Ring is the brand behind many of the best video doorbells on the market. The brand makes a range of hardwired and battery-powered doorbells, but most of them look roughly the same, so figuring out which one you need can be tricky. Below you'll find a straightforward guide to your options, including the key differences to look out for, whether hardwired and battery is better, and how the specs compare across the models.

These doorbells are widely available to buy from various retailers, but Ring's parent company is Amazon, so that's generally your best bet for the lowest prices. There's an Amazon Prime Day coming up (June 23-26) and we're pretty confident we'll see some strong discounts across the Ring range, so now's a good time to shop.

Read on for a closer look at your Ring video doorbell options, and all the information you need to figure out which one's right for your home.

US — Ring doorbell options

UK — Ring doorbell options

Battery vs hardwired Ring doorbells: which should I buy?

The first thing you'll need to decide when picking up a Ring doorbell is whether you want a battery powered or hardwired model. There's also the option of using a plug-in adapter with one of the hardwired doorbells, which lets you connect it to a regular power outlet if you don't have doorbell wiring already in place.

The general consensus online is quite strongly in favor of hardwired options. Although these are slightly more involved to install than a battery powered bell, if your have a standard doorbell/transformer setup (with 16-24V) already in place, swapping in the Ring model should be relatively straightforward. Many people will be able to do it themselves, but you could also get a professional in.

The main complaint around the battery options is that they're slower to respond and the video clips are shorter than on the hardwired versions, in a bid to save power. That, and you'll have to remember to charge them up every few weeks. Ring does sell solar charger mounts ($44.99 / £39.99), but they will need to be in a relatively sunny spot, with 3-4 hours of direct sunlight a day, to make a difference.

What's the difference between the different Ring doorbells?

Once you've decided on battery or mains-powered, your next decision is which model to opt for. There are standard, Plus and Pro options to choose from, as well as a super-pricey Elite wired option. One key difference is the image quality — cheaper models offer 2K picture, whereas the pricier models will serve up the much clearer and more zoomable 4K. More expensive models also have more advanced night vision, which might be important if you're dealing with nocturnal disturbances.

Also look at the Wi-Fi setup — the basic Ring doorbells only support 2.4GHz connection, whereas more advanced options will work with 5GHz Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi 6. That could mean a more reliable connection.

Key specs compared

Below, I've pulled all the main specs into tables for you to compare. Yes, that is tables plural, because the US and UK ranges are ever-so-slightly different. I'll start with the US specs.

Note that all options have two-way talking, head-to-toe view, a weather-resistant build. With a subscription, all offer package alerts.

Now for the UK Ring Video Doorbell models and their main specs:

What's a Ring subscription and do I need one?

With any of the Ring doorbells, you have the option of upgrading your experience with a monthly subscription. The primary features this adds are video playback for up to 180 days, and smart alerts (for people / packages / vehicles). There's a Ring Multi subscription if you have more than one device to support, and a Pro subscription that offers video descriptions. You can find out more at Ring's Subscription plan page.

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).

Sky has mastered all things TVs and broadband, and now it’s stepping into the world of smart home with its latest venture, Sky Smart Home — a service that could challenge rivals such as Ring and Blink.

The Smart Home Plan is Sky’s entry-level package, which unlocks advanced features including cloud storage for recordings, Smart Alerts, Activity Zones, and more. There’s also the new Smart Home Plan+ that allows you to add extra devices including the Indoor Camera, Leak Pack, or Motion Pack — taking your smart home ecosystem to the next level.

Sounds quite similar to Ring’s way of things, right? That’s pretty much what Sky is trying to do here, as it declared that this service will save you over £100 vs if you were to opt for Ring. But how does it compare to one of the best video doorbells out there?

Sky Smart Home vs Ring Video Doorbell

The main thing we need to address is the price point. Sky’s Smart Home Plan gets you a video doorbell and a chime for an upfront cost of £15, and then requires a £5 monthly subscription fee which gives you access to its slew of additional functions. This is required for a minimum term of 24 months, so if you want to cancel your commitment before the end of your contract you’ll be issued early termination fees.

As for its rival, a Ring video doorbell subscription will cost you the same amount (Ring Solo covers one device for £4.99 a month, or £49.99 for a year) and there’s no maximum commitment period, but the upfront costs are significantly more expensive. For example, the standard Ring Battery Video Doorbell is priced at £99.99, while its more advanced models such as the Ring Video Doorbell Pro can reach a price point as high as £179.99 but has improved features such as color night vision.

When it comes to the roster of features for both models, there’s a difference in scope and quality for sure, but if you’re a video doorbell newbie or you’re just after a simple model that will do the job, this shouldn’t matter too much.

As mentioned, Sky’s video doorbell package offers just-below surface-level features from 1080p full HD (1920 × 1080) with HDR video recording to clip sharing, to custom Activity Zones and 30 days of cloud storage. Additionally, you can access two-way talk through the Smart Home app and night vision with an infrared sensor of up to 10 metres.

Its rival does have the upper-hand on the features front, allowing you to access basic features such as live video footage without the need for a subscription. While its best features are locked behind the paywall, but some are slightly better than Sky, such as 1,440 x 1,440 video footage resolution, a staggering 180 days of cloud storage, and color night vision viewing to say the least.

With all things considered, Sky's video doorbell would cost you £135 (including the £15 up-front cost and £5 monthly fee) if you were to stick out the full 24 months, whereas Ring would be £219.75 once you've factored in the £99.99 up-front cost and £4.99 monthly subscription for 24 months. If you were to purchase two annual subscriptions however (£49.99 a year), that would bring the total down to just under £200 for two years.

If you're sticking to a budget and can live without all the bells and whistles, the Sky Smart Home Plan is the clear winner — if you know you won't change your mind and are committed to the 24-month agreement.

• Familiar Faces sends detailed notifications that tell you exactly who's calling
• It can store names and faces of up to 50 people, and is tied to your account
• It's rolling out now for Ring Pro and Ring Pro Intelligence subscribers

Ring has launched a new feature for your video doorbell and security cameras, which will let you know exactly who's calling at a glance. When activated, Familiar Faces will send you notifications including the name of the visitor, so you don't have to check the video footage yourself.

Familiar Faces can identify up to 50 people, which according to Ring, is similar to the number of individuals that the human brain can recognise.

Usefully, you can also choose not to receive notifications when your doorbell or camera spots a particular person. For example, you might choose not to be informed when your partner is coming and going, or if a gardener or window cleaner is working around your home. You can still get an alert if your device detects other people in your Familiar Faces list, or a stranger.

Putting names to faces

Familiar Faces is rolling out now in the UK for people with a Ring Pro or Pro Intelligence subscription. The feature supports both 2K and 4K cameras and doorbells, as well as selected HD models.

You'll receive a notification when Familiar Faces is available for your device, but you'll need to enable it manually if you'd like to try it. Your directory of familiar people is secured inside your account, and is encrypted for security. You're in control, and can add, edit, and remove people from the list any time.

For more details, take a look at Ring's official blog post.

• 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 is rolling out a new feature to help prevent duplicate notifications
• AI Single Alert ensures you're only notified about a particular event once
• It's available for all existing Ring doorbells and security cameras

Ever been annoyed by excessive notifications from your video doorbell or home security camera? Ring has just launched a solution that uses AI to condense related alerts together so you only receive a single message when an event takes place.

