NEW - Ring Battery Doorbell Plus (2023 release)

I finally decided to try the ever-popular Ring doorbell. I can only assume that the hype is from being an early entry into this space because after using a myriad of home automation products, I have not been impressed by this Ring doorbell in the slightest. ----------------------- 1. Terrible documentation The box contains a tiny leaflet with no information about installing the thing, just info on expediting your personal information into their system. The only hardware reference is a picture of the hardware included, with no part counts to verify that you got what you were supposed to or descriptions to explain what the fasteners in each of the four paper envelopes should be used for. Zero info for actually using the mounting hardware. There is additional info in the setup process in the mobile app; not good info and super annoying to pick details out but technically there. This is apparently not a product for grown-ups who learned to read actual words. 2. Bad hardware. The package only contains two machine screws to connect to doorbell to the mounting plate. It's bad enough that the unit only has four holes for attaching to the mounting plate, leaving a gap at the top since no fasteners are used to hold the top half of the unit. It's far worse when one of the two middle holes gets stripped, leaving a razor-thin margin between mostly attached and dangling even if there was a third screw to add to the fun. By the way, when I say "envelope, I mean there are four tiny envelopes labeled A through D for the hardware. Not sealed envelopes, just folded over and tucked, so maybe there was supposed to be more in here but they fell out while being packed, since some fasteners fell out when I removed the envelopes from the box but before I untucked any flaps. No indication on the envelopes as to what each should be used for, just a letter, so you'll just have to figure it out based upon clues from whatever sources that you can find and any prior experience that you have with similar parts. The screws are metal, the mounting plate is plastic, and the threads are tiny. Mounting the doorbell to the mounting plate securely is a very delicate balancing between having a secure hold and stripping the threads, even when fingertipping the little Torx driver that they include. I barely got resistance on one before it began spinning freely, leading to the aforementioned stripping; one of only four mounting holes now useless. By very, very slowly turning the screws in two of the remaining holes, I was able to get them to hold without stripping. They seem tight enough but I don't dare snug them down any more. The mounting plate is angled to left or right depending on how it gets placed, but all documentation and video I found online, given complete lack of included docs, are either for flat plates or an add-on plate that angles vertically rather than horizontally. Fortunately not difficult to figure out but I spent far more time than necessary trying to figure out if it was supposed to be that way or if they screwed up what went into the box. I'm still not sure since the hardware picture only covers the fasteners but the plate works so letting it be. The heads on the screws for the concrete anchors are about the same size as the mounting plate slot, so screws slide right through the slots when tightened, leaving the plate behind. No washers provided so it's just the screw head to hold. I drilled holes in the mount next to the slots so that the tiny heads on the screws would have something to hold after every screw popped right through the slot while hand-tightening. Note that the drywall anchor screw heads are larger so all of the people mounting doorbells to drywall for some reason should get a decent hold at least. 3. Insecure. Physically, this thing is trivial to pull from the wall and take, although I don't expect most people would since the devices do get registered. But if someone decided that it would be funny to rip the device off of the wall and throw it into the street, that would kill 3-4 seconds of their day and $150 of your wallet. The battery takes about two seconds to remove; there is a small screw hole to secure it, although no screw included unless you're expected to use one of the battery and only one to hold the unit to the mounting plate. So by default, they make for a very easy way for the unscrupulous to get extra batteries for their own doorbell. As far as software, it really goes out of it's way to farm out your personal information. Before you can even get to useful technical info, they're prompting for personal details to shove into their servers and inevitably leak out to the world, at least whatever info they aren't simply selling. And you have to expose some personal info just to get basic functionality since using the doorbell attached to your house and viewing the video through that camera on your house requires going through Ring via the Internet unless you pony up a lot more money. There is no local storage. To get a simulation of local storage, you have to buy a completely different piece of hardware AND subscribe to an additional service. Keeping with the theme of the Ring app being more of a marketing tool than a tool to help manage your home. They push a feature called Neighbors that tries to get you to expose more info to the people with the easiest access to your home under the guise of improving security. Admittedly, Ring is probably more concerned with targeting people in secured enclaves who don't actually need any sort of extra security but want something to deal with people at the door. But it does get marketed to everyone so something to be very aware of for the rest of the human race. If you think that calling the app a marketing tool is an exaggeration, the main app page has an ad for another Ring product that takes up more space than the preview of the last pic taken by the camera and the managing icons above that preview. Above that, the top bar of the screen exists just to push the Neighbors function. ----------------------- Not to say that it's all bad. The camera view doesn't reach the ground in front of the doorbell so not great for spotting packages stuck in front of the door, but image quality is solid otherwise. I'd say that the image quality is comparable to my ~$25 Wyze cameras. The rechargeable batteries are handy to manage with built-in micro-USB ports and quick-release buttons for quick swaps. If the unit was available standalone and had an alternative to using it other than by feeding yet another avenue for identity theft then I could see them being a very handy part of a home automation setup. But it isn't standalone and does require farming out your info just to get very basic functionality. In conclusion, I'd only recommend the Ring doorbell to someone whom I wanted to severely annoy and potentially rob, unless they were sufficiently handy and tech saavy to secure it despite the best efforts of Ring, in which case I'd just tell them to spend less money on something better. It's a shame because the basic doorbell/camera unit seems pretty good but everything around it is trash.