Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro review

Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro: Introduction

• Type: Battery
• Connectivity: 2.4 and 5GHz Wi-Fi
• Ecosystems: Amazon Alexa

Although battery-powered doorbells first brought Ring its fame, its wired range of products has highlighted the best technology… until now, with the introduction of the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro.

Building on the success of last year’s Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus, the new Pro model hits technological parity with the Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2, including the fancy radar-based 3D Motion Detection.

For those looking for the most advanced battery-powered doorbell, there’s no doubt that this is the best model; however, high subscription costs for a single device may put some people off.

Read on for our comprehensive Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro review.

Design and installation

• Familiar, chunky design
• Simple installation
• Trickle charge and wired chimes supported

Given that the basis of the majority of Ring’s battery-powered products is the Quick Release Battery Pack, there’s not much flexibility for the company to changing its designs.

Sit the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro next to pretty much any battery powered doorbell that the company has released, and you’d find it pretty much impossible to tell the difference.

That doesn’t particularly matter, as it’s what’s inside that counts. The only difference that size plays is in determining where you can and can’t install this doorbell. Relatively chunky, particularly compared to Ring’s wired devices, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro needs a fair amount of installation space.

With my Victorian house, the door frame is quite narrow, and the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro won’t fit on it without sticking out into the door opening.

Luckily, Ring provides an angle bracket in the box, so I could put the doorbell on the wall, and have it face outwards.

A Quick Release battery slides into the slot at the bottom, and can be removed for charging. It’s sealed into place with a cover, which uses a torque screw to hold it in place (driver provided in the box).

A single charge should last months, but if you can’t be bothered with the hassle of removing the battery, then you can trickle-charge the battery using the wires from your existing doorbell (8 to 24VAC adaptors accepted).

If you happen to have a wired chime, then this doorbell will work with it. That’s a trick that the older Video Doorbell Pro 2 can’t do, as it’s not compatible with wired chimes.

Not that you’ll necessarily need a wired chime. As with Ring’s other doorbells, this one works with dedicated Ring wireless chimes, and it can cause Alexa smart speakers to sound, too. Once charged and mounted, setup via the Ring app is quick and fast

Features

• Needs a subscription for all of its features
• Excellent motion detection (and suppression)
• Package alerts

Although a doorbell, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro is also a fully-fledged smart security camera, able to send you alerts. In its basic state, it can send motion alerts to your phone, but you have to pay for a Ring Protect plan if you want to store video and upgrade detection to include people-only and packages.

Ring’s plans used to be good value, but a recent price hike means that it’s now $4.99 / £4.99 a month for a single device, which is quite a lot. Possibly too much, in fact, which could see people move to subscription-free doorbells, such as the Eufy Video Doorbell Dual.

If you have multiple devices, including the Ring Alarm, then the Ring Protect Plus account, which gives you 30-days of history for unlimited devices, as well as some alarm benefits, remains $10 / £8 a month. That’s still excellent value.

The most important thing a security camera can do is record and alert you about important events only, suppressing alerts for things you won’t be interested in. Thankfully, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro is excellent at this, thanks to its 3D Motion Detection, a feature borrowed from Ring’s excellent security cameras such as the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro.

Using Radar, 3D Motion Detection lets you plot a Birds Eye Zone on a satellite image. Only movement inside this zone, based on distance, will send an alert. For example, you can have this doorbell face a busy road, but only send alerts for people who enter your driveway, not for all the people and cars passing by outside.

In addition to this trick, there are standard activity zones: motion inside a birds eye zone is then compared against the zone, and only alerts in the right area are sent.

Factor in people-only and package alerts, and this doorbell is exceptionally quiet. I’ve tested doorbells before and have had my phone constantly beep. With this model, I only get alerts when someone comes towards my door.

To help make it clear why an alert was generated, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro has two tricks. First, Pre-Roll lets the camera constantly record a few seconds of low-resolution and low-frame-rate video, which is added to the front of a recorded clip. This feature, removed from the previous Plus model, helps add context.

Then, there’s Bird’s Eye View, which plots the movement an object took on a satellite image overlayed on the main image. They’re both neat little tricks that make it easier to understand what’s happening outside.

Video is recorded to the cloud and can be browsed in two ways. First, there’s a timeline view, accessible from the live view. This is handy for scrolling back through multiple events, and the view can be filtered by motion detection type and date.

If you know roughly when a clip you want was recorded, then the updated Event History page has a thumbnail view (filterable by the same criteria) that’s faster to scroll through. All clips can be downloaded to your phone.

If you’ve got a Ring Alarm, you can set the doorbell to record or not based on the mode your alarm system is in. Truth be told, that’s a more useful feature for regular cameras as a device like this is at its best when on and awake all of the time.

If you don’t want to be bothered by alerts at certain times, it’s better to use the option to schedule when you can and can’t receive notifications.

Amazon Alexa speakers can be used as chimes, speaking when someone presses a doorbell. If you’ve got a smart display, such as the Amazon Echo Hub, you can see a live feed and answer the door without grabbing your phone.

You do get more options from your phone, including a choice of replies, such as, “Hi! We’ll be right there.” I find that handy when it’s a courier, as I can tell them to wait while I run to the door.

Don’t want to answer the door at all? Set up a default quick reply and let the doorbell wait for a long time before speaking, and the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro can ask visitors to record a message.

Performance

• Excellent 1536 x 1536 video
• Colour night vision

Using the same 1536 x 1536 resolution as the Video Doorbell Pro 2 (and last year’s Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus), the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro captures everything from head to toe. There’s a slight fish-eye effect, with the edges of the image curving, but the main thing is that you can see the person at your door clearly.

Video quality is also very good, particularly for objects and people at your door. During daylight hours, the camera can shoot sharp HDR video; sharpness drops off slightly into the distance, but that’s alright as this device is designed to monitor what’s happening at your door.

AT night, there is an option for colour night vision. You need a fair amount of ambient light, and I found that this mode worked best when combined with my security light.

I couldn’t see much going on past the end of my front garden, but up close, the colour night vision was pretty much as good as the daylight footage.

If you don’t have additional lighting and the ambient light is not strong enough, then the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro will shoot in black and white with its IR lights. They don’t light up very far away; by the door, the camera manages to produce a sharp image.

It generally takes a few seconds from a press of the doorbell until an alert comes through on my phone. Opening the app, I found the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro quick to respond to a live-view request with very little time spent buffering.

Realistically, three to four months of battery life on a charge is doable; if you do have wires in the back, then a trickle charge should mean that you never have to remove the battery for charging. In a month of use, my doorbell’s battery has remained at or near full charge.

Final thoughts

Finally, the battery series hits technological parity with the wired series, and the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro is the best wireless doorbell that you can buy. And, it even makes sense for those that have a wired chime and want to continue using that.

If you want a neater appearance, then the Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 just edges this model out. The biggest downside is for those on the basic subscription plan, which is now relatively expensive.

How we test

When we publish our reviews, you can rest assured that they are the result of “living with” long term tests.

Smart video doorbells usually live within an ecosystem, or a range of products that – supposedly – all work in harmony. Therefore, it’s impossible to use a security camera for a week and deliver a verdict.

Because we’re testing smart home kit all day, everyday, we know what matters and how a particular video doorbell compares to alternatives that you might also be considering.

Our reviews are comprehensive, objective and fair and, of course, we are never paid directly to review a device.

Read our guide on our review process for a video doorbell to learn more.

FAQs

Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro: Specifications