Ring Doorbell, any good?

I hardwired ours, didn't want to fanny about with batteries.
At first I thought it was excellent, but it wasn't long before I was balled off with my phone dinginging and pinging every 5 minutes.
But since my SO took custody of it, its back top being excellent.
You have to set it to suit your circumstance, if you just want it to operate when somebody rings the doorbell, that's not too bad, but ours is set to notify any movement around our front door.
So that will be cats, dogs, foxes, squirrels, spiders, pigeons, postmen short cutting, idiots driving on the pavement, window cleaners we never instructed, dpd deliverys we never ordered, pizzas....,fish and chips, currys and god knows how many junk mail stuffers, its a pita, I'm glad she's looking after it now....lol
 
I am ditching ours we have the doorbell and a few other ring cameras but the subscription cost has went up quite a bit. Am going to swap to another system were I can use local storage instead.
 
On HUKD the tapo td21 gets mentioned when ring deals are posted, no experience of them personally though

 
My daughter has one on the shared student house she lives in - they think it's wonderful, and have a 'rule' that everyone who visits (as well as all those in the house) strikes a pose for the camera as they approach!
 
I tried these about a year or so ago along with a couple of approach cameras. Sadly they appear to have done something very odd with the networking.

The cameras basically needed to contact the server to see if it was worth turning on. They say up their own network to do this and it's connection to my WiFi was due some reason shaky. So they missed most stuff.

Doorbells seen to have done something similar - there are many reports that when AWS is down, people have to knock

This is not how the IOT should work.....
 
We have one and I'm very disappointed with it. I'm paid up until September next year but it might go before that.

For us it fails to recognise movement or reacts too slowly far too many times. Someone can walk up to the front door and ring the bell and if we get a notification at all it might not come for 30 seconds or more. For example when coming back from the supermarket I can pull the car in the drive, open the front door and carry the shopping into the kitchen and only then get a notification so it's useless as a security device for detecting anyone coming up the drive. Sometimes it just fails to recognise movement at all. I've just spent 12 days in Thailand and only got one notification and even then "Something went wrong" and no video was recorded and when we got home there was an avalanche of mail on the mat and not one recording of any postmen.

I think one warning sign for me was when I tried to return it and found that doing so is next to impossible. I may be wrong but what that told me is that they know it's got its problems and are tying hard to stop returns. Their tech support blames Virgin who supply our internet but I have to say that every other portable device works outside the front door and connects to our internet without a problem.
 
JonathanRyan said:
I tried these about a year or so ago along with a couple of approach cameras. Sadly they appear to have done something very odd with the networking.

The cameras basically needed to contact the server to see if it was worth turning on. They say up their own network to do this and it's connection to my WiFi was due some reason shaky. So they missed most stuff.

Doorbells seen to have done something similar - there are many reports that when AWS is down, people have to knock

This is not how the IOT should work.....
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If that is the case, they are no better than a £5 chinese wifi camera from Temu!!

They also have to connect to their server, then you connect to the server to view the camera, huge opportunity for a security risk, both to your home network and the device that you are viewing the cameras on.

There is a workaround for the chinese ones, log into your router, note the IP address allocated to the camera, and configure the router so the camera is always allocated the same address, then you van use that address with one of the freely available monitoring programmes.
 
nog said:
On HUKD the tapo td21 gets mentioned when ring deals are posted, no experience of them personally though

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We have the TD210 and it works well, the TD 21 seems much the same only cheaper. Ours connects to the phone, Alexa devices and works on my iMac.
Video quality is good (we use best quality setting) and it records to 512GB card in the house.
 
gramps said:
We have the TD210 and it works well, the TD 21 seems much the same only cheaper. Ours connects to the phone, Alexa devices and works on my iMac.
Video quality is good (we use best quality setting) and it records to 512GB card in the house.
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I was going to look at Tapo. I've filled the house with their smart bulbs and despite a few instances when I've had to reconnect them they seem to mostly work well enough.
 
woof woof said:
I was going to look at Tapo. I've filled the house with their smart bulbs and despite a few instances when I've had to reconnect them they seem to mostly work well enough.
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Same here, multiple smart plugs that work with Alexa for convenience. :)
 
As a slightly different experience, I've been delighted with ours. I had to configure it carefully so it only recorded events inside our drive and not on street (you can draw a boundary in the app) but it's been superb

