Below is the transcript from the Ring Spotlight Battery security camera review. You can purchase your own at the links below (and that helps this site!). Please like and subscribe on YouTube if you found this review helpful.
Ring Spotlight Wireless – https://amzn.to/33ZGfOs
Ring Flood Light Camera – https://amzn.to/32IQtm6
Ring Doorbell – https://amzn.to/3665tg1
Ring Batteries – https://amzn.to/346x4f1
Hey guys, how’s it going? It’s Robb Sutton and today we are looking at the ring security cameras. For awhile now we’ve been thinking about putting some security cameras around the house just to keep an eye on things. Especially as our son gets older it would be nice to be able to see what’s coming and going throughout the house. So after doing some research we decided to go with these security cameras from Ring. Conveniently, do they have a spotlight but they’re motion detected and they’re battery powered. So before we get started, let’s do the classic unboxing and then I’ll show you the pros and cons of these cameras and whether or not the work for you. Let’s get started.
Ring Wireless Security Cam Unboxing
So this is the ring spotlight cam battery edition, which means we don’t have to hard wired into the house. It should just come with batteries on its own.
- 1080p
- Two Way Talk
- Motion Detection
- Motion Activated Spot Lights
- Rechargeable Battery
- Wifi Connectivity
One thing to consider when you are using these. If you have kind of a larger house, you’re probably gonna want to get some kind of mesh router system like I have with the Amplify HD to extend your network so that all the cameras actually get full coverage.
So in the box we have both of the ring cameras, this is a two pack…and then underneath you get one of your typical stickers like you do with other security systems like ADT. You can put a sticker on your window, say hello to ring, which is a simple setup guide, manual terms and conditions. No may have the amounts for each camera with anchors for drywall and just plain screws. Get one each. And then here are the batteries with included USB charging cables, one of each. And then one a driver tool that is actually you could flip over for torques as well. Alright, so two batteries mounting hardware and the ring cameras.
- Spotlight Cam Battery
- Mounting Base
- Quick-Release Battery Pack
- Installation Tools and Screws
- USB Charging Cable
- User Manual
- Security Sticker
Ring Security Camera Setup and Installation
Okay, so to get started with these camera’s pretty simple. First you have to charge the batteries. They supply you with the USB cable button, no power brick. All you do is take the USB cable, plug it into the back of the battery and let it charge. I did notice it takes quite a long time to charge, even if you’re using one of the high powered USB power bricks so give yourself some time there. These are quoted to go six months without a recharge. And then when you plug them in, you actually just take the back of it right here, hit the button and you’ll notice there are two slots for batteries in here. What you can do is once you plug in the first battery, you can put a second battery in and if this battery loses, it’ll actually automatically switch over to the other one. So at that point in time you can take out one of the batteries and then you were set to go for the mounts. I’ll loosen this up a little bit with the supplied screwdriver. You’re simply just going to mount these on the wall using the supplied hardware and then you’ll pop in like that.
So as far as the range of motion on these goes, you’re really kind of limited to this ball joint. So just keep that in mind when you’re doing going to a mounting. So when I did the mount these up is I actually took the camera, kind of set it up on the wall and it set it up to the app so I could see where it was pointed before ever screwed anything in. All right, so once you’ve charged the battery, go ahead and insert it in. Push down on this bottom piece kind of hard because it clips in on both sides. So you need to hear both sides click you’ll notice it’ll start phasing right here, and then what you’re going to do is open up that ring app. As you’ll notice, I already have two cameras set up at the house, so I’ve got all these motion alerts. But what you’re going to do now is just going to set up device security cameras. And for this one we are using the spotlight cam battery.
Let’s do custom, this’ll be rear and I’ll type in rear for rear camera. So now it’s giving you the instructions. Go ahead and insert the battery, which we have done. Wait for it to power on there. We’re going to push this top button right here and you’ll notice it starts beaming right down there at the bottom. Hit continue. Now we’ve got to go into wifi and actually connect to that unit. So you see his ring set up. Once it’s connected, go back into the app. Can you can see now it’s beaming. Yes.
And your spotlight is connecting, set up as successful. It’s updating the firmware on the camera now just to make it up to date. Now the lights stopped flashing. We’re good to go. Then it’s given you install instructions, which we’ll go through here in a minute. Then you’re going through your motion zone. Since you actually can pick out how far in front of this camera it’ll actually be until it turns on. I’m going to leave it at the default right now. And then there’s also a checkbox to whether you’re gonna want the lights on or not. I’m leaving those on. All right, so now when you go up into this top bar up here, you’ll see that you have all your cameras set up. If I click on rear view, see we’re all up and working, so now we’ll go install this camera and I’ll show you more of the features of it and how well it works outside. So one of the nice things about this ring camera system at least as far as the mounting system goes, is you can actually flip this bracket and it makes it so that it’s easier to configure whether you’re going on a flat wall or up on a ceiling and we’re going to go ahead and do that now. Now you can get into a better angle downward.
Ring Wireless Camera Review
Now that we’ve met in everything and solid, you’ve seen how that works. Let’s talk a little bit about why we chose these cameras over say like some other ones like the nest or other options on the market.
