[Closed] Ring CCTV cameras - worth it over others?

Ring isn’t a premium product - it’s actually a bit crap - but then I wouldn’t say it’s particularly expensive... look at Doorbird for an example of an actual premium product.

I use Blink in the garden office, garden and front door, with an Alexa Show in the office. Dunno if it's any better or worse than Ring - not fussed about a doorbell. The alerts on my phone never wake me up though, which is good, because cats keep setting the front door off

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Passes the Audi test but that gravel needs tidying

I have 6 cameras across 2 locations and a doorbell. Love having everything in the one app. The main limitation in my experience is the strength of your wifi signal - it needs to be strong to be really effective, otherwise it will take a long time to connect. The rapid ring app can help with this, but is really not necessary if you have the required signal.

To store footage you need a subscription, but at £80 a year for as many cameras as you want I think it’s reasonable. You also get extended warranty and 10% off additional products. If you are going to use battery only you will need 2 or it’s a pain, and I used to have a spare and just cycle them round. I found battery life to be 6-8 weeks for each battery, that’s with a fair bit of traffic.

Have converted everything to solar now and that seems good, but you do need the panels to face direct sunlight to be effective. You don’t need it to be sunny all day to get a decent charge though. Mine pretty much keep the battery topped up to 100% all the time, occasionally dropping into the 90’s.

You can share the cameras with other users too.

Overall I like them, but you do need good wifi signal to get the best out of them.

Passes the Audi test but that gravel needs tidying

Yes, it's pretty shocking

Passes the Audi test but that gravel needs tidying

And what the hell has happened to that phone 😀

We have a couple of tapo c100 in the house. Very good for the price @£20. They do an outdoor version for £50 that I plan to try. They take a micro SD for recording. Have alerts and customisable motion zones etc. No subscription either. Main powered though.

And what the hell has happened to that phone 😀

Had a hire van while my Disco was being repaired and theres a pocket in the door that states no phones. Thinking it was some stupid H&S nonsense, I put the phone in it. When I slammed the door, I then realised why it said no phones....

Lols

Thanks chaps - appreciated.
The solar sounds a good option - back of house is pretty much South facing.
Might need a WiFi booster to improve the signal at the garage.

I am thinking about a Tapo for squirrel trap monitoring duties.

No better or worse than the other consumer cameras IME. One thing I've suffered with is they are weatherproof rather than waterproof, so put them under eaves or a porch if you can. I have one in an exposed position and it's often steamed up and useless.

What's the picture quality like - good enough to get a decent look at the faces?

I’m very happy with the Eufy kit I’ve got. Similar functionality to Ring et al, but no subscription needed.

What’s the picture quality like – good enough to get a decent look at the faces?

They're almost all 1080p now, so decent quality. Depends on how close they are to the cam though. And at night when in IR mode you'd struggle more.

Think I might just order one and see how it goes.

Amazon Neos are good and fairly cheap, have them at work and home and pay the fee each month for recorded clips, around £3. Indoor use only but had one 7 deer the garage eves for 2 years now with no issues

I had a ring camera on my old house and was very happy with it.

Just sent a Blink camera back after a week. Couldn't get a full signal through one brick wall no matter what I tried, so image and sound quality was shite.

On top of that, the batteries lasted a week. A bit off the 2 year mark that is stated, but that was probably due to the amount of foot traffic past the house activating it.

My mate has one pointing at the back of his house and his seemed to work a lot better, so mine might have been faulty.

I didn't bother replacing it as I don't think anything like that is suitable for where I live on the main road.

I had a Santa Cruz Bronson and a Canyon hardtail ebike stolen in November 2020. I'd only had the Bronson for 6 hours, the burglars (were tipped off by the courier) smashed a hole in my rear garage wall with a sledgehammer and exited via the garage shutter door. I've upped my security and had a steel bike cage built which is bolted to the floor and also installed a camera inside the garage.