I got ours hardwired in
 
gramps said:
We have the TD210 and it works well, the TD 21 seems much the same only cheaper. Ours connects to the phone, Alexa devices and works on my iMac.
Video quality is good (we use best quality setting) and it records to 512GB card in the house.
Click to expand...
Update on ours, (bought in May), one suddenly lost the microphone facility - just a crackling noise.
Contacted Amazon who said they could get it repaired but I said didn't want to be without a doorbell for weeks so wanted a refund.
Was told to wait 24 for decision so I bought another anyway so I could do an immediate replacement.
Next day got notification of a refund, not for one but for both!
I contacted them again to explain their mistake and was told that it was fine, the refund for both would be in my bank 5-7 days.
Result!! :)
 
I went for Unifi kit instead- as I wanted to keep it all local, and hook it into home assistant etc. Bit more pain/hassle to setup, but it records entirely local (which has its own negatives) but means I am not relying on some other provider that might disappear/charge me money in the future etc.
 
One of my friends has one, it statered off ok, although every time someone walked past the house it went off, then a few months back it changed (the update?) now it only seems to work when you ring the bell.
They wouldn't have minded quite so much if they'd realised it was different, they found out when the police turned up with news their stolen range rover had been found. They didnt know it was stolen. It was parked by the camera so the thief had walked in front of it with nothing recorded or seen.
Luckly for them the neighbour opposite has CCTV which recorded it all and was so good they could ID the thief. I must ask him what system he has.
 
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Hanley said:
We've had one for a few years and it works great, you just need to take the time to make sure you've setup your motion alerts to suit what you need, we also have the Ring alarm system with quite a few cameras so we pay the Plus subscription, which I think is around £8 per month.
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Sadly for some it's just not that simple.

I've wrestled with ours and with their tech support to no avail.

Here's an example of how ours performs. The pizza guy walked up to the front door, I'd already seen him and he know so he didn't ring the bell. I met him at the door and paid and took my pizza into the kitchen. As I like my food really hot I put it on a plate and put it into he microwave and carried drinks and stuff into the living room. It was only then that the notification came through. Maybe it's not entirely useless but as warning that someone is approaching the house it is mostly useless.
 
woof woof said:
Sadly for some it's just not that simple.

I've wrestled with ours and with their tech support to no avail.

Here's an example of how ours performs. The pizza guy walked up to the front door, I'd already seen him and he know so he didn't ring the bell. I met him at the door and paid and took my pizza into the kitchen. As I like my food really hot I put it on a plate and put it into he microwave and carried drinks and stuff into the living room. It was only then that the notification came through. Maybe it's not entirely useless but as warning that someone is approaching the house it is mostly useless.
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Does it connect to your 2.4GHz WiFi and not 5GHz? They apparently work better on 2.4
I'd also check your RSSI in Device Health, -60 or lower is best, -60 indicates a strong signal with -40 or -50 excellent, as you can see from my screenshot, mine is -50 and we rarely, if ever, get delayed notifications.

Screenshot_20251215-133313.png
 
Hanley said:
Does it connect to your 2.4GHz WiFi and not 5GHz? They apparently work better on 2.4
I'd also check your RSSI in Device Health, -60 or lower is best, -60 indicates a strong signal with -40 or -50 excellent, as you can see from my screenshot, mine is -50 and we rarely, if ever, get delayed notifications.
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TBH I'm past fighting it. Ring blame Virgin but Virgin can't see anything wrong and I have better things to do than try and sort out why the Ring doorbell notifications only work sometimes. Not that Ring doorbells crop up a lot in conversations but I do know someone who unprompted by me grumbled one day about notifications not coming through and no video when prowlers were about and there's an avalanche of bad reviews stating similar issues but yes, one good thing is that the battery is ok. When I get around to it it's going and will be replaced probably with a Tapo.

Good luck to anyone buying a Ring, I hope it works well for them but I've just had enough.

Oh. Also I have my doubts about how honest their tech support is as I was on the phone to them one day and it suddenly started working. I asked the guy what he'd done and the reply was "Nothing." I'm more likely to believe there was an issue he knew about but for whatever reason didn't want to mention.
 
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JonathanRyan said:
I tried these about a year or so ago along with a couple of approach cameras. Sadly they appear to have done something very odd with the networking.

