Saying I have a Ring doorbell is like saying I have a Volkswagen Golf. It is only meaningful if you can be very specific about which exact type, so with apologies to poet Henry Reed, I’m going to start this review with the naming of parts. What I have is the entry-level Ring Battery Video Doorbell (2024), model number 5F97F2.
That is not to be confused with the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus, Battery Video Doorbell Pro, Peephole Camera, Video Doorbell Wired, Video Doorbell Wired Pro or Video Doorbell Elite. Oh, for a world where Ring decided to call its first doorbell the 1, its replacement the 1a, the enhanced model the 2 then 2a and so forth so we’d all know what models we were talking about.
The new doorbell replaces the long-in-the-tooth Ring Video Doorbell 2nd Gen and brings with it several handy upgrades including: 1,440 x 1,440 rather than 1080p video capture, colour night vision, so you get a clearer view of visitors in the dark, a new 150 x 150-degree field of view which lets you see packages left on your doorstep rather than just the head and torso of whoever put it there and longer battery life.
Ring Battery Video Doorbell (2024) review: What do you get for the money?
The Ring Battery Video Doorbell (2024) is now the entry-level Ring doorbell. The RRP is £99 but, you can find it on sale for less during seasonal sales events. If you want to spend less then take a look at the Blink range which is also owned by Amazon, but don’t expect the same level of image quality or responsiveness.
As you’d expect being Amazon-owned brands they both regularly appear at a discount, especially during the Black Friday consumer-gasm. If you pay full price for either a Blink or Ring camera you’re either in desperate need or have money to burn.
For your hard-earned cash, you get the doorbell camera unit itself, a mounting bracket, a little plastic doohickey to unlock the camera from the door mount, a short USB-C cable to charge and, well, that’s it. As is usual with Ring doorbells there’s no chime unit bundled, which could be an issue for those who prefer an audio backup to the tone the doorbell plays on your phone, but you can buy a Ring Chime for an extra £30.
The most significant improvement in the design is to the battery housing. With the old model, you had to remove the battery from the doorbell housing to charge it; now, you simply unclip the whole unit and plug the charging cable directly into it.
Despite that design change only the eagle-eyed will be able to tell the new Ring doorbell from the old. The only obvious giveaway is the square rather than rectangular window around the camera lens. Other than that it’s pretty much the same right down to the bright blue LED around the button and the iconic but somewhat annoying ring chime.
Of course, the features list is rather more impressive: new to the 2024 devices is an enhanced 1,440 x 1,440 video feed, colour night vision and a wide-angle camera lens. Naturally, you still get all the features you’d expect from a good video doorbell like motion detection, two-way voice communication, and the option to set pre-recorded messages and record messages from callers.
Ring Battery Video Doorbell (2024) review: How easy is it to set up?
Setup is straightforward. Ping the door mount off the doorbell with the plastic doohickey, remove the sticker covering the USB-C port and charge it up. Then download the Ring app, scan the QR code on the back of the doorbell, set up an account and link said account to your Amazon account – if you want to hook the doorbell up to an Alexa device or take out a subscription.
Then you just screw the mount to your door with the provided screws and wall plugs, clip the camera on and you’re done. Positioning the Ring Doorbell shouldn’t be an issue but it’s still worth mentioning that it’s rather big at 127 x 62 x 23mm – 20mm wider than the Blink doorbell.
The Ring mounting bracket is a better design than the Blink one. I’ve never been convinced that someone couldn’t yank my Blink doorbell off the door mount if they put their mind to it but the Ring camera fits more snugly to its bracket. It might not be any harder for some passing felonious scrote to pinch but it feels like it would be.
The app (tested in Android form) is easy enough to navigate and comprehend for all but the most determinedly technophobic and Luddite. If you don’t want to use your phone or tablet to access and control your camera, you can do it via any Alexa device, although the Echo Show 8 is the most obvious candidate thanks to its 8in touchscreen.
For the more tech-savvy there’s also support for IFTTT (you can see a selection of applets here) so you could, for example, set the camera to switch on your security lights or put a note in Google Calendar whenever the bell is pressed.
The only other technical aspect of the setup to be aware of is that the Ring Doorbell only works with 2.4GHz Wi-Fi networks and your doorbell needs to be on the same network as any controlling devices.
Ring reckons that a full charge of the battery should last between 6 and 12 months depending on usage. There’s no way we can test that but after a week of what I’d describe as more intense use than normal, the battery indicator had only dropped to 97%, suggesting that 30-odd weeks is easily achievable.