Back in June, Ring launched Ring Video Descriptions, which use AI to identify what triggered your doorbell or camera, and describe it using text so you can see what's happening at a glance. If you know what's going on, and were expecting it, you can dismiss the notification without having to watch the recording.

These notifications are fine for something brief like a person arriving at the door, or someone loitering by a window, but it's not ideal for situations like your kids playing in the garden or a gardener trimming a hedge, which could trigger your camera multiple times.

AI Single Alert takes things a step further by analysing Video Descriptions that are generated, and grouping together ones that are very similar so you're not disturbed unnecessarily.

Knock, knock...

AI Single Alert should work much better than Apple Intelligence summaries, which used to interpret multiple alerts from the Ring app as meaning there were multiple people waiting at the front door.

"When I first installed the beta, maintenance was working on my apartment for a few hours going in and out, I gasped when I looked at my phone near the end of the day and it said '47 people are at your front door,'" wrote one Reddit user. soon after Apple Intelligence Summaries rolled out.

Apple Intelligence making me think I’m gonna get sprung with an intervention when I just walked past my front door a few times. from r/iphone

AI Single Alert is compatible with all existing Ring doorbells and cameras. It rolled out in the US last month, and is now available to Ring Premium subscribers in the UK. Not sure which Ring membership plan is right for you? Take a look at our complete guide to Ring subscriptions for details of the different tiers, and prices for each one.

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 running a competition to win video doorbells and a £1,000 voucher
• It was inspired by five boys who went viral singing for their neighbours
• Record yourself singing a carol to enter, and Ring will donate £10 to charity

You can win a £1,000 Amazon voucher and free video doorbells for your whole street this week by sharing a recording of yourself (plus family and friends, if you like) singing a traditional Christmas carol.

Ring has launched a competition called RingAndSing, inspired by five schoolboys from Denny in Scotland, who decided to spread some festive cheer by going door-to-door singing for their neighbours one evening. Jack Campbell, Dylan Thompson, Cameron Bourne, Liam Phillips, and Ollie Shearer were recorded on a Ring doorbell giving a performance of Wham's Last Christmas, and signing off with "Bye, love you."

The recording went viral after the doorbell's owner, Erin Chalmers, shared it on TikTok, where it racked up almost 2 million views. The boys are now fundraising for Strathcarron Hospice, and for every video entered in the RingAndSing competition, Ring will donate a further £10 to the charity.

How to take part

The contest is open to residents of the UK and Ireland from December 8 to December 15. Your video must feature one or more people singing a traditional Christmas carol (such as 'Deck the Halls') and be recorded using your Ring doorbell. Once you're happy with your performance, use the 'Share' button in the Ring app with the hashtag #RingAndSing.

The boys will pick their five favourite performances, and each winner will receive a £1,000 Amazon voucher, plus free doorbells for their whole street. Take a look at the full terms and conditions.

"I can't believe we have been able to give five people a great Christmas through RingAndSing! Merry Christmas everyone, bye love you!" said Dylan.

Following this weekend's deal excitement, Ring doorbell Cyber Monday deals are now live, offering over 62% off some of the latest AI-enhanced models. Some older models have seen some great discounts too, and below I've explained the difference between them all.

- Shop Amazon's full Cyber Monday sale

In the US, one of our favorite models, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell, is bundled with the Outdoor Cam Plus for just $89.99 at Amazon (was $179.99). For half price the price, this handy bundle that can work in tandem to protect your home is easy to recommend.

Over in the UK, that same model is also on offer; the Ring Battery Video Doorbell, together with a no-drill mount is just £44.99 at Amazon (was £44.99). Slashing 62% off the regular price, this one is great even for renters or those who aren't sure they want to DIY their wall or doorframe.

Ring Cyber Monday deals – US quick links

• Amazon: up to 50% off the latest Ring doorbells
• Best Buy: Ring battery doorbells and bundle deals
• Home Depot: save on cameras and doorbells
• Kohl's: deep discounts on Ring cams and doorbells
• Ring: half price doorbell deals for a limited time

Today's best Ring Cyber Monday deals in the US

Ring doorbell Cyber Monday deals – UK quick links

• Amazon: the latest Ring doorbells and cameras
• AO.com: Cyber Monday deals with free delivery
• Argos: Ring video doorbells and chime bundles
• Currys: save up to £70 off Ring security
• Ring: up to 55% off selected devices

Today's best Ring doorbell Cyber Monday deals in the UK

Bear in mind that you'll need a Ring Home subscription to get the most out of your new Ring doorbell or camera. Although you can use basic functions (such as live view and two-way chat) without any extra fees, Ring Home gives you cloud storage, subject detection, and much more. For more details, including prices, check out out complete guide to Ring home.

More Cyber Monday deals in the US

• Amazon: 45% off TVs, AirPods, air fryers & vacuums
• Apple: iPads, AirPods & MacBooks from $119
• Best Buy: $1,000 off TVs, laptops & headphones
• Dell: laptop deals from $249.99
• Home Depot: 40% off appliances, furniture, grills & tools
• Lenovo: 45% off laptops & tablets
• Lowe's: up to 30% off appliances, holiday decor & tools
• Samsung: up to $2,000 off appliances, TVs & phones
• Target: 40% off Christmas decor, clothing & furniture
• T-Mobile: up to $1,100 off latest iPhone 17
• Walmart: furniture, cheap TVs & vacs from $69
• Wayfair: 54% off Christmas, furniture & decor

More Cyber Monday deals in the UK

• Amazon: up to 66% off tech & essentials
• AO: up to £500 off Dyson, Bosch & Hisense
• Argos: up to 50% off appliances, tech & toys
• Boots: save on 1,000s of beauty products
• Currys: deals on Ninja, Shark & Lenovo
• Dell: laptops from £279
• Dyson: up to £550 off vacuums
• EE: Switch 2 bundles from £20/month
• John Lewis: up to 50% off tech & fashion
• Lego: sets & accessories from £2.99
• Samsung: deals on appliances & phones
• Very: up to 40% off tech, toys & fashion

Black Friday is still over a week away, but Amazon has already launched what might just be the smart home tech bargain of the year. Right now, you can get an Amazon Echo Dot smart speaker together with a Ring Battery Video Doorbell for just £59.99 (was £154.99 when bought separately). To put that into context, the Echo Dot is currently selling for £54.99 so you're essentially getting a wireless Ring doorbell for just £5.

The Ring Battery Video Doorbell is super easy to install (just screw its mounting plate onto the wall and clip it in), and with the Echo Dot you can answer the door and chat with callers from anywhere in the house. If you don't yet own any smart home devices, it's the perfect introduction.

• Shop Amazon's full Black Friday sale

You don't need a Ring subscription to use the Ring Battery Video Doorbell's basic functions (such as chatting live with callers) but signing up for the monthly plan will unlock extras like package and person notifications, and cloud storage for your video clips. For more details, take a look at my guide to Ring Home subscriptions – and stick with TechRadar for all of the best Black Friday deals.

