic, Standard, and Premium tiers.

I don’t have a Premium subscription, but if I did, I might be able to get to the jist of my kitties' hijinx quicker with access to the Smart Video Search feature, and, at some point, the Video Description feature, too, which at the time of writing this is only available to Ring Premium subscribers in the US and Canada.

While the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam does a good job of capturing cat-based catastrophes, I do really wish that it had motion tracking. This feature isn’t a necessity if the camera has a view of the whole room, but it’d be a very useful addition for situations when this isn’t possible. If motion tracking is a must for you, I’d recommend taking a look at the IMOU Rex 3D instead.

If you’re on a mission to find one of the best home security cams, you should be quite pleased with the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam, thanks to its prompt detection, high-quality footage, and reassuring privacy features. For a more detailed account of what this little security camera can do, have a read through my full Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam review.

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• The Ring app now sends notifications with AI-generated text descriptions
• Each alert tells you what's happening in the video before you watch it
• The feature is rolling out to Ring Premium users in the US and Canada today

If you've got a Ring security camera or doorbell, there's good news - you can now get AI-generated notifications on your phone, describing exactly what's happening before you've watched the video.

Each notification will include a brief snippet of text describing what triggered the motion detection, so you can decide whether it needs your attention or not at a glance before you tap through and open the app.

The notifications are designed to be as succinct as possible, focusing on the person, animal, or object that's moving, and what they're doing.

Video descriptions work with all Ring video doorbells and cameras, and are rolling out to Ring Premium subscribers in the US and Canada from today (international release dates are yet to be announced). For more details about Ring memberships and pricing, take a look at our full guide to Ring subscriptions.

This isn't the first time Ring has used AI to describe what's going on in your video clips. Earlier this year, the company launched Smart Video Search, which lets you use natural language to look for specific events recorded by your doorbell or camera, so you don't have to spend time scrubbing through footage to find a particular moment.

Did you see something?

Ring's Video Descriptions (as the feature is officially known) sound like a welcome addition to the company's best video doorbells and best home security cameras, and I'm looking forward to testing them myself to see how accurate they are.

Back in 2023, my colleague Lance Ulanoff tested a security camera that promised to deliver AI-generated notifications based on analysis of a single frame of video. The Psync Camera Genie S is compact and cute-looking, with features including object-tracking, but its Chat GPT-powered descriptions were often wide of the mark.

During testing, the camera produced a deluge of notifications, which were often comically inaccurate. While it could usually detect people, it would often say they were carrying something that they weren't, and once the camera claimed an entire family was sitting around an empty dining room table. Psync's software also hallucinated a motorcycle visible in a closed shed, and a child playing in a deserted yard.

Two years is a long time in tech, so I'm cautiously optimistic that Ring's smart descriptions will be much more accurate than that.

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Ring is known for making some of the best video doorbells you can buy, and these are an obvious choice if you're looking for a way to check who's at the door, see whether that package you've been waiting for has arrived, or give visitors instructions if they call while you're out.

That's not all, though – your Ring doorbell has a lot more to offer, and you might only be have scratched the surface of what it can do.

Some of your doorbell's features are only available if you're a Ring Home member. For more details, take a look at our complete guide to Ring subscriptions, which includes advice on the three membership tiers and a full list of current prices.

1. Trigger Alexa routines

If you have smart home devices connected to an Amazon Echo smart speaker, or an Echo Show smart display, you can use your Ring doorbell to trigger all kinds of automations. For example, you could set your doorbell to trigger a smart light when someone pushes the button, making it change color or blink to alert you when you don't want any unnecessary noise (if you have a sleeping baby, for example).

Alternatively, you might create an Alexa automation that turns down the volume of your music when someone is at the door so you can hear them more easily through the Ring app, or activate a Ring camera to capture more footage of the caller.

To get started, open the Alexa app on your phone, select 'More'. tap the plus icon in the top right corner, and select 'Routine'. Tap 'Add an event' and choose 'Smart home', then select 'Add a device' and choose your Ring doorbell. Choose the action that will trigger the Alexa routine, then tap 'Next' and tap the plus icon to select which action Alexa should perform.

Curious? Take a look at our guide to the best smart speakers and best smart displays to see which Amazon Echo devices we recommend for each room in your house.

2. Make motion detection work for you

Motion detection is one of your Ring doorbell's best features, but if you don't have a particularly big yard, you might find yourself getting a lot of false positives and unnecessary notifications. You might be tempted to toggle motion alerts off entirely, but if you have a couple of spare minutes, you can take control and make them work for you instead.

If you just want a brief respite, you can pause motion alerts temporarily. Open the Alexa app and create a new routine following the instructions above, but this time select your Echo speaker as the device to trigger the event. Type in a voice command (like 'Alexa, pause motion alerts'), then instruct the app to set your doorbell to 'Do not disturb' mode for a certain period of time.

Alternatively, you can make a custom motion zone, so you're only alerted to movement in a particular area (on your front path and drive, for example). Open the Ring app, select Motion Settings, and select 'Edit motion zones'. You'll see a view from your Ring doorbell, with a blue shape overlaid on top. This is the area which the doorbell will monitor for movement.

To edit it, tap 'Add zone', then drag the blue dots to appear to make your own custom shape. If you want to track movement in more than one area, you can make up to three custom zones. The Motion Settings menu also lets you customize the sensitivity of your doorbell motion detection

3. Optimize battery life

Ring's battery video doorbells are super convenient – just stick them up and they're ready to use – but every now and then you'll need to remove its battery pack and plug it in to recharge. It doesn't take long, but if it's a task you'd rather delay for as long as possible, there are a few tricks you can use to keep it running for longer.

First of all, you can reduce motion detection sensitivity and ensure you've set up motion zones, as described above, to prevent the doorbell capturing footage you don't actually need.

You can also make the battery last longer between charges by reducing your doorbell's video recording length. Open the main menu from the Ring app's dashboard, tap 'Devices' and select the doorbell. Tap 'Device settings' followed by 'Video settings' and select 'Recording length'. The default for battery doorbells is 20 seconds, but you can reduce it to 15 seconds.

Your doorbell will use more power if it doesn't have a reliable connection to your home Wi-Fi network, so you may also want to consider installing a Wi-Fi extender if you find yourself charging the power pack more often than you'd like. Take a look at our roundup of the best Wi-Fi extenders for our top recommendations.

Finally, bear in mind that cold weather makes lithium-ion batteries drain particularly quickly. There's not much you can do about that, but it's worth remembering that you'll need to charge the battery pack more frequently during the winter months.

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• The new Blink Video Doorbell is on sale now for $69.99 (about £50 / AU$110)
• Its features include 150-degree field of view and infrared night vision
• Blink's affordable subscription plans unlock person recognition and alerts

Ring makes some of the best video doorbells around, but if you're looking for one that's completely wireless, then the latest model from Blink might be even better. The company has just released a new version of the Blink Video Doorbell that can run for up to two years without recharging, and includes advanced features like a 150-degree field of view that makes it easy to see callers and packages, plus infrared night vision for peace of mind after dark.

If you have a Blink subscription plan, the Blink Video Doorbell can also differentiate between people, objects, and animals, and send you a notification on your phone when someone arrives at your door.

The extra-long battery life comes courtesy of three AA batteries and the new Blink Sync Module Core – a compact smart home hub that also provides local storage for video clips captured by your Blink doorbell and security cameras.

The Blink Video Doorbell is available now direct from Blink for $69.99 (about £50 / AU$110). That makes it one of the cheapest video doorbells you can buy outright, though you'll need to sign up for a Blink subscription plan to access all of its features.

Blink subscription plans

Blink offers two subscription tiers: Blink Basic and Blink Plus. The Blink Basic plan covers just one device and includes features such as Live View recording, 60-day unlimited video history, video sharing, and person detection.

The Blink Plus plan covers an unlimited number of devices, so it will also cover security cameras like the Blink Outdoor 4 (one of the best home security cameras for guarding your yard). Blink Plus includes everything you get with Blink Basic, as well as the ability to pause movement notifications for up to 24 hours, the option to group multiple clips into a single video, and 10% off Blink products at Amazon.

For more details, check out the full subscription comparison. The table below shows the different prices for both plans in the US, UK, and Australia. Whichever option you choose, you'll find it's significantly cheaper than the equivalent Ring Home subscription.

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Ring Outdoor Camera Plus: two-minute review

Keeping an eye on your property remotely has become an obsession for many of us. No matter where you are in the world you can see exactly who is in your house and who has come to the front door. You can even use your camera to monitor the miserable weather back home while you are abroad enjoying sunshine.

Now owned by retailing behemoth Amazon, Ring was originally set up by US entrepreneur Jamie Siminoff as ‘Doorbot’ in 2013, but has since gone on to become one of the biggest names in the home security industry. As the name suggests, the Outdoor Cameras (previously known as Stick-Up Cameras) are designed for outdoor use, though there is no reason why you couldn’t use it indoors too – it can be just as easily placed on a table or desk as on the wall outside.

The Outdoor Camera Plus is certainly a versatile model with several mounting options, including a wall bracket (with wall plugs) as well as a rechargeable battery pack if a power cable isn't feasible (this wasn’t provided). Plastic covers stop water getting into the USB-C power port and the model is ‘weather-resistant’, not waterproof, so shouldn’t be submerged in water!

As with most home security cameras, set up is straightforward. Simply download the Ring app and scan the QR code with your phone’s camera to add the device to the app (several Ring devices can be viewed within the app, including cameras, video doorbells, chimes and alarms). You will then be taken through a set of voice-based instructions for syncing the camera to your home’s Wi-Fi, naming the device and updating its firmware. Usefully this new model features dual-band support so you can add it to either your 2.4GHz or 5GHz network as well as Amazon Alexa compatibility. For added security, two-factor authentication is also now provided.

When it comes to features, the Ring Outdoor Camera Plus doesn’t disappoint. You can set motion detection zones to avoid the camera capturing footage from, say, the swaying of tree branches. And it’s also possible to set up privacy zones that allow you to block out certain areas of the frame, even in ‘live view’. Instead, all you see on the screen is a black rectangle. It’s an unusual feature but one which is quite useful if you have neighbours concerned your camera can view/capture recordings from their property.

Another unusual feature in the menu is Smart Responses. This enables you to send out a warning message to people to tell them they are being recorded. However, it isn’t live on this device – at least yet. Other more conventional features include motion sensitivity for adjusting the amount of footage you capture (useful if you want to preserve battery life) and motion schedules for setting the times of day you want to record movement.

But that’s not all. For those who subscribe to Ring’s monthly subscription plans, other functions are available too. These include ‘smart alerts’ which filter different types of motion into categories – ie parcel, person and vehicles. Providing you pay for the £15.99 per month Ring Premium service, there’s also an AI-driven smart video search tool that can identify certain objects in your device's recorded motion events.

For example, just enter ‘dog’ into the search bar you can see all the times your dog has been captured by the camera while ‘red top’ will bring up footage of anyone wearing a red top in the recorded events. Particularly useful is that you can log into your Ring account on the web so you can view footage of all your cameras while working on your laptop, something which isn’t possible with more basic models.

Ring Outdoor Camera Plus: price and availability

• Prices start at $69 / £69 / AU$179
• Additional solar panel costs extra
• Launched March 2025

Ring security cameras certainly aren't expensive to buy compared to some of the best home security cameras. At the time of writing, you can pick up the Ring Outdoor Cam Plus for £69 / $69 / $179 (considerably cheaper than the launch price). However, just like printer companies make their money from selling expensive printer cartridges, home security companies make theirs from selling costly subscriptions.

Ring's Home Basic plan is $4.99 / £4.99 / AU$4.95 per month, but if you want all the bells and whistles, such as the Smart Video Search outlined earlier, it will set you back a hefty $19.99 / £15.99 per month (and this top-tier subscription isn't available in Australia).

In my opinion that’s simply far too much money, unless you are using the Ring for professional purposes such as monitoring, say, high street shops (in which case there are more advanced video surveillance systems available). Far better if you need to keep the recordings is to choose a security camera which provides the option of recording footage locally on a USB stick or MicroSD card.

• Value score: 3/5

Ring Outdoor Camera Plus: subscription options

Ring Home Basic:

$4.99 / £4.99 / AU$4.95 per month

$49.99 / £49.99 / AU$49.95 per year

Subscription for a single device. Includes up to 180 days of video event history, person and package alerts, video preview alerts, and 10% off Ring.com purchases.

Ring Home Standard:

$9.99 / £7.99 / AU$14.95 per month

$99.99 / £79.99 / AU$149.95 per year

Includes everything in Basic, plus all devices at one location, doorbell calls, extended live view, alarm cellular backup, and daily event summary.

Ring Premium:

$19.99 / £15.99 per month

$199.99 / £159.99 per year

Not currently available in Australia. Includes everything in Standard, plus 24/7 recording, continuous live view, and smart video search.

Ring Outdoor Camera Plus: design

• Upgraded from Ring Stick Up Camera
• Versatile mounting
• Flexible power options

With the Outdoor Camera Plus, Ring has made a few improvements over its predecessor, the third generation Ring Stick Up Camera (now called the Outdoor Camera). Most notable is its improved design, particularly the versatile mounting options. The Ring Outdoor Cam Plus can be mounted on a desktop/table, on a wall or roof eave using the screws and wall plugs provided. It can be mounted on the ceiling with an additional accessory (not provided as standard) and easily angled for optimum use.

Power is provided via the USB-C connector in the middle of the camera (a power cable wasn’t provided with our sample). Alternatively, you can take the Lithium-Ion battery out by swivelling the base to the unlock icon and removing it (ensuring you remove the card covering the charging points). You can then charge it via the orange Micro-USB cable provided until it’s ready for installation. Spare batteries are also available to buy online at Amazon of course.

Available in black or white, the Outdoor Cam Plus features a lens on the front which provides a 160-degree diagonal, 140-degree horizontal, and 80-degree vertical field of view. Underneath is a speaker while above there’s a small microphone for two-way conversations with visitors. When movement is recorded a solid blue light is displayed at the top of the unit while during set up this flashes blue.