The cameras basically needed to contact the server to see if it was worth turning on. They say up their own network to do this and it's connection to my WiFi was due some reason shaky. So they missed most stuff.

Doorbells seen to have done something similar - there are many reports that when AWS is down, people have to knock

This is not how the IOT should work.....
Click to expand...

I can't confirm this or say what the issues may be as I've lost interest in most tech but I'm sure I've heard whispers about this more than once. I don't know why they've designed it how they have but I think there are issues at least for some installations.
 
Had to site a wi-fi extender close to the bell push to get it to function at all. When everything is working its fine but does have a habit of going off line periodically and not notifying you that it has done so. Also, certain metreological conditions cause the lens to mist over and stops the video from working - again without warning you. It's decent but could be improved.
 
Just an update from me.

I was very unhappy with my Ring because often it either failed to spot people walking up to the front door or was very slow to raise an alert sometimes taking several minutes. The subscription is up soon so I cancelled the renewal and went for a Tapo TD21 with a hub. Installing it all was the some process as their bulbs which I already have and it all went smoothly and so far it seems to be much better than the Ring. So far it's spotted everyone who comes up the drive and has issued an alarm within a few seconds. One thing which the ring consistently failed to do is recognise a car pulling into the drive, I've only been out once since fitting the Tapo, it saw me backing out of the drive but didn't see me pull back in again. I've upped the sensitivity and fiddled with the detection zones and I'll see how it goes.

So far I'm much more pleased with the Tapo than the Ring as so far the rate of detection seems much better and the delay in raising an alert is very much shorter. Another advantage is that the subscription is gone as video is stored in the hub which I've hard wired to the router.
 
woof woof said:
Just an update from me.

I was very unhappy with my Ring because often it either failed to spot people walking up to the front door or was very slow to raise an alert sometimes taking several minutes. The subscription is up soon so I cancelled the renewal and went for a Tapo TD21 with a hub. Installing it all was the some process as their bulbs which I already have and it all went smoothly and so far it seems to be much better than the Ring. So far it's spotted everyone who comes up the drive and has issued an alarm within a few seconds. One thing which the ring consistently failed to do is recognise a car pulling into the drive, I've only been out once since fitting the Tapo, it saw me backing out of the drive but didn't see me pull back in again. I've upped the sensitivity and fiddled with the detection zones and I'll see how it goes.

So far I'm much more pleased with the Tapo than the Ring as so far the rate of detection seems much better and the delay in raising an alert is very much shorter. Another advantage is that the subscription is gone as video is stored in the hub which I've hard wired to the router.
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Tapo works great for us as well, positive with detection and great battery life.
 
gramps said:
Tapo works great for us as well, positive with detection and great battery life.
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It's just a small thing but getting the doorbell off the wall to charge it is much easier than with the Ring.

I'm going to use the Ring for watching the inside of the house when we go on holiday although I might go for a Tapo camera for that.

The next thing I have to sort out is our external CCTV cameras which have been increasingly playing up. The guy who put them in initially denied any knowledge of the issues I was complaining about but later admitted that his phone came up with the same error messages. He's so far completely failed to get them working as I want. What I wanted as CCTV which could be monitored 24/7 but googling has told me that the system he put in isn't meant for this and is just meant for looking at for a few minutes when an alarm is raised. I've got another company coming this week and this time I'm armed with a bit of knowledge and some questions to ask.

I spend decades in computers and wider tech but when I left I lost all interest and I don't want to get too deep into any tech but sadly the professionals often seem to be clueless or maybe they are clued and just aren't saying what the drawbacks are.
 
Just an update on the Tapo doorbell.

It seems to be much better than the Ring, it detects move movement and the lag between movement and notification is much shorter. It's not perfect though as sometimes just like the Ring it fails to see someone walk straight up to the front door and today it failed completely to see the postman walk up the drive and stand directly in front of it... No notification and no recording at all. It also failed to see me back a car out of the drive or pull in on numerous occasions. Also it seems to eat through battery life. You can tone the detections down and then it just doesn't go off at all so anything less than the default setting is totally useless.

After the Ring this is better but it's still iffy and it seems like making one of these devices that work all the time as in reliably see someone walk straight up to the front door or see a car pulling in or out and issue a notification is beyond mankind.