I spent quite a bit of time researching the camera and if you have Apple - iPhone or laptop you can use Apples Homekit, you need an Apple ID but it links your apple device to one of Apples cameras - I bought a Logitech off the Apple website. I can look at the garage camera footage on my phone and it has a motion detector which activates if there is movement in the garage. There is no subscription. I'd highly recommend having a look at Homekit. The cost of the camera was £180 and the cage cost me £450 (great value - if anyone wants a cage drop me a line and I can give you the name of the steel fabricator who built it for me - based in Attercliffe Sheffield). As my garage is about 80metres from my flat I had to get a wifi booster.

Look at the Eufy Doorbell, best of the bunch on the market at the minute.
if you already have lights ouside look at the Pyronix LightCam, both are the same as ring but without the monthly charges if you install a memory card.

The battery only lasted a week as the signal was so bad it was constantly searching and connecting - same with a mobile with poor signal as it is constantly trying to connect it uses up the juice - a WiFi booster might help.
Did Ring not get heavily compromised a wee while back as other accounts could view other accounts details and footage? It got fixed but something to bear in mind for all systems.

My router was only about 20m away from the camera and I had a Wi-Fi booster in between (booster was literally on the other side of the wall).

That's why I suspect it was faulty. I did consider a doorbell camera, still might as it's probably a better solution?

Thinking it was some stupid H&S nonsense, I put the phone in it. When I slammed the door, I then realised why it said no phones….

My employer is currently upgrading ancient iPhone 5 SE's. At least we know engineers were putting their old (smaller) phones out of reach whilst driving their Ford Transits!

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^^^ the only reason for putting your phone in the door pocket is because you want easy access to it whilst driving, so not a lot of sympathy tbh 🤣

I think that if you buy a camera that is ONVIF compliant you can set it up to be functional WITHOUT using a proprietary app, meaning that you can use cameras from different manufacturers, but view all feeds in the same place.

Been going through this over the last couple of years. Got a Neos camera to replace an old foscam I used as a video baby monitor. Had our front door smashed when we were out so added a few more, one looks through the front door into our porch (handy as couriers mostly dump and run), one's actually outside but under a soffit, you can get outdoor mounts as the hardware is the same as Wyze in the US.

The basic functionality is OK, the image quality is pretty good for the price, and you just need USB power to them. Without a subscription though you only get short clips (12s) to the cloud, there's a micro SD card slot but it continuously records and you have to pull out the card to get the footage. Also had a card corrupt and no notification or anything, it just stopped working at all. Think they're hackable to put on firmware that lets you send to a NAS or NVR though. Motion detection is naff, I can only use it on the porch one, the outdoor one gets set off by anything.

Like all these, they want to get you to subscribe at £2.50 a month. You get longer clips, activity zones, etc but it all adds up over time.

Ring want even more (something like £2.50 per device or £8 unlimited) and my neighbour doesn't find the notifications as quick as they'd like - so you really want the extra chime indoors too. I never want or need to talk to someone at the door via my phone so that functionality is a bit redundant really.

Currently trying out the Reolink cameras - impressed so far. Have one of their fancy 4k AI POE-powered ones on the way (under £80) which claim to recognise people and vehicles so will see if that actually works to cut down the notification chatter. These can record locally to SD card but you can get the recordings from the app, and they can stream off to a NAS or server on the network.

^^^^ yeah a decent standalone camera is going to be miles better than any integrated doorbell cam (particularly for night vision, arguably where it's most important if used for security) Reolink are good, Hikvision have a good rep, Dahua are supposed to be the best I think, I've been trying out some Annke cameras which are cheap & have good reviews.

The other main way these are better is they can have image recognition rather than motion detection, so eliminates false positives in most cases. This can either be done on the camera or you can buy cheaper cameras and then do it in software on your home server.

A friend bought a wired kit for about £200 that had 4 cameras which are great quality, all mains powered, records on site or into cloud, can see on phone, sends alerts etc. Yes it’s more effort to instal a wired system but it doesn’t have any ongoing costs, no battery replacements needed, no wifi issues. Surely it’s worth the effort to get something more reliable like he has?

We've got half a dozen Neos, they record to an SSD card in the camera itself and to the cloud (you can pay more for longer storage). Get phone alerts when they trigger.

They were dirt cheap at £25 a pair, but seem to have gone up to £25 each now.

Connect via Wifi. They seem to work OK.

Here is an arch criminal breaking into our workshop to measure something....

and at night