• Design score: 4/5

Ring Outdoor Camera Plus: performance

• 2K image quality
• Stable video connection
• Overly sensitive camera

Ring claims the Outdoor Camera Plus offers ‘brilliant 2K video quality’ but in all honesty there’s not a massive leap in quality between this model and its predecessor, the Ring Stick Up Camera. Whereas the previous model offered 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, this one boasts 2,560 x 1,440 (2K). In other words, an increase of 360 horizontal pixels and 640 vertical pixels – enough to see the difference when you zoom in to an image, but probably not otherwise.

That said, I didn’t have any complaints about picture quality at all. Images are sharp even at night thanks to the ‘low-light sight’ feature (although colour is limited in low light) and the field of vision is also quite wide: 140-degree horizontal compared to 115 degrees on the Ring Stick Up Camera.

Another benefit is having dual-band Wi-Fi support (2.4GHz and 5GHz) which ensured images recorded on the camera and viewed in Live View were extremely stable even though the camera was mostly located in the back garden, a significant distance from my broadband router.

One thing worth noting is that the Ring Outdoor Camera Plus isn’t as sensitive as some models which record every bit of motion detected, even moving branches. Instead, you will probably need to turn the motion sensitivity option up a little bit just to capture all the footage you want. This will in turn use up more battery power so it’s worth considering either using the mains or a solar panel as a power supplement.

After nearly two weeks our sample model was already down to 50% so you will probably have to take the battery pack out for charging once a month – not the worst we’ve ever tested, but not the best either.

• Performance score: 4/5

Should you buy the Ring Outdoor Camera Plus?

Buy it if

Don't buy it if

How I tested the Ring Outdoor Camera Plus

• I used the camera both indoors and outdoors
• I installed it myself
• The camera was integrated into my home system with other Ring cameras

Like most manufacturers, Ring makes adding new cameras to its app very simple indeed. Because I already had several Ring security cameras and doorbells connected to my existing app, I simply added another using the QR code at the back of the device. However, starting from scratch would have been just as straightforward.

I started off using the device mostly indoors to get the feel of it and then moved it to my garden where I mounted it on top of the shed focused on the back door. There it has remained ever since (about 12 days at the time of writing), capturing people and pets who go out into the garden. Ring provides a 30-day trial for all the advanced features, such as smart video search and person/package/video alerts, but after this runs out you will need to subscribe online at Ring.com (you can’t do this via the app).

First reviewed May 2025

• Ring Outdoor Cam Plus is the first Ring camera with 2K footage at launch
• It also offers improved low-light capability and wide viewing angles
• The camera is weather-resistant, and can be used indoors or outside

Ring has launched a new home security camera that can capture footage at 2K resolution – a big boost from previous cameras, which could only record 1080p at launch. Two of Ring's outdoor security cameras (the Ring Floodlight Cam Pro and Spotlight Cam Pro) received a software update earlier this year that boosted them to 2K resolution, but this is the first Ring camera that has been able to record at such a high resolution right from day one – and it's one of the most affordable too.

The new Ring Outdoor Cam Plus has an updated camera with a wide field of view and Low-Light Sight, which should provide crisp color footage in conditions where even the best home security cameras may normally struggle – and without the need for a distracting floodlight.

Like the Floodlight Cam Pro and Spotlight Cam Pro, the Ring Outdoor Cam Plus uses the company's Ring Vision post-processing to improve balance and contrast, and provide motion-smoothing so the video footage looks as clear as possible on your phone.

Fully flexible

The Ring Outdoor Cam Plus has a weatherproof design, and despite its name, can be used indoors or out, making it a high-resolution alternative to the Ring Indoor Cam (2nd Gen). It doesn't have the physical privacy shield of the Ring Indoor Cam, but it does offer customizable privacy settings and privacy zones, so you can exclude certain areas from monitoring and recording. A blue indicator light shows when the camera is recording.

The new camera is also available with various different power options, including battery, solar, and wired, the latter of which supports 24/7 video recording. The solar panel is sold as a separate accessory, and is supplied with a wall mounting that offers 180 degrees of tilt. The camera itself can be mounted on a wall, or on a ceiling thanks to its flexible fittings.

You can use the Ring Outdoor Cam Plus without a subscription to watch live footage on your phone, but as with all Ring video doorbells and security cameras, some features (such as package detection) are exclusive to Ring Home members. There are three different subscription levels to choose from, depending on how many Ring devices you have and which features are most important to you. For more details, check out our guide do I need a Ring subscription.

The Ring Outdoor Cam Plus is available to pre-order now from Amazon for $99.99 / £99.99 / AU$179, and should start shipping next month. At the time of writing, Australian prices have yet to be confirmed.

We're hoping to test the Ring Outdoor Cam Plus ourselves very soon, and bring you a full review so you can see how it compares to the company's other security cameras, and those from rivals like Blink and Wyze.

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• Ring and Kidde are now partners
• New alarms will have Ring capabilities
• No Alexa app integration for now

Ring is partnering up with Kidde to introduce the first Ring-enabled smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.

The two companies have a rich history in their respective markets and Ring does offer its own branded line of listening alarms, but this mashup is a first and it mostly means that Kidde’s latest line of smoke and carbon monoxide alarms are smart home-ready. Kidde and Ring unveiled the new Smart Smoke and Combination Smoke + CO Alarms with Ring technology built-in at CES 2025 in Las Vegas.

Unlike traditional Kidde alarms, you’ll set these up using the Ring app, which is also where you’ll get alerts about smoke and CO alarms. And instead of the Kidde alarms chirping when they need new batteries, you’ll get that alert in the Ring app, too. If, however, you ignore the alerts for a week, you will get the annoying chirp.

Installing the new alarms should be easy since they’re Wi-Fi connected and do not require an extra hub. Better yet, if you already have a set of wired Kidde alarms, they can deliver their alerts through to new alarm and its connected app. It might be like a whole-home protection upgrade.

The two new alarms arrive in April (US-only), and list for $54.97 (Kidde Smart Smoke) and $74.97 (Kidde Combination [Smoke + CO]). If you’re anxious to get your hands on one, you can visit ring.com to sign up for alerts for when the Ring-ready alarms are ready for purchase.

For more protection, Ring is launching a 24/7, $5-a-month protection service that will automatically contact emergency services and contacts in the event of an alarm. This works separately from Ring's Home subscription, which the company says is not required for the emergency protection service to work.

Ring tells us that its Smoke and CO Listener will listen for alarms from the Kidde alarms but they also added that you can not check the status of the Kidde Alarms through Amazon's Alexa app.

Some not-so-alarming questions

Combining smart home technology with home protection is a smart move, especially when it's simplified and works with existing protection infrastructure.

In my home, I already have a network of wired Kidde alarms and would love to add one intelligent one that gives me peace of mind when I'm out traveling. I still remember trying to add a Nest smoke and fire alarm that, unfortunately, required a hub. It now sits forgotten on a shelf.

Since Ring is an Amazon company, it is a bit frustrating that they are not integrated with your Alexa app. Not that I expect we could talk to these Kidde alarms, but being able to check through an app I already use for my various echo devices would be preferable.

Are these alarms all you need to protect your home from fire and smoke? We'll know more when TechRadar tests them later this year.

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• 2K video is coming to Ring Floodlight Cam Pro and Spotlight Cam Pro
• The update will start rolling out on Wednesday, 8 January
• If you already have a camera, you can get the update via the Ring app

Two of Ring's most popular outdoor security cameras are getting a big upgrade this week. The Ring Floodlight Cam Pro and Spotlight Cam Pro currently capture footage at 1080p, but following a new software upgrade, both will be able to record at 2K resolution instead. The update was announced at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, where tech companies from around the world gather to reveal their latest innovations.

Ring makes some of the best home security cameras we've tested, and this update will really give these two models an edge. Most cameras (whether indoor or outdoor) are only able to record at 1080p, and the improved resolution should make it easier to identify people even in low lighting conditions.

Looking sharp

Both the Floodlight Cam Pro and Spotlight Cam Pro will use the company's Ring Vision post-processing to improve balance and contrast, and provide motion-smoothing so the 2K video will be as clear as possible when you watch it on your phone.

2K video capture will be available for these two cameras from Wednesday, 8 January, and if you already own one, you will be able to download the update free via the Ring app.

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We’re covering all of the latest CES news from the show as it happens. Stick with us for the big stories on everything from 8K TVs and foldable displays to new phones, laptops, smart home gadgets, and the latest in AI.

And don’t forget to follow us on TikTok for the latest from the CES show floor!

• Apple could launch smart home security tech
• Its smart doorbell could boast Face ID, and use iCloud for video storage
• Don't expect it until late 2025 or 2026

We’ve recently heard rumors that Apple wants to launch a smart home hub with a screen – what’s been described as an Apple HomePod with a display – but the company’s smart home visions reportedly don’t stop there. We could also see it release gadgets like an Apple video doorbell, smart lock, and security camera; so while the Apple Car concept might be dead (another rumored excursion into a previously unexplored product territory), the Apple Home might be about to take off.

This comes via Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman (behind a paywall) in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, who says Apple is focusing its efforts on robotics, AI, and smart home tech – with smart home being the one most likely to bear fruit somewhat soon in the form of security devices like video doorbells that can deadbolt your front door or in-home security cameras.

The doorbell may be particularly interesting as it would supposedly offer a form of Face ID for your home by automatically detecting if it’s you.

While this smart home pivot may seem a little odd considering how the HomePod has been treated. It seems forever in the background of presentations and announcements, never getting its own chance in the spotlight. Gurman notes, however, that Apple’s smart home shift comes from the company’s belief it has one edge over the competition: trust in its privacy.

Many people don’t want Amazon-made cameras in their homes, or cameras from most major tech companies for that matter, due to concerns over how their private data might be used even if there’s no evidence it's being mishandled. But Apple has spent years cultivating a persona of being the best there is when it comes to privacy (it’s even a major component of its Apple Intelligence marketing, and wasn’t for other AI until Apple hit the scene), and so Gurman reports the company believes this perception will help it find success with home security tech.

He adds that it could also help Apple juice its iCloud subscription numbers as people would want to store their recordings in the cloud.

Learning from mistakes, or repeating them?

If you head to the Apple Store website you’ll see Apple already boasts a respectable smart home accessory lineup complete with smart locks, smart lights, motion detectors, smart doorbells, and more – but none are made by Apple.

Instead, it relies on third-party accessories which have varying quality according to some reviewers – with this $330 Level smart lock from a few years ago being labeled ineffective as it could be lockpicked with the simplest method known to pickers – but hopefully, Apple has learned from the better options amongst its third-part stock.

As with all leaks, we should take these latest ones with a pinch of salt, and even if Apple’s smart home tech is indeed on the way it could be some time before we see it in action. Mark Gurman says he’s been told not to expect to see anything until at least the end of 2025.

There’s also a non-zero chance Apple may abandon home security before it sees the light of day. One reason for it not continuing with the Apple Car was reportedly execs fearing the company would be associated with car accidents. The same fears – but this time for home security flaws – could be enough to put Apple off expanding into this area in the end.

We’ll have to wait and see what 2025 holds for us, but with reports Apple is developing a ring, and developing AR glasses in the background too, it might not be long before we see Apple’s next big hardware launch.

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Home security cameras are no longer content to sit in the background and watch for burglars – they want to be your family video cameras, and Ring has just announced a Smart Video Search feature to track down special moments in your Ring video history.

Naturally, the feature is AI-powered and only available to those with a Ring subscription (specifically those on the priciest Ring Home Premium tier, which costs $19.99 / £15.99 a month), because otherwise recorded clips aren't available. But if that includes you, it certainly looks like a helpful addition to the security cams – if you're happy with the camera nosing into your home life.

Smart Video Search is apparently powered by Visual Language Modeling (VLM), which can quickly match text queries to images. If you tend to scroll through your footage a lot, the benefit is potentially saved time – and maybe some helpful reminders about where you left your keys or the cat might be hiding.

Ring's example use cases show that the feature is clearly aimed at those who use the best home security cameras as a broader family camera rather than a burglar deterrent. It suggests you could use it to "figure out who ate the last of the ice cream" or to work out "why the garbage cans are knocked over."

If those sound a little niche, Ring also suggests searches like "red bicycle in the driveway" to track down the moment your kid first learned to ride a bike. Again, the real benefit is going to be for those who are happy to sacrifice privacy for searchable memories.

The Smart Video Search function is rolling out now in public beta to "select customers" and works with all Ring video doorbells and cameras. A wider rollout will occur from November 5 when Ring says it's launching a "revamped subscription service" called Ring Home. That new service will bring features including Smart Video Search and 24/7 recording to Ring Home Premium subscribers, initially only in the US.

Nudging ahead of Nest

While Google beat Ring to announcing AI-powered video search for its Nest home security cameras back in August, Ring has become the first to roll out the feature – if only to a select few beta customers.

Google previously said it would preview a similar feature for Nest later this year ahead of a full release in 2025, so the two rivals are on a roughly similar timeline. Yet the popularity of the feature might depend on how many see value in a searchable family video history.

AI-powered search is being pushed as a powerful replacement for our ailing memories across everything from Google Photos (with its new 'Ask Photos' feature) to Apple Intelligence (like its Memory Movies feature).

That puts these features in a controversial, sensitive spot that could leave many weighing up the potential benefits with the undoubted privacy invasion. Clearly, the tech giants see AI-powered search inside our personal photos and videos as a subscription cash cow, but we'll find out how popular they are when the likes of Ring's Smart Video Search and Google's Nest equivalent get proper rollouts later this year.

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Throughout October 2024, smart home brand Ring will be transitioning its Ring Protect subscription plan to new branding – Ring Home – as well as introducing five new features to specific tiers.

Pricing will stay the same, with Protect Basic becoming Home Basic ($4.99 / £4.99 per month), Protect Standard becoming Home Standard ($9.99 / £7.99 per month), and Protect Pro becoming Home Premium ($19.99 / £15.99 per month), the latter of which being a new tier for the UK. We don't yet have Australian pricing, but we can assume the same logic will apply and prices won't change.

Announced in a recent Ring blog post, the change comes as good news for anyone who owns one of the best video doorbells or the best home security cameras by Ring, (and might just give a good reason to subscribe to Ring's subscription plan if you haven't already) thanks to new features coming to specific tiers.

