Ring was the first doorbell manufacturer to crack the mainstream market with their video doorbells, and now, years on, they continue to push the boundaries, most recently with the new 4K Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro (2nd Gen).

The new Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro (2nd Gen) brings not only 4K resolution with up to 10x Enhanced Zoom, front door activity alerts, including package detection, colour low-light vision, and 3D motion detection.

Installation and setup

Installing a Ring Doorbell has always been easy, especially for those who already have one, but now it seems to be even simpler.  From scanning the barcode on the manual in the box to installing the doorbell on the wall, the process is incredibly simple.

The app walks you through installation and basic settings to help you get the most out of your doorbell from day one.

Features

  • Retinal 4K resolution with up to 10x Enhanced Zoom
    • Ring was late to the party with high-resolution cameras but the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro (2nd Gen) shows that they are taking it seriously now.  In decent light, you get amazing detail, the best I’ve ever seen in a Ring camera.  The camera gives you a quick, low-resolution view but a split second later will sharpen up the image.  
    • When you zoom in on the image, you can see facial features in high resolution, making it easy to identify the subject in the video.  I’m not entirely sure what the camera does, but given the “enhanced zoom” moniker, I suspect it is doing some form of post-processing edge enhancement, as it gives that sharpness.  
Zoomed
Zoomed

  • Front door activity alerts, including package detection
    • This is nothing new to many security cameras, and I have seen it on Ring cameras before.  Having received a few packages in the last week or so I can say that yes, it works.  When combined with the AI text description, it can also be useful when the doorbell captures the person bringing the package to the door, even if they are outside the “Package detection” area.

  • Colour low light vision – this sounds awesome but does require some light to be able to produce colour images.  Normally, there should be enough ambient light around from street lights etc but it will struggle in darker areas.
    • The image quality was good in the dark – remember, this is a virtually zero-ambient-light scenario, so a camera can only do so much.  The image is decent, as you can see below, and from it, you could certainly identify someone.
    • The level of light required to produce colour images was disappointing, with a fair bit required.  I have no doubt that on-device AI could fix that, so maybe that’s the next step for Ring’s AI. 

  • 3D motion detection – pinpoint motion and distance to know exactly when and where someone’s stepped onto your property.
    • I’m not entirely sure of the value of this feature.  Sure, it can tell you how far someone is from your camera, but when would that matter?  If this is something you want, then have at it, but I didn’t see all that much use for it.  It worked is all I can say about it.

  • Two-Way Talk with Audio+ – Hear visitors clearly with high-quality audio and echo cancellation. 
    • Doorbell cameras are often exposed to the elements, so the audio is often affected negatively.  This feature helps to clean up the audio, offering a clearer voice from the person at your door.  

Battery

The battery in the new Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro (2nd Gen) is different to every other Ring battery ever used.  Now it finally has USB-C charging, but, more importantly, is bigger and has a much bigger capacity.  It does mean that you cannot use your old batteries with this doorbell, but you can buy additional batteries if you wish.

OLD vs NEW

More impressive is the new solar panel add-on for the doorbell.  It looks like a light switch but it is a black box that the doorbell is mounted onto.  It does require the doorbell to receive direct sunlight at some point during the day to work, so it is not much good to me, but for those with direct sunlight on their door area it is perfect.

After a week of use, with all the features on, although using the “recommended settings” for power usage, the battery life was at 100%. Make it make sense?!?!? I’m not sure what wizardry Ring has done here but the standby battery sippage must be basically zero. This was incredibly impressive. I mean, I don’t get a heap of visitors to my front door, but each day there’s at least a few events. I do have it set up so there are virtually no false alarms, but that the battery life is virtually the same after a week is mind-blowing.

New subscription tier with AI

I’ve always used the Ring Multi subscription, which covers all the basic needs and cloud access and storage for all the Ring cameras at my house – all 13 of them.  There is another subscription level above this called Ring Protect, which includes even more features, including:

  • Video descriptions
  • Single Event Alerts
  • Unusual Event Alerts
  • Video Search
  • Alexa+ Greetings
  • Continuous Live View

The big ticket item here is the new Smart Video search feature.  

Smart Video Search is powered by Ring IQ, a combination of Ring AI technology and Ring’s in-house expertise.  It uses Visual Language Modelling to match text to images, delivering results for any query it receives. It allows the user to type a search into the app to locate a specific scene, rather than scrolling through all their saved videos and screenshots to find the image or video they want.

Yes, AI is everywhere.  Having used the feature for the past couple of weeks, it is good, but is it worth the 100% price increase?  I don’t think so.  If you pay up front, you can get it for $199 for the year, and although not that much, it is still twice the price of Ring Multi.  It really depends on how much you need these AI video search features.  

Final Thoughts

We’ve covered a lot of Ring video doorbells and cameras in the past because, well, there has been a lot of them! The problem with so many of the battery operated devices in most cases was the battery life. It was not great. Ring has now fixed that.

The new battery size (9800mAh vs 5800mAh) is part of that but that doesn’t explain the true difference in battery life I experienced during the review. I’m not sure how they have done it, but they have. The battery life I experienced was exceptional and if you really want to never charge it, you can buy a solar panel for it but with this battery life I dare say you could just set a calendar reminder to charge it once every month or two on a weekend for a few hours when you are home and be just fine.

Add in the new 4K resolution, an impressive 10x zoom and good vision in virtually zero ambient light and you have Ring’s best ever battery-powered video doorbell.

There is a new subscription level to include video search and AI descriptions but I’m not sure that price is justified by how useful the new additions are. For me they probably aren’t worth it but you may think otherwise — refer to the above table to see which subscription level best suits you.

The new Ring Battery Vieo Doorbell Pro (2nd Gen) is available now for AU$399 from Amazon, Ring and select retailers.