Ring Battery Video Doorbell (2024) review: What does it do well?
When it comes to the basics of video doorbell functionality the new Ring has it down pat. The 1,440p 30fps feed is noticeably sharper than that from my 1080p Blink camera while the wide-angle 150-degree lens is a real game changer, giving you a very impressive panoramic view of the area in front of your door.
The extended 150-degree vertical and horizontal viewing angle is a more useful feature than you may expect. It increases the vertical content area by 66% versus the 16:9 Blink camera. I didn’t miss the head-to-toe view on my Blink camera (which supports viewing angles of 135-degrees horizontal and 80-degrees vertical), but now I’ve seen it in action on the Ring, I do.
The colour night vision option is useful if your doorbell looks out into a relatively well-lit area because the resultant image shows more detail than a conventional black-and-white IR image. My doorbell looks out into a space that’s as black as the ace of spades so I saw no real benefit over my Blink doorbell’s conventional IR stream.
And the motion detection zoning system works well, too. You don’t get the radar depth detection that more advanced Ring doorbells offer, but you can achieve a similar effect with the tools on offer here, just with a touch less granularity.
Audio quality is every bit as good as video, with voice transmission coming out loud and clear at both ends with no noticeable delay. The camera’s speaker is loud enough to be easily understood on even a very windy day.
Something that hasn’t been added is facial recognition which you get with Nest cameras but then the cheapest Nest doorbell is far more expensive than the Ring, so you’d expect some extra features.
Ring doorbells do, however, match the Nest offering of a permanent live recording feed by storing a rolling 14-day capture from your camera. This only comes with the Premium subscription plan though.
Ring’s cameras have always been amongst the best when it comes to the speed of alerts and video feeds showing up on connected monitoring devices and the new Doorbell is no exception with alerts arriving in just over a second and the live feed showing up around 3 seconds after tapping the screen for a live view.
The Ring app has a feature that lets the doorbell play a pre-recorded message. You can choose from a selection, some in an American accent, some in a British accent, although who at Ring thought the choice of six “funny” messages from Ant & Dec was a good idea is beyond me.
What you can’t do is record your own message, so forget about greeting callers with something along the lines of “Please wait, I’m working in the garden office and it might take me some time to get to the door”.
Ring Battery Video Doorbell (2024) review: What could it do better?
Once again we are back to the question of what the Ring Doorbell will or won’t do without a paid subscription. In a nutshell, running a Ring Doorbell without a subscription means you get a doorbell but without any of the associated security or recording features, so all you can do is interact with the doorbell in real time.
That’s all well and good but I guarantee you that even if you buy a Ring doorbell with no other intention other than to use it as just a doorbell with the added benefit of live video and two-way communication you will very quickly come to want the security recording feature: humans are nosey by nature.
What’s particularly galling is that the cheaper Blink system does let you record video free of charge albeit only onto a USB stick attached to the Blink Sync Module. This means that if you want to use your doorbell to keep an eye on your car, assuming it’s parked directly in front of your door, you must have a Ring subscription to record anything. Without a sub, all you can do is watch someone steal your stereo in real time which isn’t a lot of use to the police or your insurance company.
Now the prices aren’t that bad if you have a few Ring devices. The multi-camera plan is £7.99/mth or £80/yr, which is pretty standard across the industry. However, if you only possess a single Ring doorbell, the price of £4.99/mth or £50/yr is expensive, especially when you consider the cheaper Blink plan covers a single device for a mere £2.50/mth (or free if you connect it to the Sync module).
Ring Battery Video Doorbell (2024) review: Should you buy it?
Despite this, if you pick it up at the standard price of £100 it’s impossible not to regard the new Ring Battery Video Doorbell as the best value Ring doorbell around. And when it’s discounted, as it often is, it’s an even better buy. Performance across the board is faultless and the ultra wide-angle video feed is a game changer.
The problem for the Ring Battery Video Doorbell 2024 (and all other Ring doorbells, for that matter) is that there are other video doorbells on the market that perform well, include a chime in the box and don’t lock core security features behind a subscription, allowing you to record video clips to local storage. Products like the TP-Link Tapo D230S1, which happens to be our favourite all-rounder.
If you happen to buy a Ring Battery Doorbell, and don’t mind paying the subscription, you won’t be disappointed. It really does work very well. But it is isn’t the only doorbell in town.