On November 5, Ring will be rolling five new features out for users across the globe:

In the US, you'll also be able to individually add services like Virtual Security Guard or Alarm Professional Monitoring (priced separately) to a Ring Home Standard or Ring Home Premium plan, too, allowing for a much more personalized home security setup through Ring.

With Amazon Prime Big Deals day right around the corner, now looks like a great time to invest in one of Ring's home security devices, especially if you want to take advantage of the Standard or Premium packages which cover all the devices at your home.

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So you've chosen a Ring security camera or one of the best video doorbells to protect your home. Now you've got another choice to make: whether or not to sign up for the optional Ring subscription, which brings a number of additional features for a monthly fee.

The subscription is now called Ring Home, but was known as Ring Protect until October 2024. The price stayed the same immediately after the rebrand, but Ring had already increased its individual device pricing by 43% earlier in the year. You'll find more details below.

That means it's even more important to figure out whether or not a Ring Home subscription is right for you. Read on to find out exactly how much you're going to have to pay each month, what Ring's competitors are charging, and whether it's worth the cost.

Does Ring work without a subscription?

Yes, your Ring camera or doorbell will work without a Ring Home subscription – though you won't get all of the features that come with being a subscriber.

If you don't want to pay up, then your Ring device will still happily alert you about any activity that happens in front of your camera or video doorbell. You'll also be able to get a live feed from the camera or doorbell through the mobile app, whether it's when you've had an alert on your device, or any other time. This is the core functionality that's included as standard, and which doesn't need any extra payment.

The big difference comes with video recording. If you don't have a subscription, your video clips aren't stored anywhere. You can't go back and view your camera feed from last week, for example, and if you miss a notification from your video doorbell then you can't then go back several hours later and see footage from what you missed.

How much is a Ring subscription?

There are three Ring Home tiers to choose from. The cheapest, Ring Home Basic, is $4.99 / £4.99 / AU$4.95 per month or $49.99 / £49.99 / AU$49.95 per year (essentially giving you two months free) – a hike of 43% from what it cost prior to March 2024.

Ring Home Standard is for multiple cameras and doorbells, as opposed to the Basic plan which is just for a single device. Right now, Ring Home Standard will cost you $10 / £8 / AU$15 a month or $100 / £80 / AU$150 a year. This tier also gives you Extended Live View, which lets you watch footage from your camera for 30 minutes at a time, and the ability to receive doorbell interactions as calls to your phone, making it easier to speak to visitors when you're away from home.

If you're in the US or UK, you can subscribe to Ring Home Premium, which includes everything in Home Standard and adds 24/7 professional monitoring for your alarms. Essentially, your alerts go to Ring as well as you, and either you or the Ring team can request an emergency response to an incident.

Ring Home Premium also offers 24/7 recording for eligible wired cameras, which even captures things happening outside the motion capture zone, and Continuous Live View, which allows you to watch your camera feed for as long as you like, provided the camera has 24/7 recording enabled.

Ring Home Premium costs $19.99 / £15.99 a month or $200 / £159.99 a year. There are currently no details about when it will be available in Australia, or how much it will cost there.

What happens if I don't subscribe to Ring Home?

If you don't subscribe to Ring Home, your camera or doorbell won't suddenly become useless: you'll still get alerts when something happens, and you'll still be able to view a live video feed at any time. You'll also be able to use two-way audio – to talk to a delivery driver at the door, for example.

What the Ring Home Basic (for a single device) and Ring Home Standard (for multiple devices) plans add are extended video storage facilities, so you can go back and look at older footage and alerts. You also get smarter alerts, so your cameras can recognize the difference between people, packages, and anything else that might be passing.

It's worth bearing in mind that new Ring cameras and doorbells usually come with a 30-day free trial of the Ring Home service. If you're wondering why you're getting an extended video history without having paid any money, that's probably why – when the free trial ends, you'll be left with just the basic functionality.

How long are Ring videos saved without a subscription?

One of your biggest concerns if you're not paying for a Ring Home subscription is likely to be the status of your videos. This is the crux of the free plan vs paid plan debate: if you're a paid up subscriber, then your recorded videos (as triggered by motion sensing) are all available from the cloud for 30 days.

You can actually adjust this to suit yourself: you can dial down the storage time to one day, or all the way up to 180 days (if you're in the UK – the US and Australia limit is 30 days). If you need videos for longer than the limit you've set, you can download them to a local device from the cloud.

Without a subscription, there's no saving of videos at all: you can't go back and look at older alerts, and you can't record footage from the live view either (if you need evidence of something happening on your property). All you can do is look at the live video feed as it's coming through your cameras or doorbells.

Is it worth paying for a Ring subscription?

So, is it worth paying for a Ring Home subscription? That's the million dollar question – or rather the $4.99 / £4.99 / $4.95 per month question. Ultimately it's down to how much you're willing to spend, and how useful you find video storage: it's probably more important to you if you're not always able to check your phone right away, for instance.

We should also point out that several other security camera and doorbell companies charge for similar subscriptions too: Google Nest Aware plans start at $8 / £6 / AU$12 per month or $80 / £60 / AU$120 per year, while Arlo Secure will set you back from $7.99 / £4.49 / AU$7.99 per month (if you're in the UK, you can also pay £44.90 per year).

There are also security cameras and video doorbells that don't need a subscription, and which can store video locally – see the Eufy range of products for one example. You might want to compare these other products and their subscription plans (or lack of them) before deciding whether or not to pay for a Ring subscription.

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Smart home brand Ring has revealed a new tilting camera – and no, we don’t mean that it gets angry. It’s called the Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam and sports a 1080p lens sitting on top of a motorized base. The base can spin 360 degrees horizontally and pan up 169 degrees.

According to a Ring representative, you can control how the motor turns via the official app. Ring believes the indoor cam is a great pick for business owners who want to see multiple angles from one location, and for people who want to keep tabs on their pets.

It also sports several features seen on other Ring models (and competing devices like Psync Camera Genie S). Whenever the Pan-Tilt camera detects someone moving in front of the lens, it’ll notify you through your smartphone via real-time motion alerts. Owners can then talk to the other person (or yell at their dog to get off the couch) thanks to Two-Way Talk since the device houses a built-in microphone and speaker for communication. Additionally, you can minimize the live video feed through Picture-in-Picture mode so you can watch while you browse the internet on your phone.

Covering your blind spots

Ring technically has a motorized camera already available. The Stick Up Cam Battery can be equipped with a special Pan-Tilt mount giving similar panoramic capabilities although this new model stands out in multiple ways.  For starters, it has a wider range of motion; the mount can only move up to 117 degrees vertically. Second, the Pan-Tilt camera has a privacy shutter. Flipping it closed automatically disables video recording and audio connectivity. You can also tweak the device’s privacy settings through the Ring app.

When asked about other notable features, Ring's representative confirmed that the Pan-Tilt cam supports color night vision and needs to be connected to an outlet. It doesn't allow battery packs. The overall package includes a 10-foot-long USB-A to USB-C Power Cable with an accompanying adapter.

Subscribing to a Ring Protect plan unlocks extra features such as Multi-Cam Live View. This lets you watch up to four different Live View streams from other Ring cameras on your smartphone or tablet.

Pre-orders for the Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam are currently live in the US with a $79.99 price tag on Ring’s official website and Amazon. The shipping date for the device differs on whatever color you get. Your standard Black and White models will begin shipping out on May 30. But deliveries for the Starlight white, Charcoal gray, and Blush pink options won’t start until June 12.

For those in the UK and Australia, the Pan-Tilt Indoor Camera will be available to buy for £69.99 / AU$129 from May 31. If you're interested in other options, check out TechRadar's list of the best home security cameras for 2024.

Update 5-1-2024: A company representative told us three of the color options (Starlight white, Charcoal gray, and Blush pink) will not be available on June 12; however they didn't give us an exact date. All they told us is that the other three "will be available soon."

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Over the past few years, smart home brand Ring has released Pro versions of mainline models like the Wired Doorbell Pro, but there’s never been one for its wireless devices. That gap is now being filled with the company's brand new Battery Doorbell Pro.

Ring’s upcoming camera comes packed with several advanced features befitting a high-end model. It comes equipped with 3D Motion Detection, allowing the lenses to more accurately detect movement resulting in “more refined” motion alerts. This performance boost is made possible by a pair of radar-powered abilities: Bird’s Eye Zones and Bird’s Eye View. The former, according to a company representative, allows the Battery Doorbell Pro to measure “the distance and angle of objects in front of the camera”. Users can customize when they want the device to start recording such as when a subject crosses beyond a certain threshold. Once set up, Bird’s Eye Zone can be used to track where unwanted visitors went on the property. 

Bird’s Eye View, as the name suggests, provides homeowners with a satellite image of the path taken by the aforementioned unwanted visitors. It’ll arrive on your smartphone alongside a notification. The same representative goes on to say, “No additional device is needed” to use Bird’s Eye View.

Specs and availability

Moving past the features, the Doorbell Pro offers some interesting specs.

Homeowners can enjoy high-quality footage as the Battery Doorbell Pro can shoot video in 1546p HD Plus resolution (2,048 x 1,536 pixels). The clips can maintain this level of fidelity thanks to a combination of key hardware and software components. Dynamic Image processing and “enhanced imaging sensors” ensure videos have vibrant colors as well as staying crystal clear. This quality can still be enjoyed in the dark due to Low-Light Sight promising visual clarity after the sun sets.

People can add more features to this model by purchasing a Ring Protect Pro subscription plan. Doing so gives access to cloud storage as well as person and package alerts. Users can also connect the Doorbell Pro to a compatible Alexa device, like the Echo Show 8, and other Ring products to create a security system spanning their entire home.

The Battery Doorbell Pro is available for pre-order right now for $229.99 on Ring’s website and Amazon in the US. In Australia, it will set you back AU$349. Units will ship out on March 6 in the US and from March 20 in Australia. We reached out to the company asking for information on the battery’s life span and if they have plans for an international release. This story will be updated at a later time.

In the meantime, check out TechRadar's list of the best smart home devices for 2024.

Update (Feb 7): A company representative got back to us stating Ring will release the Battery Doorbell Pro in the the UK and Europe on March 20. Also, they clarified that homeowners don't need to purchase a Protect Pro plan to receive extra feature. Any Ring Protect plan works.

When asked about battery life, the same company rep told us that Ring does not make any claims regarding how long the device lasts on a single charge. Take that as you will.

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Ring is just about done playing Robin to law enforcement's Batman.

For every amusing Ring Video Doorbell video showing a bear dancing in the snow or a mailman pirouetting to the Broadway show tune in his head, there are videos of people stealing packages, vandalizing homes, or committing other petty crimes. The video collected by these popular front door cameras has been a potential crime-fighting bonanza for local law enforcement.

After launching in 2013, Ring (an Amazon company) added the free Neighbors app in 2017 as a place where Ring customers in a community could share details of local crime (like people stealing packages from doorsteps). The platform also let local law enforcement post public service updates, and contact Ring owners directly to request videos of illegal activity happening outside their homes. While a potentially powerful crime deterrent, it was also seen as a possible privacy and civil-right-violating issue and Ring's track record for sharing customer videos with law enforcement without seeking permission wasn't exactly spotless.

Now following the 2021 update that forced local law enforcement to post all calls for video in a public part of the Neighbors app under "Request for Assistance," Ring has decided to sunset that feature, as well.

Neighbors becoming even more neighborly

In other words, there should be no more posts from law enforcement within the Neighbors app that describe a crime in your local Ring coverage area and then request videos relating to the incident. Ring customers can still, obviously, freely share videos with law enforcement and authorities if they choose.

In a release on the update, Ring head of Neighbors Eric Kuhn notes that " fire and police departments can still use the Neighbors app to share helpful safety tips, updates, and community events." The platform will no longer be a place to ask for and exchange videos with authorities.

Ring also appears to be pushing Neighbors beyond (or maybe away from) its community safety roots and more toward those viral videos we share on TikTok. It's adding a new Neighbors section called "Ring Moments," which is decidedly not about sharing crime and safety videos, and "Best of Ring" which will feature Ring-curated videos.

Ring's Neighbors will still, the company notes, be a place to share important information about safety-related events happening in your community, including floods, major storms, and fires but it's no longer a major law enforcement source for crime-fighting information.

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Ring A19: One-minute review

The Ring A19 isn't the only smart lighting the home security and smart doorbell brand has in its collection. It is, however, the only entry it has in the smart light bulb market since the company has traditionally focused more on path lights, floodlights, and spotlights, which are practical add-ons to its core products.

One has to wonder, therefore, what nudged the company to add the Ring A19 to its catalog, especially since it launched it in 2020 and hasn't followed it up with a different model – one that can display other colors, perhaps. Especially since it remains unavailable in the UK and Australia.

Not that I'm complaining. This white model is one of the best smart lights I've had – and I've owned my share of them, from Philips Hue bulbs to one from unknown brands on Amazon. Unlike the expensive Philips A19 White Ambiance bulb, it's a more economical buy that is almost comparable in build quality, which makes it a smarter choice for budget-minded consumers.

It's also very easy to set up, with the Ring app guiding you through the whole quick process, including connecting it to Alexa. So, if you haven't used a smart light bulb before, this is a great gateway bulb. 

With a smooth, rounded bulb, the Ring A19 looks more like a traditional light bulb in design, which makes it a good fit in just about anything, whether it's a ceiling light recess or a lamp. It might not be as cool-looking as Philip's version, but it still looks refined, with a white plastic lamp body and circuit housing that has good heat dissipation properties. 

It's an indoor/outdoor light bulb, but it's not the best for exposed fixtures, as Ring advises avoiding water exposure. If you were to use this as lighting in your portico, porch, veranda, or gazebo, however, it should fit in nicely as those areas are traditionally roofed.

We only wish the Ring A19 had the capability to display variations of white other than its 3500K color temperature, which is kind of on the warm side on the color temperature scale. Unfortunately, unlike its Philips Hue counterpart, it has no warm-to-cool light capability. This model is only adjustable in brightness up to 800 lumens.

But, if you prefer warm light in the evenings and really only require something you can control with your voice or an app, you set schedules and routines for, and whose brightness you can change without an actual dimmer, then this is perfect.