Wireless Connectivity and Battery Powered
One, I wanted something that was wireless and battery powered. Since we don’t have power routed to those areas of the house, I didn’t want to have to drill in and actually have power run to those areas. Also with battery powered cameras. If the power ever goes off in the house and I don’t have some kind of battery backup powering, the cameras were still recording. It’s all in an offsite service done by a Ring. And speaking of ops offsite services nest and some other competitors do offer offsite recording that you can go back and repeat, review your footage, but like for example, nest is three times as much for $100 a year.
I get unlimited cameras with unlimited recording and everything through ring wear with nest to do unlimited cameras in 30 day recording would actually cost you $300 a year. So over time they should cost you less as well.
Pricing of the Ring Spotlight Camera
Now the downside is they are expensive. These spotlight batteries are $200 a piece. We saved a little bit by doing the two camera bundles set. I’ll link everything down in the video description below, but up basically show everything that we used. That is the small downside to this. You can find security cameras that perform just as well that are probably cheaper, but then you probably have to do your own onsite recording and they wouldn’t be wireless like with this battery system. The good news is with these cameras and these batteries is they are only $30 and they’re supposed to last six months with normal usage, so it’s not like you’re having to reinvest in some really expensive batteries you can load up to in each one of these for relatively inexpensive, comparatively speaking, they do have other versions of out that have bigger floodlight cams in them.
Our property’s pretty well lit up. We have a lot of outdoor lighting that we put in for landscape use and for semi security, so the big spotlights really weren’t a big concern. I also have spotlights on the corner of the house that are activated, so once those go on, that actually helped the camera’s out anyway, that made these really economical to use.
Security Cameras Deter Break-Ins
We did go with the black versions. We felt that they worked better at the house. The black gloss will stay cleaner and outdoor applications versus the white one. To keep in mind though is I didn’t want to really hide these. So one of the nice deterrents about security cameras, if you have someone that’s coming up and trying to do some harm or take something from your house is if they see a camera, they’ll generally just turn around. They’re going to go under the assumption that you’re probably recording them.
Now it’s made kind of as funny Amazon spoof off where you can actually buy dummy cameras with no service at all just to kind of do that same same effect, but you do really want to put these in a visible spot that there’s more of a deterrent to just make things not happened to begin with.
Ring Camera Build Quality
The construction on the ring cameras is a little bit flimsy. You can see this door wants to wiggle around and when you go to push it in, you’ve really got to kind of shove it in there. But once you have these things set up, it’s really not that big a deal. So it wasn’t a huge thing for me. But when you first put it together, it does make you kind of wonder a little bit, but they are watertight. There is a seal that runs around the bottom and the back so you don’t have to worry about outdoor applications.
Built In Spotlights and Alarm
These also have the spotlight’s built in. As mentioned before that our motion detected. You can also turn them on through the app, but you can also turn out through the app, which I’ll show you here is 110 decibel alarm. So if you see someone walking up you can hit the alarm it drives the dogs crazy when they walk by and hear it, but that’s just a little fun end on mine.
Easy App Integration for Computer and Phone
Overall, the app is extremely easy to use. You could set up schedules, which is a big deal for us, so especially on that backdoor location where we let the dogs out constantly or they’re running around the backyard, you can actually set up schedules where you want motion detect on or off. You can also leave it on and then just not get a notification. So when I leave notifications on every time I leave, let the dogs out, I get to learn on my phone. I don’t need that constantly while I’m at home. So it is nice to be able to set those schedules on your notifications for your devices. And that way you’re not bugged all the time. Every time you’re just using your house.
Ring does make applications for Mac,Windows, Android and iPhone. So every single one of our devices, whether it be an Apple laptop, my computer sitting here, our iPad phones all have the ring app on them. And you can actually set the notifications for every single one of those separately. So if you want one device to always have notifications come on while the other ones are turned off, you have that option. The interfaces are all very similar and you can access all of your emotion recordings and alerts through those apps. So if you have ring recording all of your motion detected video, you’ll actually get a list that you can see in every single one of the app and it’ll show you that period of time when it detected motion. So you can see what’s going on.
1080 HD Video Recording and Distance Setting
So there were a couple of features I was looking for specifically that the Ring cameras did provide. One was 1080 HD video. So you do get full HD with these cameras. There is a microphone on them so you can actually speak to whoever’s out in front of your camera. The motion detection settings on these are great so you can actually set that distance. So if you have things that are going by a certain area a lot, but you’d really just want the cameras to come on when there’s someone coming up to the door, they will do that. They also have a really wide, 140 degree angle of view. As you can see in the sample footage I’m about to show you now, it gives you a nice big spread of space so you’re not having to put up multiple cameras in one area. As you will notice with the night, it is actually infrared night video. So it’ll be in black and white. But that gives you better contrast and resolution so that you better see what’s going on in the scene.
So guys, that’s it. That’s all I have on the ratings. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, hit up the comment section. If you like this video, give it a thumbs up. If you didn’t like it, give it a thumbs down. And as always, if you’re looking for more reviews like this on tech and photography equipment, be sure to hit that subscribe button until then. I’ll see you on the next one.