And, I was behind too. For being a home automation guy, I was way behind on getting a Ring Doorbell Pro. What was with the delay? Well, we have Arlo cameras and wanted to keep all our cameras under the same umbrella. The reviews of the Arlo Doorbell weren’t good and the features weren’t as rebust as the Ring Pro Doorbell.
I finally took the plunge and I’m happy with it. It turns out that the amount of activity at the front door is much more than where my other cameras are so opening a different app wasn’t the issue I thought it would be. Most of the time, the front door motions don’t turn into motion at other cameras.
The installation was easy enough. You just have to confirm that your existing doorbell system is supported. It comes with several housing colors so the dark bronze worked perfectly with our house colors. The wifi and app setup was a breeze.
When someone rings the doorbell, it will ring on your existing ringer. The cool part, of course, is that it also rings on your phone and there’s an announcement on your Echo devices if you so choose which we do. You then can answer the door remotely from your phone or Echo device and speak to the person and they don’t know if you’re speaking from within your house or not.
I work out of the home so I rarely use the app when away from home. I get so many deliveries that it’s very helpful to get that ring and see the delivery person walking away from the front door. I then quickly retrieve my package.
I do have two issues. First, our front door is side facing. There are wedges to angle the doorbell one way or the other and down. It also has a fish eye lens so the coverage is pretty good. I do need better down angle though. There isn’t enough to see a package sitting on my front door mat. I need to investigate getting an additional wedge to angle down further.
The second issue I have is that there is a delay in getting to view recorded video. With the Arlo cameras, recorded video is available almost instantaneously. With the Ring Doorbell Pro, there is a delay of several minutes. I don’t know if that is an issue with my Internet connection at the front door or that is standard with the Ring. The issue is that you need instant availability of recorded video. You can still see the camera view in real time, but if the event already occurred and ended, you won’t know for several minutes what happened. That’s a problem. I’m going to be at my brother’s house tomorrow. He also has one so I’m going to test latency with his.
The other thing you must know about Ring is that there is a monthly fee for access to recorded video. Now, I bought it with a 1 year subscription, but I won’t be looking forward to a monthly fee.
The Ring Doorbell Pro has become a very universal line of defense at homes. The commercial of the criminals walking away when they see the Ring Doorbell is likely not far from reality. Why mess with it? Try another house.
BUY NOW: Ring Doorbell Pro