You're definitely getting your money's worth here, especially since it's more than bright enough for most users' needs and very responsive to app and voice controls. It does take a second to respond, however, to Alexa voice commands – it only supports Alexa (as well as Ring Bridge connectivity so you can connect it to other Ring products like a smart doorbell or a smart camera) – but during our week-long testing, it hasn't failed to do so yet.

Unlike other smart lights from lesser brands, I haven't encountered any failures or issues like random flickering and connection issues.

So, despite its limitations, the Ring A19 is a fantastic smart light bulb option if you're looking for an affordable contender that can light up your entire home and provide all the smart light basics. Instead of going for one of those unknown brands you'll find at online retailers, invest in this better-quality option instead.

Ring A19: Price and availability

• How much is it? $14.99 (about £12, AU$23)
• When is it available? Available now
• Where is it available? Only available in the US

At only $14.99 (about £12, AU$23), the Ring A19 is a very affordable smart light bulb from a trusted brand. It's definitely cheaper than the Philips Hue A19, although that one comes with adjustable color temperature, making it a better value if your budget isn't too tight.

It's only available in the US, however. At the time of writing, it's not available in the UK and Australia, and there's no word on whether Ring is planning on rolling it out in these countries.

• Value: 4.5 / 5

Ring A19: Specs

Should I buy the Ring A19?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if... 

Ring A19: Also consider

How I tested the Ring A19

• I tested the Ring A19 for a week
• I tested its performance using Alexa and the Ring app

I tested the Ring A19 for a week, using it as one of the light bulbs in my living room. I noted its installation and setup, as well as its smart home features and performance. Since it's a more stripped-down smart light, there isn't much to test in terms of features. However, I did test its brightness adjustment as well as its ability to respond to voice commands and app control.

A big smart home fan, I've been a smart home user for a few years, with Philips Hue light bulbs being my very first smart home device. I've also been testing smart home devices, from smart lights and smart speakers to smart appliances like robot vacuums and heaters, since owning my first light bulbs.

We pride ourselves on our independence and our rigorous review-testing process, offering up long-term attention to the products we review and making sure our reviews are updated and maintained - regardless of when a device was released, if you can still buy it, it's on our radar.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed November 2023

One-minute review

Breaking with the line’s numerical naming convention, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus is the newest addition to Ring’s range of video doorbells since the Ring Video Doorbell 4 was released in 2021. 

The Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus easily earns its spot among our picks of the best video doorbells. It’s only the second Ring device to introduce head-to-toe visibility (the other being the Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2), and the first wireless Ring device to do so.

On the outside, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus looks much the same as the Ring Doorbell (2nd gen), as well as the Ring Doorbells 3 and 4, but inside is where the magic happens. 

The Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus drops a few features in favor of improved quality and intelligence. It’s packing a new camera with 1536p resolution, night vision with color, and a snazzy new head-to-toe view thanks to the increased vertical field of view (150 degrees by 150 degrees), and is a noticeable iterative improvement on the Ring Video Doorbell 4 for an ever-so-slightly higher price.

Ring also says the Battery Video Doorbell Plus offers up to three times the battery life of previous models. It’s worth noting that it’s quite hard to test this, as it’s dependent on how much motion occurs outside your home, but I found that it drained very slowly over the weeks I used it, and hasn’t yet dropped below 50%. 

While these upgrades do see the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus lose out on some features, like pre-roll (which captures motion four seconds before a motion event is triggered), 5GHz connectivity, and motion alerts on compatible Amazon Echo devices, some of these are value-adds rather than a necessity. It’s a bit of a shame, certainly on behalf of pre-roll and the Amazon Echo compatibility, but ultimately the head-to-toe view, improved overall motion detection and battery life go a long way to making the extra expense worth it. 

Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus review: price and availability

• List price: $179.99 / £159.99 / AU$289
• Available from Ring and Amazon

The Ring Battery Doorbell Plus is available from Ring and Amazon directly, as well as some third-party sellers, and costs $179.99 / £159.99 / AU$289.

While it’s certainly not cheap, it’s not outlandish compared to other video doorbells; the Ring Video Doorbell 4 is just $20 / £20 / AU$30 cheaper, having had its price cut fairly recently. 

However, as with all Ring Video Doorbells, it’s worth noting that the ongoing costs can get pretty high if you take out a Ring Protect subscription that enables you to keep your recordings and access some of the more premium features. Plans start at $4 / £3.49 / AU$4.95 monthly or $40 / £34.99 / AU$49.95 per year for the Basic plan, which covers one device. There are more expensive options, depending on your setup and location; the Plus membership is about double the price but covers multiple devices, while the Pro plan (which is only available in the US) starts at $20/month or $200/year.

Price and availability: 3.5/5

Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus review: specifications

Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus review: design

• Simple design
• Rechargeable and removable batteries
• Easy installation

If you’ve read TechRadar’s previous reviews of Ring video doorbells like the Ring Video Doorbell 4, you’ll likely be surprised to hear that the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus looks the same as previous devices, with a black top third that houses its 1536p camera, and a matt silver lower section with the doorbell button in the middle.

Ring isn’t reinventing the wheel here, and while that’s hard to do even with conventional doorbells, the design is perhaps getting a little tired. However, it comes with perks; it’s incredibly easy to install, and if you’ve previously used Ring Doorbells it’s likely you won’t need to replace the base plate.

The battery is removable, meaning you don’t have to uninstall the entire device every time it runs out of juice, as is the case with some video doorbells. Alternatively, if you’d rather not worry about having to recharge it, you can also hardwire the doorbell into your home's electrical system.

I installed mine with the tilted base plate, which is a wedge that can be purchased separately to improve the viewing angle; on my door, there wasn’t a suitable spot for it that was facing straight onto my walkway. It’s worth noting most users wouldn’t need one thanks to the new, taller video feed aspect ratio. 

Design: 4/5

Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus review: performance

• Package detection works well (mostly)
• Head-to-toe camera view
• Impressive camera quality

The Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus works brilliantly both as a security camera device and a functional way to remotely interact with anyone – or thing – that finds itself passing by your door. However, there are some pretty huge differences between the features that are available with and without the Ring Protect subscription.

First, let’s discuss how the Battery Video Doorbell Plus performs sans-subs. Once you’ve installed the doorbell, you’ll need to download the app, create an account and follow the pairing instructions – this is pretty easy. 

As with most video doorbells, once you’re set up you’ll be able to tap into your doorbell from your phone and watch a live feed of your front door, using two-way audio to communicate with anyone waiting outside, whether you’re at home or out and about. You can adjust the motion zones on your camera to stop your doorbell from sending erroneous motion alerts, and also set up privacy zones if you don’t want to see into a neighboring property. 

The doorbell will also notify you when it detects movement outside of your home on your mobile device or, of course, when someone rings your doorbell. You can also check out your device’s battery status and adjust various settings in the app. 

The newly upgraded HD+ 1536p camera has HDR and night vision with color, meaning you can get much clearer footage from your Ring doorbell around the clock compared to previous models. Its head-to-toe view means you can check out all of your entryway’s surroundings – including any packages that might have been left for you – but the odd fisheye lens effect needed to facilitate the expanded field of view is a little off-putting. The audio is pretty clear, as long as whoever’s at the door is facing the bell; otherwise, it can be a little muffled, especially if you live on a busy road.

All of the above is great, but on its own doesn’t quite justify a pricey video doorbell such as this – but that’s par for the course with Ring at this point. A Ring Protect subscription unlocks a whole host of additional features, and some pretty useful ones at that, although while the basic membership tier isn’t too expensive, it’s always a little frustrating to see so many useful tricks locked behind a paywall. 

You get one free month of Ring Protect with your new Ring device, during which time you can try out some of its exclusive features, including:

• Connect devices: Set up trigger responses on other Ring devices, as well as Amazon Echo smart speakers and selected third-party devices.
• Advanced motion detection features: With Ring Protect, you can customize motion detection even further, including how frequently the doorbell checks for motion, schedules, sensitivity, and snooze alerts.
• Package detection: Easily the most exciting addition to the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus is package detection, which I found worked pretty well for larger packages. Amazon says 10 x 10-inch packages and larger are most likely to be identified, with anything smaller being hit-or-miss, and my results were consistent with this.
• Alerts: Change your alert sounds for doorbell rings and motion detection, and also set up person alerts, which will mean your mobile device only notifies you when a person has been detected. With Ring Protect, the doorbell will also send you a snapshot of whatever triggered the alert.
• Photos and video: Your doorbell will record video events in the cloud for 180 days, which can be saved or shared, and you can also set it to capture a snapshot once every hour or 14 minutes, creating a timelapse of the day in front of your doorbell.
• Home or Away modes: Set up pre-recorded quick replies to respond to a doorbell press, and allow visitors to leave a voicemail if you can’t answer the door. You’ll also be able to customize how your doorbell behaves when you’re home or away.

Some of these features are a huge boon day-to-day. Home and Away modes, in particular, are really useful, as are object-specific notifications and connected devices. 

Due to operational costs, I can understand why any features involving data storage justify a greater fee; but overall it just feels like ringfencing these features detracts from how great the product is by itself. 

Still, both with and without a subscription, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus can most definitely perform well; I’d just say you’re better off with a lower-spec video doorbell if you’re not willing to pay out for the Ring Protect subscription.

Performance: 4.5/5

Should I buy the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus?

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Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus not for you? Try out one of these alternatives...

How I tested the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus

• I tested the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus for two weeks
• I used it every day with the free Ring Protect subscription trial
• I tested its motion detection, package detection, and sound quality. 

I installed the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus on my front door, using it to track movements outdoors, accept deliveries and communicate with callers when I wasn’t home.

I used both its standard features and advanced, Ring Protect-enabled features, and tested how well they work. I used parcels at three different sizes to test parcel identification, set up motion zones and privacy zones to test the responsiveness, and recorded motion triggers to see how accurate and timely filming was. I also tinkered with its customization settings, adjusting the motion detection zone on the doorbell’s field of view and seeing how well it could detect parcels and people.

I test smart home devices regularly, and have a good sense of how easy the user interface should be and how well devices should interact with one another. I’ve also used various smart home security devices, developing testing metrics for motion detection and object identification.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed June 2023

I recently attended an event hosted by Samsung at which it showcased the capabilities of its SmartThings connected appliances app. It's fascinating to learn how everyday appliances such as washing machines, refrigerators and ovens can all be controlled via SmartThings.

Samsung SmartThings is one of the largest open ecosystems for controlling your smart home devices. It has over 150 million users worldwide, is available on both Android and iOS, and is compatible with voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

The SmartThings app can be either downloaded onto your phone or tablet, or displayed on a Samsung RF9000 Family Hub Fridge Freezer with Beverage Centre (for example), by mirroring the screen from your phone to the  appliance. Either way, the SmartThings app is the gateway to making all your gadgets and appliances talk to one another – and you don't need to have a home full of Samsung devices to benefit from its capabilities.

One thing that surprised me was learning that Samsung TVS are the only televisions to be integrated with Ring. The brand is one of a number of featured brands that work with SmartThings, with others including Bose, Google Nest, HoneyWell Home, Philips Hue and Yale.

Ring is behind some of the best video doorbells and best home security cameras. In fact; you might even have one the latest video doorbells from the brand, such as the Ring Video Doorbell Pro or Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Pro home security camera installed.

If this is the case then you're already halfway there to being able to flip between watching your favorite Netflix series and surveilling the land outside your property.

By connecting your Ring video doorbell to a Samsung Smart TV you'll be able to see visitors when they ring the bell, or take a look outside when motion is detected. You will need to connect the video doorbell to the Ring and Samsung SmartThings app to benefit from the functionality.

I've seen how the Ring Doorbell Pro can be integrated with SmartThings Video (this was in the demo) and the Ring Video Doorbell 3 (wireless) is also on the compatibility list. You'll also need to own a 2018 Samsung smart TV (models NU7400 and above), 2019 Samsung smart TV (RU7400 and above), and 2020 Samsung smart TVs (TU8500 and above).

Yet another thing that you can do through your Samsung Smart TV connected to the SmartThings app is to check in the progress of the food you're cooking in a Samsung smart oven. It won't quite serve up the food for you, but being able to see inside the oven without leaving the couch is a pretty sweet deal.

It can also hook up to one of the best smart lighting brands – Philips Hue – to control your smart lights for an immersive movie or gaming experience. Color will flood the room as the lights mirror the colors from your TV to totally surround you in the drama unfolding on-screen. You will need a few smart light bulbs and / or smart lights to make this worthwhile though.

If you're looking to build out your connected home I think the Samsung SmartThings ecosystem is a good route to go down – it's future-proofed with the Matter 1.0 connectivity standard, and all the brands that matter (no pun intended) are on board. What's not to love?

A popular ransomware operator claims to have compromised Ring, the Amazon-owned company that builds smart doorbells with cameras. 

A new report on Vice’s Motherboard states that the group known as ALPHV, popular for its use of the BlackCat encryptor malware, added a new entry to its leak site, next to which is Ring’s logo.

A message posted by the group says “There's always an option to let us leak your data,” hinting that the negotiations over the ransom demand are ongoing (or could have broken down).

Sensitive customer data?

Amazon is staying relatively silent on the matter. In a short statement issued to Motherboard, the company said it has “no indications” that Ring experienced a ransomware attack.

However, it did say that a third-party vendor did succumb to ransomware and that Ring is currently engaged with it in an effort to learn more about the incident. It also clarified that the vendor doesn’t have access to customer records.

Currently, there are no reports detailing what kind of data ALPHV is supposedly holding and threatening to release. Allegedly, Amazon’s employees were instructed to stay quiet. Motherboard reported that “one person” notified Amazon’s employees of the incident via a Slack message and instructed them “do not discuss anything about this”, adding that the “right security teams” were engaged.

There are still plenty of unanswered questions about this incident. If Ring isn’t the one that was compromised, who is the third party? What kind of data does ALPHV hold? How did the group compromise the target network, and was any malware or social engineering involved? What are the ransom demands, and how much money does ALPHV expect to get in exchange for the data and the decryption key?

Until ALPHV leaks the data, or the targeted company files a report with the SEC, we won’t know for sure. 

• Check out the best home security cameras right now

Via: Vice

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Ring roll out a brand-new video doorbell. Well, the drought is almost over as the company revealed this week its upcoming Battery Doorbell Plus, bringing new features and improved battery life to the table.

