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Ring, Ring – Who’s at Your Front Door?

During Amazon Prime days, I bought a Ring doorbell cause it was $20 off. Great deal, huh? Only $69 on sale! (now on sale at $59) – clearance?

Sigh. So buying the cheapest one is quite disappointing.

With both of us with hearing loss, I’ve been pondering over this for the 4 years we’ve owned this house. The Ring doorbell is an easy install, runs on wifi and has enough settings to satisfy any techie. I thought. A doorbell plus…. Oh, I can check to see what’s happening outside, who’s at the door, has the mail come, is my husband back from shopping (or me back from wherever needing an assist with the shopping bags or the wheelchair), etc. Cool! Hmm….

The video doorbell works. But the problems with this Ring doorbell are irritating enough that I think you need to think this through more carefully than I did.

  1. The motion detection is so sensitive that it gets triggered constantly during the day because we are on a major road. Lots of vehicles (mostly but not all large ones) trigger it. Which means it drains the battery really fast. I do like being notified of folks in my yard – maybe next time I can stop my husband from chopping down anymore shrubs… Solution? buy a more advanced (more expensive) doorbell that allows you to change the motion settings. Also, only use the day setting with no motion detection.
  2. Though the wifi is pretty strong (I even use a booster), obviously it’s not stable enough. A known problem with these doorbells is the draining of power from a not great wifi.They say one charge should last 6 months to a year. We’ve drained it in one month. Solution? wire it in or buy a solar adaptor. Wiring it in may not be much of a problem actually because there is a line running right behind it with 2 sets of light switches. So much for making my life easier. Solar adaptor $45
  3. No videos are saved ever unless you pay Ring a monthly/yearly fee. Once we ran out the month trial, I found that live video is the only thing. 15 motion alerts and no way to see what’s going on. Ha. Solution? Pay out more money on a constant basis. Give up on the motion detection completely is certainly the cheaper option.
  4. We’ve had only one person use the doorbell – on Halloween, a trick or treater hit it once. I don’t do candy.

So I don’t have a path forward that works. Oh, wait, I really was just wanting a doorbell. That works. Just gotta turn off the motion detection and go back to checking the mail constantly and never knowing where the hubby is or what he’s doing. Sigh.