Hopefully the aliens will help us out with this one day.
 
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Like most batteries they need a few charges before they reach full capacity, I'm surprised how infrequently I have to replace with the spare and I'm running them at best video quality.
Problem with PIR sensors is that they work best walking across them rather than toward them so inevitably there will be an occasional miss or slow pickup.
We have two at the front, only one acting as the doorbell and the other offering a different angle and covering the garage.
Had good notification, video and audio of our post lady while I was up in London today :)
 
The angle of approach sounds like a good theory but in our case people need to walk across and then towards at an angle so the pir should have a good chance of working and we have them in the house with a straight on approach and they seem to work every time but they don't need to connect to wifi and issue an alert and they don't go into any sort of sleep mode.

I don't know what the issue is and it is much better than thr Ring but there do still seem to be issues with both people and cars. I'm disappointed with both issues. I was pleased to see a car mode but it does miss and I don't know how it can fail to see somone walk up to the door. I think rather than the angle it's an issue with alertness and how it sleeps and wakes up as if I drop it down from its default it hardly works at all. Upping it to max isn't really an option as it'll drain too quickly and of course the TD21 can't be hard wired. I might run it for a while until I think I've had my moneys worth and then look at a hard wired one which can run on max alertness.

It's better than the Ring but still a bit disappointing with those inexplicable see you one time but not the next misses.
 
Ours is useless. Next doors cat sets it off 3 or 4 times a day, but people coming to the house dont, it misses "err indoors" leaving but sometimes activates as she put the key in the door, it usually misses me altogether (think I'm too fast for it) frankly I'd look for something eles.
A few of my friends have them, they all have the same issues, my neighbour had her range rover stolen off the drive right in front of the camera, it miised it. Luckly next door had CCTV.
 
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As I said, this seems to be beyond mankind.

We do have cctv but have had endless issues with that too. Had a bloke in today and I thought finally it's working... I went out to cut the lawns and when I came back in one camera was off so he's coming back again.
 
gramps said:
I guess experiences vary. :)
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We have a friend who's Ring doorbell never gave any problems until she let slip that it hadn't recorded someone coming to the door. Maybe I'm just picky and expecting too much expecting these things to work every time or to at least be consistent.

How hard can this be?
 
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My camera near the door has never missed any one, notifications (when I have them on, which I don't normally) are as good as instant, night vision is excellent and rarely switches to B&W, if I set it to do so it will follow people around the drive.

It cost me £5.60

I also have a 16 camera (wired) CCTV and recorder with a 5 day battery back up, been running for 15 years now, though I should think the hard drive is near or past its expected lifespan.

We also have a keypad/card reader to open the front door, so never any keys to loose or forget. (5 lever lock is locked at night etc)

These things are a convenience when they work, but I couldn't be bothered with them when they don't.
 
As it happens SWMBO was taken into hospital yesterday and whilst visiting this morning we had two deliveries.
Both deliveries were picked up by Tapo, as was the ring, and I was able to see and instruct the deliverymen from the hospital.
Fortunately SWMBO is home now. :)
 
Today the Tapo spotted me pulling my Getz out of the drive and pulling back in but it missed me doing the same with my Evoque. It is better than the Ring and I suppose I'll have to accept this is as good as it gets.

Having had a Ring and now the Tapo if asked to recommend either I'd say that for us the Ring was next to useless for motion detection and raising an alert, the Tapo is better but still inexplicably misses some events including people walking up the drive and directly up to the front door.
 
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I went with Eufy, no subscription required. So far so good. Hard wired on a PSU as I can't be ar5ed charging the battery.
 
PeteNaples said:
I went with Eufy, no subscription required. So far so good. Hard wired on a PSU as I can't be ar5ed charging the battery.
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I think if I ever get around to changing again a hard wired system may be the way to go as I suspect that some of the detection and notification issues are related to the devices going to sleep or otherwise trying to save power.

I took the Tapo off the wall to charge it today and the anti theft alarm went off and cancelling it just didn't match up with the instructions. Grrrrr. It's better than the Ring and ok for now though.
 
woof woof said:
I took the Tapo off the wall to charge it today and the anti theft alarm went off and cancelling it just didn't match up with the instructions.
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Switch it off before you remove it to change the battery!
 
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