The last time we saw a doorbell from Ring was the Video Doorbell 4 back in 2021 which we were fairly impressed by – even if the lack of support for Google Assistant was a little disappointing. Comparing the two side-by-side, the Battery Doorbell Plus is an improvement in certain areas while remaining the same in others.

Starting with the new, Ring took care to enhance the battery, claiming it's “three times better than [the] first Ring Video Doorbell” although the company doesn’t explain itself any further. It does, however, sport the highest video resolution of any Ring battery doorbell to date at 1536p (2048x1536 pixels), "providing a crisp and clear view" according to the company. The field of view is a little smaller than the Video Doorbell 4 as it's 150 degrees by 150 degrees. But you'll able to see the full person outside thanks to its Head-to-Toe Video feature, giving the Battery Doorbell Plus the ability to stream video with a 1:1 aspect ratio.

Migrating features

Apart from that, the rest of the Battery Doorbell Plus’ toolkit consists of features we’ve seen before on other Ring devices. You have things like Live View and Two-Way Talk “to speak to people at your door in real time”. If you’re not at home or can’t answer the door for whatever reason, you can always set up Quick Replies to have preset responses. The Battery Doorbell Plus is also compatible with Amazon Alexa so you can communicate via an “Echo or Fire TV device” with the person on the other end.

The battery life can be improved upon even further, according to Ring, by utilizing other previously seen tools. Advanced Motion Detection can “conserve power usage” by only activating when it detects "events that matter to you" like people or objects. But if you prefer a permanent solution, the company states you can connect its new doorbell to an at-home solar panel for constant power.

Availability

The Battery Doorbell Plus is currently available for pre-order on Ring’s website and Amazon for $179.99 making it cheaper than the Video Doorbell 4 . Shipping starts on April 5. You can add more features if you want by subscribing to Ring Protect. Prices, as you can imagine, depend on the tier. The highest tier, for example, adds in 24/7 Professional Monitoring that instantly calls emergency responders if there’s a break-in at your house. Just be aware that’s an extra $20 a month for that protection.

While we have you, be sure to check out TechRadar’s list of the best video doorbells to see some high-end devices.

Starting March 29, smart home brand Ring will begin requiring users to purchase a Ring Protect Plan for its devices as it’s placing several currently free features behind a paywall.

On that day, owners of either a Ring doorbell or camera will lose access to Home and Away Modes on the official app and Amazon Alexa without a subscription. 

Home Mode, for those who don’t know, deactivates in-house sensors so people can move freely inside while keeping the ones outside a residence activated. Away Mode fully secures a house by arming all sensors and having the cameras constantly record; great for people who want to keep an eye on things while away. So as you can see, Ring is going to be charging people to use two of the more basic features. Not everything is changing, however. Other features like Two-Way Talk plus Motion Detection are staying free.

Ring Alarm changes

Additionally, the Ring Alarm security system will also see all of its in-app features put behind a paywall on that day in the United States and Canada. This includes tools like the ability to arm or disarm sensors via the app, digital notifications, plus home security automations. However, this only pertains to future purchases.

If you already own or are planning to buy a Ring Alarm before March 29, these changes don’t apply to you. This also extends to accessories for the system. And even if you don’t activate Ring Alarm until after that date, you still have access to the in-app features without needing the subscription. It appears what’s most important is that you purchase the setup before March 29.

Anger users

As you can imagine, a lot of people are not happy with the looming subscription plan requirement as many have flocked to social media to air out their frustration. One user on Twitter said “this kind of stunt” is making them consider switching to a different brand. On the Ring subreddit, some are saying they now regret purchasing their Ring setup and will no longer expand their at-home system because of this news. The silver lining (if you can call that) in all this is that the price of Ring Protect isn't going up – it's remaining the same.

We asked Ring why it decided to begin requiring a Protect subscription, however, we didn’t really get a straightforward answer. A company spokesperson simply reiterated the company statement and pointed out Ring Alarm customers can change Alarm Modes via the physical keypad without needing the app. We pushed for more details, but at the time of this writing, the spokesperson hasn’t gotten back to us. The new direction could be an attempt by the company to boost revenue. As one person on the subreddit suggests, perhaps not enough people were buying the subscription.

Be sure to check out TechRadar’s list of the best security cameras for 2023 (both indoor and outdoor) if you want to better protect your home. 

Ring security cameras are taking to the sky – or at least, the ceiling – as the company publicly reveals its first autonomous indoor drone, the Always Home Cam, at CES 2023. It's main purpose is to deliver a direct live feed of your home while so you can keep an eye on things while you're away. The drone takes off whenever a Ring Alarm is triggered or when you activate via the official app.

The drone has been in the works for a couple of years now and made its last appearance back in 2021. So it’s been a while since we’ve last heard of the Always Home Cam, and by the looks of it, not much has changed. 

Potential users will first have to “train” the device by holding it in the air (without blocking the camera) and walking around their house to create a preset flight path. Equipped with four rotors, the Always Home Cam will fly along that path so long as there aren't any obstacles. If it detects something's in the way, it'll turn around and return to its charging dock.

A live feed from the drone’s camera is available on the app too. The footage will have a resolution of 1440 x 1440 pixels and offer a wide field of view at 120 degrees horizontal and 120 degrees vertical, so you get a decent-sized, high-quality picture.  

Restrictions

As cool as it is, the Always Home Cam does have some limitations on what it can do. Owners will be able to create up to 50 different flight paths, but the drone can only fly on one as it can’t switch to another mid-flight. To fly another path, the device will have to return to its charging dock, recharge if necessary, and then change fly that other path. They also have to be pretty short paths as the drone only gets five minutes of flight time before needing a recharge.

The Home Cam is also restricted to “operating on a single story of a home at a time.” Apparently, it has a hard time with stairs. So if your house has multiple stories, you’ll have to purchase another drone for the other floors. 

It’ll be pretty loud as well. According to the drone’s FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), “it is about as loud as a vacuum or a blender during flight.”

Availability

Despite its first public appearance, it’ll still be a while before the drone officially takes off. In an interview with The Verge, Ring founder Jamie Siminoff said the Always Home Cam will become “widely available” sometime in 2024 for $249.99. This delay is due to persisting issues. According to that same interview, the device apparently has a hard time “detecting mirrors and windows.”

We asked Ring if it could tell us what else it’s working on for the Always Home Cam. Will the drone eventually gain the ability to go up a flight of stairs so people won’t have to purchase another drone for the second floor? Do they have plans to increase its current battery life? This story will be updated once we hear back.

Preorders are open for Day1 Edition, however, if you’re interested. It’s only available through invitation on Amazon’s website since quantities are limited at this time. Be sure to check out TechRadar’s recently updated recommended list for the best beginner drones for the new year. 

What's good for your house, is probably, at least when it comes to security, good for your car. That's likely video doorbell company Ring's thinking. It finally officially unveiled at CES 2023 in Las Vegas the Ring Car Cam it's been talking about for almost a year and a half.

The dashboard dual-camera system looks almost exactly like the leaks we saw a good year ago. It's a relatively compact box of cameras, microphones, speakers, and motion detectors on an extender that attaches to your dashboard. It's unclear if Ring Car Cam could also be flipped over and attached to the windshield.

Ring Car Cam has a collection of useful, though not groundbreaking security features. It can detect motion inside and outside your car and send notifications and video, which it starts recording as soon as the motion is detected, to the same Ring app that you use for your other Ring devices.

If an intruder enters your car and you receive an alert, you can even start talking (or yelling at) them through the Ring Car Cam.

Amazon owns Ring, so it should come as no surprise that Ring Car cam can also do some on-demand recording (up to a few minutes) that you activate with the phrase "Alexa, record." This can come in handy if you spot some motorist engaging in bizarre behavior and want to capture and share in your next TikTok.

Virtually all these features, including two-way-audio and voice-activated recording, could be found in the original Owl Car Cam another dashboard-based security cam that could watch both the interior and exterior of your car, send motion-activated videos to a dedicated app, and even record video based on voice commands. That product disappeared in 2020 and it doesn't look as if it's coming back anytime soon.

Ring Car Cam has the undeniable benefit of joining the existing Ring ecosystem and, by extension the Amazone Alexa orbit (it even has the signature Alexa Blue Circle on top).

Ring told us that Ring Car Cam pre-orders start today (January 5). List price is $249.99 but there's a limited time $199.99 deal. While you do not need a subscirotuon for all the features listed above, you won't be able to tack your car when you'e away from your home's Wi-Fi unless you pay $6 a month ($60 a year) for a Ring Protect Go subscription that allows the device to connect to an LTE network. That subsription also enhances Traffic Stop utility, automatically uploading a portion of the recording to the cloud, while the reaminder is stored locally on the device.

Like the Owl Car Cam, Ring Car Cam connects via an OBD II adapter, which plugs into your car's OBD port (mechanics use this port to diagnose modern vehicles). While we we're hoping for a wireless adapter, Ring Car Cam is a cabled device. This means you have to snake a thin able around your dashboard (it can usually tuck into the space between the windsheild and dashboard) and then under the dash to the port.

Still, with nearly three-quarters of a million cars in the US and well over one hundred thousand in the UK stolen each year, there's no doubt that a pair of watchful, digital eyes could be a welcome addition to the dashboard of your beloved automobile.

Check out our CES 2023 hub for all the latest news from the show as it happens. We'll be covering everything from 8K TVs and foldable displays to new phones, laptops, and smart home gadgets, so stick with us for the big stories.

One-minute review

Once known for some of the best video doorbells, Ring has steadily been increasing its range of products to include security monitoring beyond your doorstep. It’s actually been more than five years since Ring launched its popular Floodlight Cam, combining an outdoor light with security technology. 

Since then, it’s evolved into the Floodlight Cam Pro, initially with a wired model followed by this battery-powered version, delivering greater flexibility in terms of where it’s installed outside your home. And while the concept behind the camera remains similar – its purpose being to monitor any comings and goings outside your home – the Floodlight Cam Pro Battery boasts a new lineup of features that make fulfilling this purpose easier, clearer and more accurate.  

One of four permanent battery-powered outdoor-only cameras from Ring, the Floodlight Cam Pro Battery is at the more expensive end of the range, thanks to its advanced features and versatility. Most similar is the Floodlight Cam Plus, which lacks the Pro’s biggest selling points of radar-powered motion detection, Bird’s Eye View (providing an aerial view for added context outside the perimeters of your motion zones), and improved audio. We found some of these features more useful than others; however, overall, both the clarity of audio and video of the Floodlight Cam Pro Battery were excellent.

As such, this model is most likely to appeal to those who’d welcome better-quality video and sound than that delivered by even some of the best home security cameras. Those who already have a Ring product are also likely to consider the Spotlight Cam Pro Battery, given that it uses the existing app and can be integrated with other devices.
 

Ring Spotlight Cam Pro Battery price and availability

• List price: $229.99 / £199.99 / AU$329  

The Ring Spotlight Cam Pro Battery is priced at $229.99 / £199.99 / AU$329. It’s available to buy now in the US, UK and Australia directly from Ring or through Amazon. Solar, plug-in and wired versions are also available.

For the technology the Ring Spotlight Cam Pro Battery includes, and the brand’s typical ease of use, it’s fairly reasonably priced – comparable cameras can easily cost up to a third more. However, it’s slightly pricier than Ring’s Spotlight Cam Plus Battery, which is its more affordable option. 

The Ring Spotlight Cam Pro Battery includes one battery in the box, but has space for two (allowing the second to serve as a backup). Additional batteries cost $29.99 / £24.99 / AU$49. 

Value score: 4.5 out of 5 

Ring Spotlight Cam Pro Battery design

•  Twin LED lights 
•  Installation can be fiddly 
•  Space inside for two batteries 

The Ring Spotlight Cam Pro Battery is less obtrusive than some security cameras at a diminutive 3.1 x 3.2 x 5.7in / 7.8 x 8.1 x 14.4cm, but it still looks very much like a camera as opposed to a light. It has a sizeable speaker at its base, while a pair of LED lights flank the camera at the front. While these lights are definitely bright enough for you to be able to see at night, it’s clear that lighting isn’t this camera’s primary purpose. The model is available in two colors, black or white, allowing you to choose your preference over an option that blends in with your exterior or acts as a visible deterrent. 

In terms of design, the Ring Spotlight Cam Pro Battery is sleek. It has a single button on top, while the speaker section at the base twists off to reveal a twin cavity for batteries. The unit simply pushes onto and pulls off the mount; there are no clips or levers required. Mounting the camera is fairly easy, although you’ll need the right size of screwdriver since no tool is provided. Ring estimates that installation is a 5-10 minute process (there are four screws on the baseplate, plus one to attach the mounting). However, we found it took longer, especially when it came to tightening the grommet around the small, fiddly ball joint with the camera in place. 

Linking the camera to Wi-Fi is straightforward, but the multiple decisions surrounding the settings you want lengthens the process somewhat, especially since they’re all available to toggle later on. An option to choose default settings would be a welcome addition for those who just want to get the Spotlight Cam Pro Battery up and running. A USB charging cable for recharging the battery is included.

Design score: 4.5 / 5

Ring Spotlight Cam Pro Battery performance

•  Night videos clear and in color 
•  Needs reliable far-reaching Wi-Fi for best performance 
•  Limited video viewing without Ring Protect subscription 

On the whole, the Ring Spotlight Cam Pro Battery proved problem-free in terms of monitoring and alerts once it was set up, although keeping it “talking” to our Wi-Fi was an issue. The property where it was installed relies on booster discs to extend the signal outside – and while this has been sufficient for other outdoor tech, this camera didn’t work well on the system. Often simply nudging the camera for a better angle would cause it to lose connectivity. Essentially, you’ll need a solid Wi-Fi signal for the best performance – and you may well find that while the battery doesn’t limit where you install it, connectivity could have a bearing. Ring states that the Spotlight Cam Pro Battery requires a minimum upload speed of 2Mbps for optimal performance.

An existing camera at the property tended to register motion that the Ring didn’t (for example, animals) when we altered its sensitivity to preserve battery – although it did still spot people reliably. We found the Bird’s Eye View function largely redundant in our small outside area – it tended to pick up vehicles driving on the road past the property, resulting in multiple alerts every hour. However, in a home with a large garden or long driveway (its custom Motion Zones extend up to 29ft 6in / 9m), this could be very useful. 