(Not in the UK? See today's best deals in your region below)

Today's best Ring Video Doorbell Black Friday deal

The Amazon Echo Dot isn't just a handy way to answer your doorbell – it's also a great little speaker in its own right, a handy virtual assistant, and a controller for any other smart home devices you pick up in the Black Friday sales. Want to know more? Our guide to the best Alexa skills and commands will give you an insight into how much it can do for you.

More Black Friday smart home tech deals

Shop more of today's best Black Friday sales

• Amazon: up to 66% off tech & essentials
• AO: up to £500 off Dyson, Bosch & Hisense
• Argos: up to 50% off appliances, tech & toys
• Boots: save on 1,000s of beauty products
• Currys: deals on Ninja, Shark & Lenovo
• Dell: laptops from £279
• Dyson: up to £550 off vacuums
• EE: Switch 2 bundles from £20/month
• John Lewis: up to 50% off tech & fashion
• Lego: sets & accessories from £2.99
• Samsung: deals on appliances & phones
• Very: up to 40% off tech, toys & fashion

If you're not in the UK, here are today's best deals on the Amazon Echo Dot and Ring Battery Video Doorbell where you are.

• 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.

• Aldi has launched its own video doorbell, and could be a contender for a budget-friendly option to Amazon's Ring lineup
• While it doesn't pack the most advanced features, it has two-way talking, water and dust resistance, and SD card support meaning you don't need a subscription
• It's not available to purchase online, but you can get in in-store for £16.99

Aldi’s middle aisle just got more interesting, as it’s now stocking a new smart home device which could be a great entry point into the world of smart home security.

The retailer has launched a new battery-powered video doorbell which comes in at a budget-friendly price of just £16.99. The best video doorbells are one of the basic devices to kick-start a smart home setup, and thanks to pioneering brands such as Ring, Blink, and even Google’s own Nest devices, their popularity has grown exponentially.

Now, Aldi is upping its own smart home tech game, and while its new video doorbell lacks some of the features of bigger brands (which is expected given its price point), it looks like a decent buy.

Subscription-free

You read that right. Unlike leading video doorbell brands that require you to pay a monthly subscription for advanced features and additional storage, Aldi’s version does not, thanks to its support for micro SD cards (up to 32GB).

In the case of Ring’s own battery doorbell, subscription plans range from £4.99 to £15.99 a month depending on which tier you opt for. But even then, video history will only be saved to your cloud for up to 180 days before it vanishes, meaning that with Aldi’s video doorbell, you can hold onto as much footage history as you need given that you switch out the SD cards yourself.

Basic features, but ideal for smart home beginners

Aside from its subscription-free nature, Aldi’s video doorbell isn’t quite up to par when it comes to the features offered by its competitors, but this shouldn’t be too big an issue if you’re looking for a basic model without AI smarts to get you started.

Compared to the Ring battery doorbell’s 1440 x 1440 HD quality, Aldi’s falls behind offering a resolution of only 480p. It’s poor to say the least, but as mentioned, that’s expected given its price point. With that said, Aldi’s video doorbell packs a plethora of other basic functions including night vision, two-way talking, and water and dust resistance (IP rating yet to be determined) – which you can read more about on the product’s listing.

It’s far from a groundbreaking piece of smart home tech, but for £16.99 I'd say it's worth trying. We haven’t had the opportunity to try it out for ourselves yet, but we plan to do that soon.

You might also like

• The best video doorbell 2025: security for your home, wherever you are
• Nest isn’t dead – Google takes on Ring with new AI-powered video doorbell and security cameras
• Amazon has just announced its first-ever 4K Ring video doorbells with Alexa+ features – here's what we know so far

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

Smart home security devices are some of the best deals to snag in this year's Amazon Prime Day event, and there are still some lurking about on the second and final day of the huge sale. Of course, I'm talking about Amazon's own Ring devices.

• Shop Amazon's full Prime Day sale

Not only will you be getting a new video doorbell, you'll also be kitted out with another one of the best smart home devices be that a new indoor security camera, an Echo speaker, or even a Fire TV streaming stick. I've rounded up some of the best Ring video doorbell bundle deals in both the US and UK below – and they're all at record-low prices.

The only catch with Ring devices is that they require a subscription of you want to access their advanced features (see our guide to Ring subscriptions), however that doesn't mean its free versions don't offer a satisfactory experience – which is ideal if you're just after the basics.

Not after a Ring device? We have other brands kicking about in our big Amazon Prime Day deals page.

Amazon Prime Day Ring doorbell bundle deals in the US

Amazon Prime Day Ring doorbell bundle deals in the UK

Amazon's Prime Day sale in the US – quick links

• Amazon Devices: 50% off TVs, Ring & Fire Sticks
• Apple: AirPods + iPads from $99
• Back to school: deals from $5.99
• Beauty: 80% off toothbrushes & skincare
• Headphones: $120 off Bose, Apple & Sony
• Health: electric toothbrushes from $24.99
• Kitchen: 54% off Ninja, Nespresso & Keurig
• Laptops: record-low prices from $175
• Tablets: iPads and Samsung from $54.99
• Toys: 40% off Lego, scooters & Toniebox
• TVs: cheap TVs from $59.99
• Vacuums: Shark, Bissell & Dyson from $49.99

Amazon's Prime Day sale in the UK – quick links

• Amazon Devices: up to 50% off Echo & Ring
• Appliances: Ninja & De'Longhi from £29.99
• Gaming: Nintendo Switch 2 – in stock now
• Headphones: Anker & Sony from £15.98
• Health: up to 68% off Philips, Remington & Oral-B
• Home: fans from £12.99
• Laptops: Lenovo, Asus and HP from £159.99
• Phones: up to 20% off Apple & Samsung
• Tablets: Lenovo & Samsung from £119
• Toys: up to 50% off Lego & Mattel
• TVs: cheap TVs from £109
• Vacuums: Shark and eufy from £99
• Wearables: up to 25% off Huawei & Samsung

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're ready to get started on a new security system or looking to add to an existing setup, Amazon Prime Day is the ideal time to buy, thanks to some incredible offers on home security cameras from trusted brands like Ring, Blink, and Google Nest.

• Shop Amazon's full Prime Day sale in the US

• Shop Amazon's full Prime Day sale in the UK

It still amazes me quite how affordable and convenient it has become to keep an eye on property and pets while we're away from home, and thanks to these deals, I can keep an eye on my kitties for under $20 / £16 – purr-fection!

I've found some fantastic deals on some of the best home security cameras, along with some great alternatives, so if you'd like some reassurance that everything's okay at home while you're out at work, or want to check in on your furry friends, these camera deals are well worth a look.