We especially liked its easily activated, ear-piercing 105dB alarm and the crispness of its sound, thanks to noise cancellation. The field of vision was also excellent at 140° horizontal and 80° vertical, allowing a view far beyond the boundary of the property. At night, when activated by motion, the LED lights really did transform the quality of the video, from grainy black-and-white to full color footage. This allowed us to clearly identify urban foxes from cats, for example. However, there’s no way of differentiating animals from something blowing along in the wind, or a vehicle.

While the camera functions without it, a Ring Protect subscription (from £3.49 a month) is required for some of the more useful functionality. Without it, you won’t be able to review videos that you may have missed in real-time, or save them; you’ll only have access to photos for up to 7 days. We found it annoying to have motion registered during the night without any video. You also can’t differentiate between people and motion alerts without a subscription.

Performance score: 3.5 out of 5

Ring Spotlight Cam Pro Battery app

•  Easy to use app 
•  Ability to adjust sensitivity and motion zones 
•  Useful for multiple devices 

As accompanying apps go, Ring attempt is probably one of the most user-friendly around. Key features appear to have been kept to the fore, with each option arriving with an explanation of what it is, or how it impacts monitoring. However, with so many features, there are a fair few options to choose from. This is great for those who like to tailor their tech just so, but less appealing for people who prefer to “fit and forget”. You can adjust privacy zones to block out certain areas, adjust the Bird’s Eye View’ reach, motion frequency and video length, among other things. 

What could be useful, if you have more than one device, is the app’s Modes. These allow you to activate all cameras at once when you’re away, for example, or just the outdoor ones when you’re at home, plus its motion schedule, which enables alerts and recordings while you’re away.

The Spotlight Cam Pro Battery integrates with Alexa, illuminating and sending announcements to Echo devices when motion is detected, plus you can speak to people on camera with some Echo and Fire TV devices.

App score: 5 / 5

Ring Spotlight Cam Pro Battery life

•  Easy to change the battery 
•  Frequent monitoring depletes battery life more quickly 
•  Recharges from flat in 5.5 hours 

There’s no real indication of how long the Spotlight Cam Pro Battery’s battery should last, given that it’s largely dependent on use and the monitoring settings enlisted. Additional batteries state that they can last for months between charges, depending on use and the weather. We found that when set to frequent monitoring, our battery lost 20% of its charge in just three days, suggesting that those who want precise monitoring would be advised to invest in a second or third battery – and be prepared to charge them every fortnight or so. It was disappointing that Ring didn’t see fit to include a second battery, or a bigger battery that holds more charge. Our battery took 5.5 hours to recharge from flat.

Battery life score: 3/5

Should I buy the Ring Spotlight Cam Pro Battery?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

• First reviewed: December 2022

One-minute review

The Ring Video Doorbell 3 is a popular model that's been upgraded over its predecessor, the Ring Video Doorbell 2, with additional security features. It was launched around the same time as the Ring Video Doorbell 3 Plus last year, although that model has since been discontinued for reasons that are unknown.

As is the case with all the best video doorbells, control is through the smartphone app. From there you can live view the street outside, engage in two-way talk, and check out the event history – if you're still within the trial period, that is, or you're a subscription payer. The Doorbell 3 captures live and saved footage in 1080p HD color, and night vision ensures streaming is clear during the darker hours of the day.

We were concerned that our Wi-Fi signal strength wouldn't be sufficient to cope with the model's dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz connectivity requirements, so at the same time we were reviewing the Doorbell 3, we also tested the Chime Pro to help extend our Ring network – and to ensure we could hear the doorbell when it was rung. The latter can be bought separately for $49.99 / £49.99 / AU$79, or bundled in with the Doorbell 3 at the time of purchase (this is the cheaper option). Once connected to Wi-Fi, setup was really easy.

Like other models in Ring's range, the Video Doorbell 3 is available in wired and wireless options. Meant as a replacement for your existing doorbell, the battery-powered model could in fact be used alongside your current doorbell – although it might cause confusion for those coming to your door. The wireless Doorbell 3 has a removable battery, which you pop out for charging; it will need to be recharged every 25 days. Helpfully, Ring includes a little screwdriver device to more easily access the battery; without this tool, it would be tricky. If you've chosen a wired Doorbell 3, this will be synced up to your existing doorbell system.

Ring is an Amazon-owned company so it's hardly surprising that the Video Doorbell 3 can be integrated with Alexa. Having done so, you can set Amazon Alexa-enabled devices to hear custom notifications and use Two-Way Talk through the Echo Dot. You can even launch live video on the Echo Show when the doorbell is activated, and so much more.

It isn't the most subtle of doorbells, but you can buy a new faceplate – available in a range of colors such as Blue Metal, Fire Cracker Red and Galaxy Black – to better match your front door. This can be bought direct from Ring for $14.99 / £14.99 / AU$25. 

While the Video Doorbell 3 is one of the more affordable models in Ring's range at $199.99/ £159.99 / AU$299, you will need to factor in ongoing costs if you're to continue to benefit from all the features on offer. Ring Protect includes extras such as information on missed doorbell rings and motion detection, for example, and will set you back $3.99 / £3.49 / AU$4.95 per month.

Ring Video Doorbell 3 price and availability

• List price: $199.99/£159.99/AU$299
• Available in the US, UK and Australia

The Ring Video Doorbell 3 is a mid-range, mid-priced video doorbell in the US brand's lineup of products. It sits between the Video Doorbell (2nd Gen) priced at $59.99 / £89.99 / AU$149 and the Video Doorbell 4 at $219.99 / £179.99 / AU$329. 

Launched around the same time as the Ring Video Doorbell 3, the Ring Video Doorbell 3 Plus has since been discontinued. Costing $229.99 / £199 / AU$369, the main difference between the two models is that the Doorbell 3 Plus comes with a "pre-roll" feature. In fact, it's the only Ring Video Doorbell to arrive with this feature. This enabled the doorbell to store four seconds of black-and-white video, captured before motion detection was activated, without audio. However, as our review pointed out, the feature only works in good lighting conditions. So, while footage in the dark is saved, we found it extremely difficult to make out.

The Ring Video Doorbell 3 is one of the most popular Ring Video Doorbells available and can be bought direct from Ring, or various resellers such as Amazon, Best Buy and Target.

Price & availability score: 5/5

Ring Video Doorbell 3 design

• Can be hardwired or battery-powered
• Customizable faceplates
• Quick-release battery pack (battery-powered version)

The Ring Video Doorbell 3 is a smart-looking doorbell, yet it might prove too bulky for some households. It's larger than your average doorbell, measuring
5.1 x 2.4 x 1.1 inches / 12.8 x 6.2 x 2.8cm, and will need to be mounted next to the front door. Note that you can buy an interchangeable faceplate direct from Ring for $14.99 / £14.99 / AU$25 in order to switch out the standard gray faceplate for a color that better suits the outside decor of your home.

The Doorbell 3 is relatively easy to install. Download the app (more on this later) and you'll have access to step-by-step instructions on how to mount the unit to the wall. Those who have opted for the battery-powered version of the doorbell can just use the mount and screws included in the box to secure it, but if you have the hard-wired model then this will need to be connected to your existing doorbell.

Note that on the hard-wired model of the Video Doorbell 3, the LED ring around the doorbell button will permanently glow white, switching to blue when the doorbell is pressed. However, the LED ring on the battery-powered Doorbell 3 doesn't illuminate until the button is pressed; you won't even hear it ring inside the home. This is where you'll need the optional Ring Chime Pro, which will not only sound the door bell, but it will also help to boost Wi-Fi connectivity.

The Chime Pro can be hooked up to the Doorbell 3 and other Ring products in the app over your home Wi-Fi. It's powered by plugging it into a main socket, but you'll need to ensure it's positioned in a central location in your home to boost and ride the Wi-Fi.

Included in the box of the battery-powered version of the Ring Video Doorbell 3 is a special screwdriver that grants access to the faceplate for switching it out, and the battery pack for recharging purposes. There's no replacement, so be sure you don't lose it. 

Design: 5/5

Ring Video Doorbell 3 performance

• Clear HD video footage with night vision
• Motion detection and alerts
• Works with Alexa-enabled devices for hands-free control

The Ring Video Doorbell 3 is a fantastic security camera for the front door – and it's easy to use, too, from initial setup through to viewing recorded footage via the app. And it's through the app that you'll receive notifications to your smartphone each time the doorbell is pressed or motion is detected. Those using the battery-powered Doorbell 3 will hear the tone selected on their Ring Chime or Ring Chime Pro.

Tap on a notification and you'll be taken to a view of your front door to see who is outside; here, you'll have the option to engage in two-way talk. Although this works across a dual-band 2.4GHz or 5GHz Wi-Fi network to speed up load times, we found that it still took a few seconds for the notification to connect to the Doorbell 3, even with the Chime Pro in place. If you miss the ring at the door, or if motion is detected, then this will be recorded and you can view it later. However, in order to do this, you'll need to be signed up to Ring Protect once the free trial period has come to an end.

Video and audio was crisp, both during the day and at night. Even the recorded footage was clear, with no pixelation or juddering when watching it back.

The Ring Video Doorbell 3 works with Alexa, too, which means you'll be able to see who is at your door simply by saying: "Alexa, show me my front door". If you have an Echo Dot then you can hear custom notifications or use two-way talk, and if you have an Echo Show then you can even launch live or recorded footage.

Performance: 4.5/5

Ring Video Doorbell 3 app

• Easy to download and use
• Simple to navigate
• Subscription required to access recordings

The Ring app is available for download from the App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android). By following the on-screen instructions, you'll soon be connected to the Ring Video Doorbell 3, granting access to live streaming and various other features such as motion detection, missed doorbell rings and two-way talk.

For the first 30 days you'll be able to access all the features the Ring Video Doorbell 3 has to offer, for free. Once this trial period ends, however, to continue using the doorbell as you have been, you'll need to subscribe to Ring Protect for $3.99 / £3.49 / AU$4.95 per month. This on-going cost isn't unique to the Doorbell 3; it's required for all Ring Video Doorbells. 

In general, we found the app really easy to navigate. The first screen you're presented with is the live stream, plus any other Ring products that you may have synced with the device – we had the Chime Pro, for example. From here you can click through to Event History to view motion detection and any missed rings; simply click through on either activity to view footage. From there you can share videos with friends and family, or save videos to your device. Of course, this is if you're within the free trial period, or have subscribed to Ring Protect.

We found the Video Doorbell 3's two-way talk feature particularly useful. When the doorbell is pressed, you can set it up to receive a notification. If you're not at home, you can click on this notification to view the person at your front door, "answering" it by selecting 'some is at your front door'. Using two-way talk when a delivery was being attempted allowed us to instruct the courier to leave the package in a specified safe place.

App: 4/5

Ring Video Doorbell 3 battery life

• Battery will need a recharge every 25 days
• Takes 6 hours to charge
• Charging cable supplied, but no plug

Ring claims that Video Doorbell 3's battery life can last anywhere between six and twelve months, yet during our two-month testing period, we found that we were having to recharge the battery every 25 days or so. This was under normal use.

On day 18 we received an email to our inbox and notification to our smartphone that the Doorbell 3 had "battery at 30%", advising a recharge. We didn't recharge it at this point, and within seven days the notifications and emails stopped, and so did the Doorbell 3.

The battery pack is quick-release, sliding in-and-out of the main unit. It's secured by a little screw on the underside of the unit, which is released using the screwdriver type tool supplied in the box. It's a small screw, so keep this safe because there's no replacement included.

It took six hours to charge the battery; we did this overnight, when the doorbell is unlikely to be rung. Note that there is a USB charging cable in the box, but no plug, so you'll need to source one yourself. 

Battery life: 3.5/5

Ring Video Doorbell 3 score card

Should I buy?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

• First reviewed: October 2022

Home security brand Ring is expanding end-to-end encryption (also known as E2EE) support to more devices while also introducing a new data transfer feature. It's a welcome security update, but it also forces the deactivation of some useful Ring features.

Previously, E2EE was only available to wired products like the Ring Video Doorbell Pro and Floodlight Cam. Now that support is migrating over to Ring’s wireless cameras and doorbells. However, it’s unknown if everything in the lineup will get it. Nowhere in the announcement does it say whether or not all wireless devices will have the E2EE support; although there are reports stating the support is indeed universal. We reached out to the company to see if it could clear up this confusion. This story will be updated if we hear back.

Update 9-9-2022: A Ring representative confirmed that all wireless cameras and doorbells will have end-to-end encryption. When asked about other products like Ring's security alarms, they couldn't comment on that end.

As for the new data transfer tool, it’s called Deactivated Device State. It allows users to save past recordings from an old Ring device to their account. This way, you don’t have to manually download every single video one by one. Users must stay a Ring subscriber to use this tool, however. Otherwise, they’ll have to download everything to their local computer before the company deletes the videos. 

Instructions on how to save recordings and deactivate devices can be found on Ring’s website. It'll involve updating the Ring mobile app and going into a device's personal settings to keep events.

End-to-end encryption

Either way, if you do have a wireless Ring camera or doorbell, we recommend updating the mobile app to see if the E2EE is available. The company has a set of instructions on its website that detail how to set up end-to-end encryption. Similar to Deactivated Device State, you'll have to update the app and go into the Control Center. From there, activate E2EE, create a passphrase, and then add whichever devices you want.

It's worth enabling E2EE is because, somewhat obviously, it improves Ring Device security. Videos recorded on Ring cameras are uploaded to the company’s cloud storage which, as it turns out, isn’t the most secure. The company has a history of security problems from 1,500 passwords leaking onto the dark web to possibly giving hackers a way to steal Wi-Fi from houses. 

With end-to-end encryption, your recordings have their data protected and unreadable. No one – not Ring, Amazon, hackers, or even the government – can view your encrypted videos. All they’ll get is a jumbled mess of data. Only the Ring user and their connected device can view recorded videos.

That said, there’s a catch to having this level of security. End-to-end encryption on Ring devices actually disables many features including Bird’s Eye View, Virtual Security Guard, Event Timeline, and Alexa Greetings just to name a few. The full list of disabled features can be found on the company website. Users will essentially have to ask themselves whether the better security is worth the loss of convenience. 