Amazon Prime Day security camera deals in the US

Amazon Prime Day security camera deals in the UK

Amazon's Prime Day sale in the US - quick links

• Amazon Devices: 50% off TVs, Ring & Fire Sticks
• Apple: AirPods + iPads from $99
• Back to school: deals from $5.99
• Beauty: 80% off toothbrushes & skincare
• Headphones: $120 off Bose, Apple & Sony
• Health: electric toothbrushes from $24.99
• Kitchen: 54% off Ninja, Nespresso & Keurig
• Laptops: record-low prices from $175
• Tablets: iPads and Samsung from $54.99
• Toys: 40% off Lego, scooters & Toniebox
• TVs: cheap TVs from $59.99
• Vacuums: Shark, Bissell & Dyson from $49.99

Amazon's Prime Day sale in the UK - quick links

• Amazon Devices: up to 50% off Echo & Ring
• Appliances: Ninja & De'Longhi from £29.99
• Gaming: Nintendo Switch 2 – in stock now
• Headphones: Anker & Sony from £15.98
• Health: up to 68% off Philips, Remington & Oral-B
• Home: fans from £12.99
• Laptops: Lenovo, Asus and HP from £159.99
• Phones: up to 20% off Apple & Samsung
• Tablets: Lenovo & Samsung from £119
• Toys: up to 50% off Lego & Mattel
• TVs: cheap TVs from £109
• Vacuums: Shark and eufy from £99
• Wearables: up to 25% off Huawei & Samsung

It's no secret that Prime Day is one of the best times to make those home security improvements, as it's pretty much guaranteed that there will be some impressive discounts on Amazon-owned Ring products.

• Shop Amazon's full Prime Day sale in the US

• Shop Amazon's full Prime Day sale in the UK

Ring makes some of the best video doorbells around, so I'm beyond pleased to see their prices tumble this Prime Day. With not-to-be-missed deals on some of their best-rated products, like the 4.5-star-rated Ring Battery Doorbell Plus, this is the perfect time to get in on the action.

Whether you want to up your home security, get package delivery alerts, or catch your cat out past curfew, a Ring video doorbell will do the job nicely. However, do remember that you'll need a Ring subscription to make the most of all the fancy features.

If you're yet to enjoy some Primetime, now's your moment, as there's a load of deals popping up that could save you hundreds on big-name brands. And there are no worries if you're not a full member just yet, as you can easily sign up for a 30-day Amazon Prime free trial to make the most of those discounts.

Cutting to the chase, here are the very best deals on Ring Doorbells this Prime Day:

Amazon Prime Day Ring Doorbell deals in the US

Amazon Prime Day Ring Doorbell deals in the UK

Amazon's Prime Day sale in the US - quick links

• Amazon Devices: 50% off TVs, Ring & Fire Sticks
• Apple: AirPods + iPads from $99
• Back to school: deals from $5.99
• Beauty: 80% off toothbrushes & skincare
• Headphones: $120 off Bose, Apple & Sony
• Health: electric toothbrushes from $24.99
• Kitchen: 54% off Ninja, Nespresso & Keurig
• Laptops: record-low prices from $175
• Tablets: iPads and Samsung from $54.99
• Toys: 40% off Lego, scooters & Toniebox
• TVs: cheap TVs from $59.99
• Vacuums: Shark, Bissell & Dyson from $49.99

Amazon's Prime Day sale in the UK - quick links

• Amazon Devices: up to 50% off Echo & Ring
• Appliances: Ninja & De'Longhi from £29.99
• Gaming: Nintendo Switch 2 – in stock now
• Headphones: Anker & Sony from £15.98
• Health: up to 68% off Philips, Remington & Oral-B
• Home: fans from £12.99
• Laptops: Lenovo, Asus and HP from £159.99
• Phones: up to 20% off Apple & Samsung
• Tablets: Lenovo & Samsung from £119
• Toys: up to 50% off Lego & Mattel
• TVs: cheap TVs from £109
• Vacuums: Shark and eufy from £99
• Wearables: up to 25% off Huawei & Samsung

Not only has Prime Day been stretched over four days this year, but Amazon is also gifting us with some incredible early deals, and you can now get the Ring Battery Video Doorbell and Indoor Cam 2nd Gen bundle at Amazon US for $69.99 (was $139.99).

There's a fantastic discount on offer in the UK too, as you can get the Ring Battery Video Doorbell and Indoor Cam 2nd Gen bundle at Amazon UK for £54.99 (was £149.98).

• Take a look at today’s Amazon deals in the US
• Take a look at today’s Amazon deals in the UK

These deals knock a massive $70 / £94.99 off this bundle's list price, bringing it down to its lowest price yet. We're a huge fan of Ring tech here at TechRadar, with its products regularly featured in our selection of the best video doorbells and the best home security cameras, which is why I'm so keen to highlight this unmissable saving.

Early Prime Day deal: Ring Battery Doorbell with Ring Indoor Cam 2nd Gen

This Ring indoor and front door camera bundle includes the Battery Video Doorbell, which offers HD video, head-to-toe view, and two-way talk, and the Indoor Camera 2nd Gen, which we awarded with four stars thanks to its reliable performance and useful privacy cover.

There are a load more fantastic features on offer when you purchase a Ring Home subscription, including person and package alerts, 24/7 recording, and pre-recorded replies. Check out our Do I need a Ring subscription guide if you'd like to learn more about what's included when you sign up for a Ring Home membership.

Amazon's early Prime Day sale in the US – quick links

• Amazon Devices: 50% off TVs, Ring & Fire Sticks
• Apple: AirPods + iPads from $99
• Back to school: deals from $5.99
• Beauty: 80% off toothbrushes & skincare
• Headphones: $120 off Bose, Apple & Sony
• Health: electric toothbrushes from $24.99
• Kitchen: 54% off Ninja, Nespresso & Keurig
• Laptops: record-low prices from $175
• Tablets: iPads and Samsung from $54.99
• Toys: 40% off Lego, scooters & Toniebox
• TVs: cheap TVs from $59.99
• Vacuums: Shark, Bissell & Dyson from $49.99

Amazon's early Prime Day sale in the UK – quick links

• Amazon Devices: up to 56% off smart home gadgets
• Appliances: 60% off Ninja and Tefal
• Gaming: gaming headsets from £22.99
• Headphones: Sony, Apple Bose from £19.99
• Health: up to 63% off Philips and Oral-B
• Laptops: Lenovo, HP, and Acer from £159
• Phones: Google and Samsung from £129
• Smart home: Ring & Blink cameras from £15.99
• Toys: up to 60% off Lego and Barbie
• TVs: cheap TVs from £139.99
• Vacuums: up to 40% off Shark and Dyson
• Wearables: up to 25% off Fitbit and Garmin

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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You won't hear about it elsewhere, but Amazon has quietly cut the prices of Ring video doorbells and cameras with a secret sale, and many devices are down to their lowest-ever prices. If you've been thinking about upgrading your home security (or you just want a cheap camera to keep an eye on your cat while you're out), there's never been a better time to take the plunge.

The Ring Battery Video Doorbell is one of the best video doorbells we've ever tested here at TechRadar, and right now it's just £59 at Amazon (was £99.99). That's an awesome saving, bringing it back down to its record-breaking Black Friday price.

If you rent, or just don't want to drill holes in your walls, you can pick up the same doorbell with a no-drill mount for £69.99 (was £117.99) at Amazon today.

I've rounded up all of the best offers from the secret sale for you below, but you can also browse all the deals yourself if you have something specific in mind. Can't see what you want? Scroll down to the bottom of this article for more of today's best prices on Ring video doorbells, and never miss another caller or delivery.

Today's best Ring doorbell and camera deals

If you can't see the device you want, here are more of today's best prices on the full range of Ring video doorbells.

You might also want to check out our guide – do I need a Ring subscription? – to see what you'll get if you decide to sign up for Ring Home membership.

• 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 and the RSPB are giving away 50 cameras for watching garden birds
• The giveaway is open to UK residents between 18 and 35 years old
• It follows a survey that found 24% of young adults plan to start birdwatching

Ring and the RSPB are giving away 50 free Ring Battery Outdoor Cameras, so you can keep an eye on the birds visiting your garden even when you're away from home. The offer is open to people in the UK aged 18-35, and you can apply by filling out a form explaining why you want to take part.

The giveaway follows a recent Ring survey, which found that 60% of customers regularly watch garden birds using their home security cameras, and 24% of respondents under the age of 35 were planning to start birdwatching this spring.

Although Ring is most well known for making some of the best video doorbells, many users prefer to use its cameras to enjoy wildlife in their gardens. Blue tits, great tits, magpies, pigeons, and owls are all popular subjects of users' shared video footage.

Over half of respondents said they saw the appeal of remote birdwatching, and almost three quarters said that seeing birds and hearing birdsong is good for their wellbeing.

Make your garden bird-friendly

If you want to help support your local garden birds, the RSPB has offered a few simple suggestions to get you started:

• Install bird-friendly habitats, like nest boxes and feeding stations
• Keep gardens and green spaces wildlife-friendly by planting native flora
• Submit your sightings from Ring devices of key species like song thrush and greenfinch using the ‘Share’ feature

If you don't have your own garden, keep an eye out for the start of Springwatch 2025 on the BBC, where you'll be able to watch the progress of all kinds of nesting birds, from blue tits to eagles, and enjoy live video feeds from 7am to 10pm. The series is usually broadcast in May, so this year's dates could be announced any time.

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• Smart Video Search lets you find specific events recorded by a Ring doorbell
• The feature is AI-powered and lets you search using natural language
• It's rolling out in public beta now for Ring Home subscribers in the UK

Your Ring doorbell just got smarter with a new feature that lets you search its video footage for specific events. Smart Video Search uses virtual language modeling (VLM) to let you search using natural language. If you want to find out when a fox trotted across your garden, or when a pizza delivery man with a red shirt arrived, you can just type your request into the app and see that snippet of video.

Smart Video Search is rolling out now in a public beta for Ring Home Premium subscribers. A Ring Home subscription already gives you package, person, and motion alerts, but the new tool makes it much easier to find a specific moment captured by your doorbell.

To find out more about what you get with Ring Home Premium, take a look at our guide do I need a Ring subscription?

Get right to the point

Ring Smart Video Search can recognise specific animals, places, packages, people, vehicles, and even weather conditions. You can also search for events that happened within a particular time window, and for activities like jumping, running, and playing.

For example, you could look for the moment your kids came home from school, check to see if (and when) the dog decided to dig up your flower bed yesterday, or find out when it started raining. The tool has automatic moderation to prevent searches for anything inappropriate, offensive, or harmful.

Ring Home Premium subscribers get 24/7 recording, which is stored for seven days, and access to 180 days of video events. This top-tier subscription level also lets you watch footage from up to four cameras on one screen, receive alerts when a person or package is detected, and receive a call on your phone when someone rings the doorbell so you can speak to them directly.

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• 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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There are huge savings on Ring video doorbells at Amazon right now, with some models dropping down to record-low prices. There are also some great bundle deals on Ring doorbell and security camera packages, meaning you can keep tabs on your home from multiple angles, even when you're out, and speak to visitors in real time (whether they're welcome or not).

Ring makes some of the best video doorbells and best home security cameras you can buy. They're always great value, and with these price cuts they're even easier to recommend. For me, the best deal right now is the Ring Battery Video Doorbell for £59 (was £99.99) at Amazon. This is the newest version of Ring's fully wireless entry-level doorbell, and it's back down to its Black Friday deal price.

All new Ring doorbells come with a free trial of Ring Home (formerly known as Ring Protect), which you'll need to access some features, like cloud video storage and package alerts when something is delivered to your doorstep. To find out more about pricing and what you get for the monthly membership fee, take a look at our guide do I need a Ring subscription?

Today's best Ring video doorbell deals

I've picked out a selection of the best deals in Amazon's Ring doorbell sale, but you can also browse all the offers yourself if you have a specific model in mind.

Even without a subscription, all of these doorbells will send you a notification in the Ring app when someone rings, let you see who's calling live on your phone, and speak to them. You can also use the app to check what's happening outside your front door at any time, even when nobody has rung the bell.

If you want to store video footage and review it later, you'll need a Ring Home subscription. There are three different tiers available, each with different features and prices. The table below will help you decide on the right level for you.

Looking for something slightly different? Here are today's best deals on all our top-rated video doorbells.

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Tired of missing package deliveries? Help is at hand – right now you can grab the latest Ring Battery Video Doorbell for just $59.99 (was $99.99) at Amazon. This particular model was released in August last year and includes lots of features you'd normally only expect to find on Ring's premium doorbells, including head-to-toe video footage with a 150-degree by 150-degree field of view, color night vision, and extra long battery life.

If you have a Ring Home subscription, you'll also get person notifications and package alerts, so you can rescue your deliveries before they're plundered by a porch pirate. A Ring Home plan gives you cloud video storage too, so you can check who rang your bell while you were away from home.

If you're in the UK, the same Ring Battery Video Doorbell is down to £59.99 (was £99.99). That's not quite the cheapest it's ever been (it was 99p less on Black Friday last year), but it's very close, and a great price for one of the best video doorbells you can buy.

Today's best Ring Battery Doorbell deals

The Ring Battery Video Doorbell is fully wireless, so there's no complicated setup, and you won't need to fiddle with any wires. Just attach the mounting bracket wherever you want it, then clip the doorbell into place. When you want to recharge it, the removal tool included in the box means you can easily take it down again, but any would-be thieves will be stuck.

Ring doorbells and cameras also work seamlessly with many of the best smart speakers, including Amazon Alexa devices, so you can receive notifications when a person or package arrives without having to pick up your phone.

Looking for something even more advanced? We've rounded up today's best deals on the wider Ring video doorbell collection for you right here:

• 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!

There are lots of scenarios when a home security camera can be important, whether you're off on vacation and want to keep an eye on the house, or you want to check in on your cat while you're at work to be sure they aren't spending their alone time planning world domination.

Both Ring and Blink are popular Amazon-owned smart home security brands that both feature in our selection of the best home security cameras and best smart home devices due to their useful features and good performance.

Each camera offers easy remote viewing of your space, but has aspects that may appeal to different shoppers depending on their needs. As I've spent a lot of time testing writing my Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam review and my Blink Mini 2 review, I've put together a comparison to help you decide which best fits your requirements.

Blink Mini 2 vs Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam: Specs

Blink Mini 2 vs Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam: Prices & availability

• Blink Mini 2 list price: $39.99 / £34.99 / AU$69
• Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam has a list price of $79.99 / £69.99 / AU$129
• Available in the US, UK, and Australia

There is a considerable price difference between these Ring and Blink cameras. The Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam has a list price of $79.99 / £69.99 / AU$129, double the price of the Blink Mini 2 which is listed at $39.99 / £34.99 / AU$69. However, after spending a lot of time using them both, they've each proven to be good value for money.

The Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam and the Blink Mini 2 are available at Amazon in the US, UK, and Australia, along with other easy-to-sync Ring and Blink products, which makes it easy to tailor-build a home security setup.

I've seen regular discounts applied to both products at Amazon, and we like to keep track of the best home security camera deals, so we highly recommend checking in to make sure you're getting the best price.

Blink Mini 2 vs Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam: Design & features

In terms of the size of each camera, the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam is only 0.37 inches / 9mm wider than the Blink Mini 2, but much taller at 5.78 inches / 147mm due to the camera's design and the pan-and-tilt stand, while the cube-shaped Blink cams height is just 1.5 inches / 40mm.

The material and build quality of both cameras are as one would expect from the price, so I had nothing to complain about in either case. Both require plug-in power, and if you want to take advantage of the Blink Mini 2's IP65 rating and set it up outside, there's a Blink Weather Resistant Power Adapter available for $9.99 / £8.99.

Both feature two-way audio, but the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam takes it a step further with added noise cancellation. Ring's got us covered when it comes to assuring privacy, too, as it has a manual privacy cover that instantly disconnects the audio and visual feeds whereas there's no way to guarantee the same with the Blink Mini 2 if others have access to it in the Blink Home Monitor app.

Winner: Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam

Blink Mini 2 vs Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam: Video quality

The price difference between these two home security cameras became evident when I assessed the live view and recorded footage from each device. The video quality of the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam was fantastic, there was no pixelation or lag, even when filming a busy space. The Blink Mini 2's image quality was not so impressive, however, although, at this lower price point, I can't be too hard on it. The picture was grainy on both the standard and best-quality settings, and it struggled with pixelation when recording movement, although this was at least improved on the higher setting.

It was the same story when it came to the audio. The Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam's audio was clear and well-aligned with the recordings, but the results from the Blink Mini 2 were full of static noise and lacked clarity when people were talking, again though, it wasn't terrible for the price.

Naturally, as the Blink is a static camera it doesn't offer motion tracking – surprisingly, however, despite the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam's ability to pan 360 degrees, it doesn't have motion tracking capabilities, which I was very disappointed about, especially considering I've owned budget indoor cameras with this capability in the past.

Winner: Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam

Blink Mini 2 vs Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam: Storage

One aspect of the Blink Mini 2 I appreciated is that, with an additional purchase of a Blink Sync Module 2 at $49.99 / £34.99, it offers onboard storage, something that's becoming a rarity now that Cloud storage is so popular.

The Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam doesn't have the capacity to store recordings locally, so I was restricted to viewing the live feed only and would need to pay for a subscription if I wanted to look back at motion detections.

Winner: Blink Mini 2

Blink subscription plans

Blink Basic Plan:
In addition to the features available without a plan, you also get live view and motion event recording, unlimited cloud storage for up to 60 days, automatic local storage backup every 24 hours, instant video access, video sharing, person detection, and photo capture. Applicable to one device only.
Price: $3 / £2.50 / AU$4.95 per month, $30 / £24.99 / AU$49.95 per year

Blink Plus Plan:
Along with the benefits of the Basic Plan, you’re able to snooze notifications, get 10% off Blink device purchases at Amazon, and use the Blink Moments feature, which seamlessly stitches together multiple events into one video. Applicable to all Blink devices.
Price: $10 / £8 / AU$15 per month, $100 / £80 / AU$150 per year

Ring subscription plans

Ring Protect Basic:
Up to 180 days of video storage, download up to 50 videos at once, snapshot capture, package alerts, person alerts, and rich notifications.
Price: $4.99 / £4.99 / AU$4.99 per month, or, $49.99 / AU$49.95 per year per, Ring device.

Ring Protect Plus:
Has the same benefits as Protect Basic, plus (no pun intended) advanced video features, enhanced notifications, Home and Away modes, and extended warranties.
Price: $10 / £8 / AU$15 per month, or $100 / AU$150 per year. Covers all Ring devices at one location in the UK and Australia, or all Ring Home cameras and doorbells at one location in the US.

Ring Protect Pro (currently US only):
Offers everything in Protect Plus, as well as 24/7 alarm monitoring, alarm cellular backup, 24/7 backup internet with optional extra data, digital security by Eero Secure, and Ring Edge with local video storage. Please note an additional purchase of the Ring Alarm Pro is required to make use of some of these benefits.
Price: $10 per month or $100 per year, for all Ring devices at one location, US only.

Blink Mini 2 vs Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam: Value

It's clear the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam and the Blink Mini 2 are both good value for money. Both offer easy access to live views and recordings and although the $39.99 / £34.99 / AU$69 Blink camera's video and audio quality paled in comparison to the $79.99 / £69.99 / AU$129 Ring Pan-Tilt's, this is understandable given the price difference.

So there's no overall winner here, as each camera performed as expected, making both a classic case of you-get-what-you-pay-for.

Winner: Tie

Blink Mini 2 vs Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam: Verdict

As one would expect given the higher price point, the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam topped the Blink Mini 2 in most areas, although the Blink had the upper hand when it came to local storage capabilities, and they're matched in terms of value for money.

If your budget can't quite stretch to the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam, then you'll still be getting a good deal with the Blink Mini 2, because while the audio and visual quality may not be up to the Pan-Tilt's standard, it's still perfectly adequate for checking in on the goings-on at home.

Overall winner: Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam

• 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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Fancy a well-known comedy TV presenting duo greeting visitors to your house with cheeky and chirpy soundbites when someone uses your Ring Video Doorbell?

Well, you’re in luck, as from today, Amazon-owned Ring is introducing some new ‘quick replies’ for its video doorbell, which are voiced by Ant and Dec.

If you’re not familiar with quick replies – a capability introduced some time ago – here’s how it works. When you’ve got the quick reply feature activated, you can choose from a bunch of pre-recorded messages, this time from Ant and Dec.

When a visitor presses the doorbell, they’ll get that message, and can leave their own message in reply (like a voicemail) if necessary.

Bants and Dec

There are six Ant and Dec quick replies to choose from with the Ring Video Doorbell, featuring the expected kind of back-and-forth between the two presenters.

Here’s one example:

“Ant: Surprise! Ant and Dec here, and you’re live on the telly! Give us a wave!”

“Dec: We’re only joking! But you are live on this doorbell, so please leave a message!”

And another:

“Ant: Hi, Ant and Dec here – fortunately, Dec’s so small he can fit inside the doorbell.”

“Dec: Yes, I’m here! Thanks for stopping by! Someone will be right out.”

So, you get the idea with that, to quote another well-known TV comedian. That said, we’re slightly disappointed that there are no ‘prime minister’ references sneaked in there.

For the uninitiated, the Ring Video Doorbell can be triggered by motion tracking (with varying levels of sensitivity), so the doorbell doesn’t necessarily have to be pressed, and it’s possible to have a two-way call with the person at your door (via your phone, so you can interact with, say, delivery people even if you’re not at home).

The device very much impressed us in our Ring Video Doorbell review, although the latest ‘Plus’ version is a relatively pricey proposition.