Given Ring's history, it may be better to opt for security.

Room for improvement

Expanded E2EE support and the new data transfer feature are great and all, but Ring still has room for improvement. Cybersecurity research firm Checkmarx recently discovered a vulnerability within the Ring Android app that could allow “threat actors to steal identity data including geolocation and camera recordings.” On top of that, it might be possible for someone to upload malware to an Android phone via this vulnerability and steal even more sensitive data, including addresses.

And what’s scary is that theRing  Android app has more than 10 million downloads. Now that end-to-end encryption is available to most of RIng’s offerings, perhaps it’s time for the company to patch the holes in its own security and stop the constant leaks.

If you’re interested in beefing up your home security, be sure to check out TechRadar’s list of the best home security systems of 2022.

Video doorbell company Ring wants to drag apartment building intercoms and buzzers into the 21st century with its new remote-control-capable Ring Intercom.

The new DIY system connects to standard apartment intercom systems via a wire and the Ring app over Wi-Fi, adding features like remote alerts and the ability to buzz someone into your apartment from almost anywhere in the world.

Unveiled at IFA 2022 in Berlin, the Ring Intercom is battery-operated, and ships with a removable and rechargeable battery, as well as a backup. Initially it'll go on sale for £179.99 in the UK and Germany, with availability in the US set for sometime next year (no US pricing was available at the time of writing – Ring told us to expect that info next year). Ring says there won't be any subscription fee for the service. 

With the Ring Intercom added to an existing apartment intercom, you'll be able to speak to anyone who buzzes your apartment, even if you're not at home. The alert comes through the app and opens an encrypted communication line between you and your visitor standing outside your apartment's front door. You can then choose to remotely grant them access to the building.

In addition to remote unlocking capabilities, the Ring Intercom will offer shared user capabilities, so that anyone with the app and that you've granted access to can buzz themselves into the building. Similarly, you'll be able to offer guest access to someone who only needs temporary access to the building.

Ring Intercom will work with Alexa-enabled devices (the audio from outside could come though, for instance, your Amazon Echo). And, in keeping with the Amazon theme you'll be able to authorize Amazon delivery people to buzz themselves in and leave your packages inside, instead of leaving them, for instance, out in the rain.

Even though Ring claims that the Ring Intercom is compatible with most apartment intercom systems, you'll still have to run a compatibility checker through Ring.com.

Ring adds that the installation requires no structural changes, though we'll be interested to see how landlords feel about you adding this equipment to what is essentially their security system. Based on the photos we've seen, though, the self-contained box is installed in your apartment, and connects directly to your wall-based apartment intercom and buzzer system. A Ring representative told us that Ring Intercom uses 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, which should make it compatible with virtually all home networks.

Apartment life is an attractive target for Ring. Recent studies have revealed there are some 40.6 million apartments in Germany and 24.2 million in the UK, and 1.6 million apartment buildings in the US.

Analysis: Ring around us

Ring has methodically drawn, well, a smart security ring around every facet of our lives, starting with video doorbells, and adding security cameras, alarm systems, doorbell chimes, and now an apartment intercom system.

It ties much of this together with a somewhat controversial neighborhood network security system, with Ring users receiving notifications about security alerts from other nearby Ring systems. In addition, Ring Doorbells regularly record activities in front of homes, often without people's knowledge or permission. The practice has become so popular that Amazon is producing a new show called Ring Nation, which will feature the most interesting clips from its network of Ring Video Doorbells. 

It'll be interesting to see if Ring seeks to build a similar library of entertaining apartment intercom interactions – since these are encrypted, it might mean they can never be shared outside the system. Unless, of course, both parties agree, and then a future show called Ring Talk Nation seems possible.

The fact that Ring is releasing the Ring Intercom first in Europe might indicate that it wants to test reaction to the new device, and get some real-world telemetry on how well the system lives up to its claim that it can work with most apartment intercom systems.

TechRadar is headed to Berlin for IFA 2022, which runs from September 2-6. It's one of the biggest tech expos of the year, and alongside global brands like Samsung and LG, who make everything from laptops to TVs as well as devices for the home, smart home and appliance specialists like SharkNinja and Ring will be showing off their wares.

From a Homes point of view, we're expecting exciting new product launches and new category announcements. We're also looking forward to seeing, and getting hands-on with, the latest innovations at the various show-arounds and live product demos.

We're still finalizing our itinerary for event, but we've already pinned down a few key brands that we'll be meeting with. Here's who – and what – we're looking forward to seeing.

Who are we looking forward to seeing at IFA Berlin 2022?

Arçelik

The global home appliances manufacturer, Arçelik, will be showcasing innovations from across their 12 brands, which include Grundig and Beko. Company CEO Hakan Bulgurlu will give a keynote speech on Friday, the first day of the convention, where he'll focus on the climate crisis and his vision for addressing such challenges. 

We're particularly excited to see new water efficiency solutions from Beko, which may drive real change in homes around the world. We're also keen to hear about innovations for small appliances, such as vacuum cleaners, coffee machines, and hairdryers.

SharkNinja

The makers of Ninja blenders and Shark vacuum cleaners are going to be launching a new category and a new product. As fans of the Ninja Foodi Health Grill & Air Fryer and the Shark Bagless Cylinder Pet Vacuum CZ250UKT, we can't wait to see what the next offering from the company might be.

Ring

Famous for their video doorbells, such as the Ring Doorbell Pro 2 and Video Doorbell 4, the Ring company is one of the go-to brands for smart home security. It has been some time since the May 2021 Doorbell 4 release, the latest in their current product lineup, so we think there might be a new product launched at the convention.

Samsung

Everyone is familiar with this tech and appliance juggernaut, the makers of many different types of products including phones, TVs, robot vacuum cleaners, and washing machines. 

We recently covered the Samsung Bespoke Jet so we're looking forward to (hopefully) hearing more about their home appliance lineup. We suspect any innovation they present will help us live more connected lives.

Anyone else?

We're alsoexcited to meet up with the likes of AEG, Swan and Yale to hear about what they've been working on and their innovative plans for the future. There will be a good mix here of large appliances, such as washing machines, tumble dryers and dishwashers, and small appliances, such as fans, air fryers, and smart home locks.

Prior to IFA 2022, on August 31, the Smart Home League event is scheduled to take place. Also in Berlin, this event will be held on the rooftop terrace in one of the city's hottest neighborhoods. We can't wait to hear from tado°, Yale, Philips Hue, and the CSA.

What are we most looking forward to at IFA?

Aside from getting our hair styled with SharkNinja on Friday, September 1, we're looking forward to seeing the latest innovations.

If we're in a position to try out any products than that'll be equally great, so we can then report back and perhaps even call it in to review at home.

How long will we be at IFA for?

The event is officially open from September 2-6 but we (our Homes Editor) will be there from August 31-September 3 to attend press events and test as many products as possible.

The Android app of Ring, the Amazon-owned firm that offers doorbells and indoor and outdoor surveillance cameras, had a vulnerability that could have allowed threat actors to steal identity data including geolocation and camera recordings. 

Cybersecurity researchers from Checkmarx found the vulnerability in the com.ringapp/com.ring.nh.deeplink.DeepLinkActivity activity, noting that this was, "implicitly exported in the Android Manifest and, as such, was accessible to other applications on the same device.

"These other applications could be malicious applications that users could be convinced to install. This activity would accept, load, and execute web content from any server, as long as the Intent’s destination URI contained the string “/better-neighborhoods/”.

Stealing sensitive data

In other words, a malicious app installed on an Android device could access sensitive data generated by the Ring app, not only geolocation and camera recordings, but also full names, emails, phone numbers, and postal addresses. 

The Android Ring app has more than 10 million downloads so far.

Checkmarx even took it a step further, using Rekognition (machine learning image and video analysis tool) to automate the analysis of the stolen video content and extract additional useful information, such as faces, text, public figures, information from computer screens, intel on people’s movements, etc.

Checkmarx notified Amazon of the vulnerability on May 1, this year, and less than a month later, on May 27, the company pushed a fix. Therefore, from version .51 (3.51.0 for Android and 5.51.0 for iOS), the vulnerability has been mitigated. 

Amazon has seen it as a high-severity issue and moved fast to issue a patch. 

“We issued a fix for supported Android customers on May 27, 2022, soon after the researchers’ submission was processed. Based on our review, no customer information was exposed. This issue would be extremely difficult for anyone to exploit, because it requires an unlikely and complex set of circumstances to execute,” the company concluded.

• Here's our rundown of the best video doorbells to let you see and speak to anyone who comes to your doorstep

Whether you're new to the world of smart home tech or you just aren't confident in the set-up stage, getting a new gadget to try can be a little overwhelming at first. Add to that the vague instructions in the box, and you may end up putting off installing your device for weeks. Our guide to how to install a Ring doorbell will hopefully help you get over the hump.

The best video doorbells may look similar but vary from brand to brand. Even within the Ring range, the specifics of installing each model can be slightly different depending on whether it is battery-powered or wireless or the surface on which you want to mount it. While we've tried to cover as much as possible in this guide, you can also take a look at our article on how video doorbells work for more information.

Keep reading for a step-by-step guide on how to get your new smart doorbell up and running, whether you're a renter looking to do as little damage as possible or a homeowner who wants a more permanent solution.

1. Get prepared

Unpack your doorbell and get familiar with its contents, which will likely include the main device, a charging cable, screws and other fittings, and a small screwdriver. The specifics will depend on which model you have, but all of them will be similar.

We recommend laying everything out before you start and choosing a vague place outside for your doorbell to go, so you're not scrambling later.

2. Power your doorbell

If your Ring doorbell is a battery-powered model, you thankfully won't need to fiddle around with any wiring at this stage. Instead, you will have to wait around a little while so that the internal battery can charge. For the Ring Video Doorbell (2nd Gen), you can plug the charger into the port at the back, and for the Ring Doorbells 3 and 4, press the release for the battery pack and charge this.

A small light should be on top of the device that turns green once the battery has been fully charged.

How do you know if your doorbell is battery-powered?

All Ring doorbells have the option to be hardwired, but if you prefer a battery-powered model, you have the following options:

Ring Video Doorbell (2nd Gen)
Ring Video Doorbell 3
Ring Video Doorbell 4

These doorbells can be used wirelessly, with a built-in rechargeable battery. The 2nd Gen model will need to be removed entirely from the door for charging, while the 3rd and 4th Gen doorbells have a removable pack that can be released and reinserted when required.

If your Ring is hardwired

The Ring Video Doorbell Pro, Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 and Ring Video Doorbell Wired must be hardwired.

If replacing an existing wired bell, you should turn off your doorbell's power for safety before going further. Then you can take your old doorbell off and carefully disconnect the wires. Note: you may need an additional transformer to replace an old doorbell, so check your chosen model's fine print.

What if you don't have existing doorbell wiring?

Ring allows you to 'hardwire' your doorbell from scratch with its plug-in adapter. This works with an ordinary indoor socket with a wire going out to the doorbell. Otherwise, you can call out for professional installation.

3. Download the Ring app

The Ring app is where all the action happens, and you should ensure you're set up before mounting your device. You will find the app in your phone's store.

Once downloaded, you will need to create an account. This account can host any Ring products, so you won't need to re-register if you add a security camera or chime from the brand later.

Speaking of the chime, Ring sells these separately, so if you don't want to rely on your phone to tell you when someone's at the door, you may consider the Ring Chime Pro. This can be easily added to your account and linked to your doorbell.

Once your account is ready, select the 'Set Up a Device' option, followed by 'Doorbells'. The app will then direct you to scan the QR code on the front of the device (sometimes underneath the faceplate if you're having trouble spotting it).

Scan the code with your smartphone camera, and you should be taken to the next stage. Enable location tracking (required for some features), so your account knows where you are and customize your device's name.

4. Connect your doorbell to your home WiFi

There is an orange button on the back of your doorbell. Push this and the light on the front should start spinning. Once it is, tap 'Continue' in the app. It will then ask to join your home WiFi network or, if you are an Android user, this step is automatic. Input your password.

And you should be ready to go!

5. Mount your doorbell

It is recommended that you put your new doorbell about 1.2m from the ground, but you should use your own judgment based on things such as the length of your driveway or whether your front door has steps leading up to it.

Put the mounting bracket in your chosen position and mark where the screws will go. There is also a level tool included to get things perfectly aligned. If you are mounting to brick, concrete or stucco, you can use the plastic anchors and drill bit included in the box, though you won't need the anchors for a wooden surface.

Then use the screws to secure the mount to the wall at the same points you marked initially. There's a tab on the mount that you can use to slot the Ring doorbell into place before using the smaller screw to make sure it doesn't budge.

These security screws may look slightly different depending on your model, but they essentially function to keep the faceplate in place.

If your Ring doorbell is hardwired

Before attaching the mount or device, ensure you have fed the existing doorbell wires through the holes in the bracket. After securing the mount to the wall, connect these wires to the screws on the back of the Ring doorbell. Then you can follow the steps above.

Read our guide to Ring Video Doorbell Pro vs Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 if you're struggling to choose between wired models.

Don't want to (or can't) drill holes?

If you're a renter and don't want to drill holes into the outside of your home, there are other - completely reversible - ways to mount your Ring doorbell. The trick is to get high-quality mounting tape that won't wear out quickly and lead to a broken doorbell. We have successfully used this method, but there is no guarantee that you will have the same results. So to be safe, we recommend mounting it in the traditional way.

Popular smart home video doorbell camera company Ring is adding features, raising service fees, and making some customers very angry.

Ring is expanding its Protect Basic Plan, allowing people to save videos up to 180 days, introducing discounts for other security devices, and expanding bulk video downloads to 50 at once. These three additions will be released in July 2022, and there are four more features in the pipeline. 

Those additional features include package alerts, smart alerts for cars and animals, sound detection (such as a Ring camera detecting glass breaking), and custom event alerts. With custom alerts, you’ll be able to create a unique notification for your home. For example, if you live in a home with a gate that is frequently left open, you can create a custom alert to notify you when that happens.

Ring has no release date for these features other than “coming soon.”

Overall, it’s a potentially useful collection of updates for Ring customers, but there is a catch. Ring is increasing its prices and this has drawn the ire of some customers.

Starting July 1, Ring will increase its Basic plan price from an even $3 to $3.99. This means subscribers will be paying $39.99 for an entire year. The Plus and Pro plans will be untouched and not see any price increase or new features added. People on the Ring subreddit noted that the changes are coming to the UK too. A Ring representative was able to confirm that Basic plan subscribers will now pay 3.49 pounds a month (34.99 pounds annually).

Some subscribers on social media are now complaining that they’re no longer getting a good enough service for the price. The Basic plan only covers one doorbell or camera, while the Plus plan (the next cheapest plan) covers every device in your home for $10. Plus, subscribers will be paying for features that won’t come out for a while.

 Don't knock

People across social media have been understandably angry at Ring for the unexpected subscription service price increase. On Twitter, one customer complained that they’re seeing a 33% price hike for features they don’t even want.

Going back to the subreddit, one person cynically points out this is all a ploy to get more people away from the Basic plan and onto the more expensive plans. There is a free plan that still gives coverage to Ring cameras, but the main draw of the paid plan is being able to record and save videos. 

Now some customers are looking for alternatives. Many have stated that they’re going to ditch Ring and look for a better deal. If you’re one of these people, TechRadar has a list of the best video doorbells with several non-Ring suggestions. 

Ring and Google Nest are two of the most popular brands in the video doorbell market, even for those new to smart home devices. These doorbells can help give peace of mind, especially for anyone away from their homes for long periods, by allowing users to speak to visitors at the door in order to divert a package to a neighbor when needed.

Since smart home devices first appeared around 2012, they've become more affordable, offering a huge range of the best home security cameras and the best video doorbells to choose from. With apps for iPhone or Android, it's easy to see who's at your front door or home, either through dedicated apps by brands or through Apple's Home and Google Home apps.

Ring, Nest, and other companies offer features such as two-way audio to speak to visitors remotely, night-vision video, and even doorbells with dual cameras — such as the EZVIZ EP3x Pro Doorbell.

For first-time buyers, Ring's Video Doorbell 4 and Google Nest are the standout choices — but which is better? With this in mind, we've tested both in-depth, so read on for our verdict on which one comes out on top.

Ring vs Nest: Key Similarities

• Both have wired and battery-powered options across the range
• Ring and Google Nest are both compatible with Alexa
• You can build out your smart home security system with all the products in the range (so long as they are by the same brand)

Ring vs Nest: Key Differences

• Ring has the upper hand in terms of product choice with 8 video doorbells and 3 security cameras, whereas Google Nest has 2 video doorbells and 3 security cameras
• Google Nest works with Alexa and Google Assistant, whereas Ring is Alexa-compatible only
• Both brands have a slight difference in their field of view. For example, Nest video doorbells have a field of view from 145 to 160 degrees, whereas Ring’s doorbells range from 150 degrees in the Video Doorbell Pro 2 to 180 degrees in the second, third, and fourth-generation Video Doorbell.

Ring vs Nest: Range

Google Nest currently offers a much smaller range than Ring in both home security cameras and video doorbells. The brand currently offers just three cameras; there’s the Nest Cam (battery), which is designed for indoor or outdoor use; the Nest Cam (wired), which is purely for indoor use; and finally, there’s the Nest Cam with floodlight (wired), which is designed for outdoors and illuminates a wide area when the motion sensor is triggered.

Nest also offers two video doorbells, the Nest Doorbell (battery) and the Nest Doorbell (wired), previously known as the Nest Hello. 

The Ring range is much more extensive. It offers eight video doorbells ranging from the entry-level Video Doorbell (Wired) to the top-of-the-range Video Doorbell Pro 2 and includes both wired and wireless options. 

For cameras, there are Stick Up Cams, Spotlight Cams, and Floodlight Cams. The Stick Up Cam is a go-anywhere HD camera available in wired, wireless, and solar versions, as well as with an ethernet option, and the Floodlight Cams are both wired and deliver illumination to a wide area. Spotlight cams are smaller with an integrated 

Ring vs Nest: Price

So just how much with these home security cameras and video doorbells set you back? Ring's range of cameras is slightly more affordable than Nest's, but the prices are pretty evenly matched for its top-of-the-range devices.

For security cameras, the Google Nest Cam (wired) is the brand's entry-level device and is priced at $179.99 / £177.99 / AU$169.99, while the Nest Cam (battery) will set you back $179.99 / £179.99 /AU$329. Finally, the Google Nest Cam with Floodlight is priced at $279.99 / £269.99 / AU$549.99.

When it comes to video doorbells, the Nest Doorbell (battery) is slightly more affordable than the Nest Doorbell (wired), costing $179.99 / £179.99 / AU$329, compared to $229.99 / £229.99 (around AU$325). However, the Nest Doorbell (wired) isn't currently available in Australia. This isn't surprising given the Nest Doorbell (wired) can capture higher-resolution footage, has a wider field of view, and offers an 8x zoom too.

Because Ring has more products, it also has a larger price list. The Indoor Cam, a mains-powered entry-level camera, costs $59.99 / £49.99 / AU$94. Next up is the Stick Up Cam, which can be used inside or outdoors and comes in both wired and wireless options. It is priced at $99.99 / £89.99 / AU$139, or if you opt for a version with a solar panel, it will set you back $139.99 / £129.99 / AU$199 for solar.

Still keeping track? Next, we have the Spotlight Cam Plus, which again comes in a wired or wireless option but is designed to be used outside and comes with a built-in light that can be set to illuminate when motion is detected. It costs $169.99 / £149.99 / AU$289, although this rises to $229.99 / £229.99 / AU$339 for the solar-powered version. 

The final option in Ring's security camera range is the Floodlight Cam Wired Plus, which has not one but two spotlights built in. It is priced at $199.99 / £179.99 / AU$299, while the Pro model, which adds HDR to the mix for clearer video no matter how good or bad the lighting, costs $229.99 / £219.99 / AU$379.

Now let's look at the brand's video doorbells. The $99.99 / £49.99 / AU$119.99 Video Doorbell Wired is the most affordable device offered by Ring. However, for battery power, you'll need to fork out $99.99 / £89.99 / AU$131.99 for the Video Doorbell 2nd Gen. 

The Video Doorbell Plus is $149.99 / £178.99 / AU$299.99 and the Video Doorbell 4 is $199.99 / £179.99 / AU$329.99. The Video Doorbell Pro is $229.99 / £159.99 / AU$279.99 and the Video Doorbell Elite is $349.99 / £349.99 / AU$499.99.

These prices don't include the optional cloud storage and extra features offered by the brand's subscription services. For example, Ring Protect starts at $3 / £2.50 / AU$4 per month for one device and $10 / £8 / AU$15 for your entire home. Nest Aware is a flat $6 / £5 / AU$9 per month for as many devices as you like or $12 / £10 / AU$18 for Nest Aware Plus, which has longer storage.

Ring vs Nest: Video and Audio

You don’t need to spend a lot of money to get good quality video: even the cheapest Ring camera, the Indoor Cam, offers 1080p HD video. With the exception of the Spotlight Cam, you also get two-way audio so you can communicate with visitors or confuse your pets. The cameras also offer night vision. On cameras without built-in illumination that’s infra-red, which has a reasonably long range and displays in shades of grey; on cameras with built-in lighting, you can also get color night vision, which makes it easier to identify items, clothing, and so on but is much shorter range.

All Nest cameras have 1080p HD video and night vision, two-way audio, and HDR (High Dynamic Range) for clearer video.

When comparing cameras, it’s essential to look at the field of view: this is how wide an area the camera can see, and it’s particularly important with video doorbells as they are usually much closer to the subject. For example, Nest doorbells have a field of view from 145 to 160 degrees, depending on the model (the bigger the number, the wider the view). In comparison, Ring’s doorbells range from 150 degrees in the Video Doorbell Pro 2 to 180 degrees in the second, third, and fourth-generation Video Doorbell.

Ring vs Nest: Features

All of these cameras are designed to integrate with smart home technology. As you’d expect from a company owned by Amazon, Ring products integrate very well with Alexa and the Alexa app. You can also communicate with them via Google Assistant, although it’s a little more tricky: you need both the Ring app, the Google Assistant App, and the Ring Action for Google Assistant. This enables you to start recording and review your last notification.

For the Google-owned Nest, it’s the same but in reverse: it’s fully integrated with Google Assistant, but you can add a Nest skill to Alexa. This enables you to show your Nest camera on an Amazon Echo Show, but not all cameras are compatible: the battery versions of the Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell won’t work with the Alexa skill.

In addition to their smart home integration, the cameras here have smart features in their own right. For example, Nest video doorbells have smart alerts that can tell the difference between moving objects and people; the Nest Doorbell (battery) can also recognize parcels, animals, and vehicles. Likewise, the Nest Cameras’ smart alerts differentiate between motion, people, cars, and animals, and they can also continue recording for an hour if there’s a power cut. You also get three hours of free online recording without paying for a subscription. 

The Ring cameras all offer motion detection with customizable zones, enabling you to disable motion detection so that your pets or passing traffic won’t trigger a notification. In the case of the cameras with built-in lights, you can also create separate rules for the lights. The more advanced cameras have more advanced motion detection, so for example, the Floodlight Cam Wired Pro has 3D motion detection and a “bird’s eye view” that gives you more information about the motion detected.

With both Nest and Ring, you can get additional features with a security plan subscription. For example, Ring Protect will store your video for 30 days and enables you to save and share video footage, while Nest Aware gives you 30 days of event storage (except for the Nest Doorbell battery), which only records video when the camera is triggered; the more expensive Nest Aware Plus doubles the storage time and adds 10 days of 24/7 video storage.

Ring vs Nest: Verdict

These are both very impressive and flexible security systems, but the choice will largely depend on two things: what smart home technology you already have, if any, and how much you want to spend. Nest has the edge when it comes to technology, but Ring beats it on price.

If you already have smart home equipment, Ring works best with Alexa, and Nest works best with Google Assistant. Unfortunately, neither platform currently works with Apple’s HomeKit, although their respective apps are available for iPhones and iPads, so Apple users can still control them.

As much as price isn’t the only consideration when it comes to wireless security cameras, we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that Amazon prices its Ring products very aggressively and offers them with significant discounts during every one of its sales events. So if this is your first step into smart home technology, Ring is the one to go for if the price is your priority or if you intend to buy multiple cameras for indoors and out.

Ring has just launched its new Ring Pan-Tilt Mount, specifically designed for the Stick Up Cam. The remote-controlled camera stand is designed to give your Stick Up Cam a better view of its surroundings simply by being attached to the device as part of your smart home security setup.

The Ring Pan-Tilt Mount offers the Stick Up Cam a 340-degree horizontal rotation and a 60-degree vertical tile, all controllable from the Ring app's Live View feature. The new panoramic view expands the Stick Up Cam's default 130-degree static field of view, and could be extremely useful for catching any blind spots your camera was previously unable to cover.

The Ring Pan-Tilt Mount is available to buy right now on Ring's official store for $44.99 / £34.99 individually. The accessory can also be bought with an indoor/outdoor power adapter for $54.99 / £44.99, or bundled with a Stick Up Cam for $129.99 / £109.99.

The Stick Up Cam requires only a few minutes of setup to make it compatible with the Pan-Tilt Mount. When it's ready, accessing its features is a relatively straightforward process. It can all be done via the Ring app, wherein you'll need to select the Live View option, followed by Rotate. You can even set a default position for the Pan-Tilt Mount, allowing the device to automatically reorient itself once you're finished manually viewing its surroundings.

As you'd expect, the Pan-Tilt Mount can be used both indoors and out due to its weather-resistant design, and either placed on a flat surface or mounted to a wall, depending on your preference.

Power options for the device are quite robust, too. If you already own the Stick Up Cam Plug-In, then an attached Pan-Tilt Mount will be powered by that device without needing any extra sources.

The Pan-Tilt Mount is also compatible with both the Stick Up Cam Battery and Stick Up Cam Solar if they're paired with the Indoor/Outdoor Power Adapter, also available to buy on Ring's official store.

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Being able to check what’s happening at your property when you’re not around was once a luxury reserved for only the most affluent members of society, as CCTV systems came with a hefty price tag and often needed professional installation. You also had to deal with the fact you might have more than a few cables running through your home. 

The best video doorbells and home security cameras have made keeping an eye on your home more accessible, as they can be self-installed, use Wi-Fi rather than an intricate network of wires running from room-to-room and are far more affordable. 

But there’s more to video doorbells than just home security, as Google and Ring are keen to show. You can now add some Halloween-related features to your devices that can bring some spooky fun to your home. 

Ring Video Doorbells can be set to emit a number of spooky sounds including a creaking door, a screeching cat, and chilling organ tones. Meanwhile, Google has added the ability to change the ringtone of its Google Nest Doorbell (battery) and the Nest Doorbell (wired), which is the new name for the Nest Hello, to seasonal tones including an evil laugh, a howling werewolf, and even a cackling witch.

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Fun as well as functional

One in four homes in the US and the UK owns a video doorbell, according to Strategy Analytics, and there’s no denying they are great security devices. But Google and Ring are helping to show these smart home devices can be just as fun as the best smart speakers or smart displays, too.  

Ring has gone one step further by also offering some Halloween-themed Quick Replies – the pre-recorded messages can be played to whoever is on your doorstep through the doorbell’s speaker. These are usually messages such as, “Please leave the package outside” or “We can’t answer the door right now”. 

However, for the Halloween period, options include temporary phrases such as:  “Boo! Leave us a message if you dare,” followed by an evil laugh. You will need a Ring Protect subscription to access the Quick Replies feature, however.

Opinion: Halloween hijinks are here 

I’m not quite as invested in Halloween, but when it comes to the holiday I do like to indulge in some Christmas spirit, and having previously owned a Ring Video Doorbell, I usually changed the sound it makes to “Ho,Ho,Ho” or to play Jingle Bells, in a bid to provide a bit of festive cheer to those ringing my doorbell. It makes sense Ring and Google have expanded the options to cover Halloween, and hopefully in the future, there will be even more seasonal tones to choose from. 

Although I won’t be rushing to set my doorbell to play “Here comes the sun” during Summer, just as I draw the line when it comes to having my smart lights glow green and red during the holidays – there is such a thing as too much fun. 

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