In the past, other celebs have voiced quick replies, so for example we’ve had Toadfish from Neighbours. (“G-day mate, they’re busy doing some good neighbourly deed because, crikey, we all know ‘everyone needs good neighbours…")

And also, M&M’s, or ‘Red,’ the animated character version of the sweets, which was brought in for Halloween this year. But this one is the strangest, and potentially most popular, one so far.

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Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam review: two-minute review

The Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam is suitably priced at $79.99 / £69.99 / AU$129. It offers a range of customizable features and can rotate and tilt, providing a good insight into the goings-on at home.

The Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam is available in black and white for all regions, but the US has the added benefit of Blush, Charcoal, and Starlight color options, too. As the name suggests, the rotating and pivoting mount beneath the camera allowed 360-degree panning and 169-degree tilting, providing a larger viewing area than static cameras.

The Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam has many things in common with the Ring Indoor Cam (2nd Gen), which at the time of writing holds the top spot in our selection of the best indoor security cameras. Although its days may be numbered, as the Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam can do the same job, plus is capable of viewing a far wider area.

The privacy cover worked well, cutting off the camera feed and audio instantly whenever required, then sending word via the Ring app, meaning I’d know straight away if it was being tampered with.

There is no way to store recordings locally, so if one wanted to see an occurrence after the fact, paying for a subscription would be the only way to do this. Without a subscription, the Ring app can still send instant notifications, show a live view, and access the two-way talk feature.

The pan and tilt functions worked well, and I got a clear view thanks to the 1080p HD resolution, but the Color Night Vision didn’t live up to its name. Unlike some cheaper cameras, the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam had no problem handling movement, with no visible pixelation or lag, but it’s a real shame that the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam is missing motion-tracking.

The audio wasn’t exceptional, but I was still impressed with the quality on the live view and recorded footage; conversations were easy to decipher and I didn’t find the sound not aligning with the image at any point.

The Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam isn’t the cheapest option out there, but it’s suitably priced for the features and app support it offers. It’s regrettable that there’s no way to store footage locally so an extra fee is required for access, and that Ring has missed a trick by not including a motion-tracking function, but overall it’s good value for money.

If you’re in the market for something different, such as an outdoor-suitable camera or one with motion tracking, we have some highly-rated recommendations in our pick of the best security cameras.

Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam review: price and availability

• List price: $79.99 / £69.99 / AU$129
• Availability: US, UK, and Australia
• Release date: mid 2024

Released in 2024, the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam has a list price of $79.99 / £69.99 / AU$129, putting it toward the premium end for a single indoor camera. However, with its ability to sync with multiple other Ring home security devices, great picture quality, and good audio, it’s not overpriced. The Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam is available at Amazon, Ring, and other third-party retailers.

Something to bear in mind when considering the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam is that there is no option to store recordings locally, so if you want to review footage after the event has happened, you’ll need to pay for a subscription. You do get a complementary 30-day subscription to Protect Plus, though. If you intend to use your Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam without a subscription, you’ll still have access to Instant notifications, the live view, and the two-way talk feature via the Ring app or website, plus a one-year limited warranty.

• Value score: 4.5 / 5

Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam subscription options

Ring Protect Basic:
Up to 180 days of video storage, download up to 50 videos at once, snapshot capture, package alerts, person alerts, and rich notifications.
Price: $4.99 / £4.99 / AU$4.99 per month, or, $49.99 / AU$49.95 per year per, Ring device.

Ring Protect Plus:
Has the same benefits as Protect Basic, plus (no pun intended) advanced video features, enhanced notifications, Home and Away modes, and extended warranties.
Price: $10 / £8 / AU$15 per month, or $100 / AU$150 per year. Covers all Ring devices at one location in the UK and Australia, or all Ring Home cameras and doorbells at one location in the US.

Ring Protect Pro (currently US only):
Offers everything in Protect Plus, as well as 24/7 alarm monitoring, alarm cellular backup, 24/7 backup internet with optional extra data, digital security by Eero Secure, and Ring Edge with local video storage. Please note an additional purchase of the Ring Alarm Pro is required to make use of some of these benefits.
Price: $10 per month or $100 per year, for all Ring devices at one location, US only.

Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam review: specifications

Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam review: design and features

• 360-degree panning and 169-degree tilting
• Efficient privacy cover
• No motion-tracking

In the UK and Australia, the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam is available in either black or white. I’m a little jealous of our friends over the pond because in the US there are additional options like Blush, Charcoal, and Starlight, which is a cream color.

Setting up the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam was blissfully quick and simple, in essence, all I needed to do was install the Ring app, scan the barcode on the back of the camera, connect it to my phone via Bluetooth, and then connect it to the Wi-Fi. Voila.

Unsurprisingly, as Ring is owned by Amazon, the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam can be linked to an Amazon account, and accessed through devices like the Amazon Show 8 (3rd gen).

Being able to access the camera through a browser is a big plus in my book because it enabled me to see the live view and recorded footage on a bigger screen. I had no problem viewing things on my phone though, as it was easy to zoom into areas on the app, on both live and recorded footage.

The camera itself doesn’t look dissimilar to the Ring Indoor Cam (2nd Gen), except now it has the new mount that allows it to, you guessed it, pan and tilt, offering a far broader coverage when viewing live. The Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam has a couple of placement options, either on a flat surface, or attached to the wall or ceiling using the included mounting plate, bracket, raw plugs, and screws.

I was surprised there isn't a motion tracking feature on the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam; some older and cheaper indoor cameras have this function. It’s curious to me that the camera has the benefit of being able to see almost anywhere, but there’s no way for it to be set to track a potential intruder (or a mischievous pet) unless it’s moved manually using the directional arrows through the app.

Despite this, the motion sensors proved effective on the lowest sensitivity setting out of the three available. I would quickly get a ping on my phone and Apple Watch whenever a person was spotted in the space, and I was able to set privacy and activity zones so that I wouldn’t get constant notifications when I was testing the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam in our busy office.

Customizable home and away modes are available as part of the Plus subscription, so I could change the settings using just one button on the dashboard. By default, Home mode is set to stop detection motion, and recording, and Away mode enables these settings again.

The attached privacy cover was easy to open and close, instantly disconnecting the video and microphone feed when shut and notifying me whenever it was shut or reopened. In addition to this, for added privacy, there was another handy feature available that enabled me to disable the microphone at all times so only visual footage was captured.

In all, the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam is feature-packed and well-designed, but I can’t help but wonder why Ring neglected to include a motion-tracking feature, considering the scope of view this camera has to offer.

• Design and features score: 4 / 5

Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam review: performance

• Good quality audio and video
• Notifications kept me well informed
• Efficient activity and privacy zones

The Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam kept me in the loop with all the comings and goings at home and in the office, and once I’d mastered the settings, I could pretty much be left to do its own thing.

Speaking of the settings, the app wasn’t the most user-friendly in that respect, but otherwise, it’s responsive and worked well. There seemed to be a few ways to access similar things, and occasionally it took some hunting around to find a specific setting that I wanted to change.

Setting up the privacy and activity zones was straightforward; unlike some other cameras that can be limited to square zones, the Ring app offers a six-point selection area, so I had a bit more control to fit the zones around awkward spaces. There was one occasion when the app had a wobble, and got stuck on updating the snapshot to apply the zones onto, but the simple trick of turning the app off and on again solved the issue. These zones did their jobs well in action and helped to stop constant notifications of a person being detected, as I was working within view of the camera.

The recordings were easy to access through the history button on the dashboard. Each recording was labeled; for example, it stated if it was recorded through live view, or a person was detected, and the device the recording came from, which would come in handy if I had a complete Ring setup. The event history can easily be filtered from tabs at the top of the screen, making it easy to view certain event types, such as motion or person detection, device types including alarms and smart lighting, and single devices.

I was pleased with the picture quality on the live view and recorded footage. A slight fisheye distortion was present toward the edges due to the wide lens, but apart from this, the images looked clear and high-quality. The camera handled movement well, with no lag or pixelation.

I tested out the siren, which was easily enabled by pushing a button on the app via the device's home screen; this caused the camera to make a loud security alarm sound, which I imagine could be capable of scaring off an unwanted guest.

The name Color Night Vision is a little misleading; in low light, say, when shutting the blinds and turning off the lights in the office, it enhanced the colors on the live view really well, but we had the ambient light from our monitors to help this along. In full darkness, the feed is black and white just like many other night-vision-enabled cameras. The image quality is still great, but it is not in color like the name of this feature suggests.

I was pleased with the audio quality, other than a little bit of tinniness. Words and activities were easy to identify, and I didn’t experience any issues with the alignment of the audio and footage; whereas with past cameras I’ve encountered misalignments between what’s happening on screen and the audio recordings.

Overall, the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam did a great job, though I’d have preferred to have the ability to track motions, rather than staying static. A decent amount of customization options were available for me to fine-tune, and it detected and recorded everything I expected it to, providing me with a high-quality visual and satisfactory audio representation of what had been going on in its vicinity.

• Performance score: 4.5 / 5

Should I buy the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam review: Also consider

How I tested the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam

• I tested it for a week at home and in a busy office
• I tested the sound and video quality, live and recorded
• I tested the ease of setup, usability, privacy settings, and motion detection

I reviewed how easy the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam was to set up, and tested its panning and tilting capabilities.

I tested the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam in our busy TechRadar reviews office along with a quieter area of my home to establish how sensitive the motion detection was, and how efficient the privacy and activity zones were.

I tested the frequency of notifications and reviewed live and recorded footage, paying close attention to the visual and sound quality, and evaluating how well the camera handled movement.

I observed how well the Night Color Vision worked in different environments, testing how well it performed in darkness and with varying levels of ambient lighting.

I compared the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam against our previous camera reviews, and benchmarked it against other indoor cameras I am currently testing.

Read more about how we test.

First reviewed October 2024

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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• Ring Protect is history - enter the era of Ring Home subscription (plus five new features)

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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Ring, the maker of some of the best video doorbells, is holding open auditions to find a new voice to give some personality to Quick Replies – pre-selected messages that play when someone presses the button, a little like an answering machine.

Scotland has a huge variety of accents, and Ring hasn't specified one in particular – the only requirement is that you're at least 18 years old.

The company is holding in-person events in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, or you can audition virtually by recording a video of yourself saying "We can’t answer the door right now, but if you’d like to leave a message, you can do it now," and then posting it to Instagram or TikTok with the hashtag #RingVoiceoftheNation.

If you have your own Ring doorbell and a Ring Protect subscription, you can audition by using the device to record yourself saying the line, then pressing the 'Share' button in the Ring app and selecting 'Share with Ring'.

What you'll win

DJ Edith Bowman will help select the winner, whose voice will be available for Ring users throughout the UK to select for their Quick Replies. 

The successful speaker will also receive a Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus, which we awarded four-and-a-half stars out of five when we tested it in July last year, and up to £150 in expenses for traveling to the recording session.

Take a look at Ring's blog for full details, plus terms and conditions. If you want to attend a casting in person, here are full details of the live events:

St James Quarter, Edinburgh

Saturday August 31, 10am - 6pm

Sunday September 1, 10am - 6pm

Union Square, Aberdeen

Saturday September 7, 10am - 4pm

Sunday September 8, 10am - 4pm

Silverburn Shopping Centre, Glasgow

Saturday September 14, 10am - 4pm

Sunday September 15, 10am - 4pm

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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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As always, the Prime Day deals make for an excellent opportunity to save big on some of Amazon's own devices, and that includes Ring Video Doorbells, with some models receiving as much as 50% off in this year's mega sale.

The biggest saving is the Ring Video Doorbell for $49 at Amazon in the US, as well as the Ring Video Doorbell for £49 in the UK, a half-price offer that's well worth investigating. In particular, this model is great if you aren't interested in subscribing to the Ring Protect plan, as the list price isn't artificially inflated by features that are only useful with access to the subscription plan's advanced features.

Alternatively, if you want a little more for your money, there's the Ring Video Doorbell Plus for $99 in the US and £89 in the UK at Amazon, a record-low for a model that offers higher resolution, battery-operated video doorbell with two-way talk functions. If you opt for the subscription plan, you'll also get access to the exclusive Package Alerts feature – a real boon for regular online shoppers like myself.

Today's best Ring Video Doorbell deals in the US

Today's best Ring Video Doorbell deals in the UK

It's no big secret that Amazon has been progressively hiking the price of its Ring subscription plan in recent years, and that's why each of the models I've listed above brings a slightly different value proposition. 

The first and second-generation models offer the most basic feature set and hardware, but still function incredibly well all these years after their initial release - and they're the most affordable models available. If you just want something simple that allows you to receive instant alerts and remotely communicate with couriers or guests, these will be the best option. 

As soon as you start looking to spend more than $50/£50 on a Ring Doorbell, you'll want to consider adding on a subscription, as you're paying for some features and functionality that can't be used. Ring Protect not only allows you to save, share and store videos captured by your doorbell, but also its higher tiers unlock advanced video features and enhanced notifications. 

Of course, you might just want the improved video or audio quality from newer models, but it's always worth considering your options.

If you grab one of these deals make sure to check out our guide on how to set up your Ring video doorbell. In addition to the Ring Video Doorbell deals, we have highlighted other models to look out for in our best video doorbells list.

More Amazon Prime Day deals in the US

• Amazon Devices: Fire Sticks from $14.99
• Apple: AirPods and iPads from $69
• Audible: three months free
• Back to school: essentials and tech from $5
• Gaming: free PC games until July 16
• Headphones: cheapest-ever AirPods
• Kitchen: coffee makers from $24.99
• Kindle: three months Kindle Unlimited
• Laptops: deals from $179.99
• Music Unlimited: five months free
• Smart home: up to 61% off cameras
• Tablets: Fire tablets from $54.99
• TVs: cheap TVs from $64.99
• Vacuums: Shark from $149.99

More Amazon Prime Day deals in the UK

• Amazon Devices: up to 66% off
• Audible: three months free
• Books: from 99p
• Cars: dash cams from £33.99
• Fans: deals from £15
• Gaming: free PC games until July 16
• Headphones: from £7.99
• Health: electric toothbrushes from £16.99
• Kitchen: air fryers from £29.99
• Laptops: devices from £149
• Music Unlimited: five months free
• Phones: Samsung and OnePlus from £159
• Vacuums: deals on Vax and eufy
• Video: movies and TV shows from £1.99