Please can someone explain Ring doorbells?

[RobinOnTheTable]

Please can someone give a brief dummy's guide to Ring doorbell, to this 62 year old technophobe?
I'm hoping for a video doorbell to deter some problematic behaviours at the front of the house, a security camera for the garage at the back of the garden and maybe an internal nanny-cam style camera to watch the puppy when we're out.

How does it work with installing as I can't even work a drill successfully?! Can it be mounted on the brick beside the front door, rather than the door or frame?
How do you sync this to your phone - what happens if i change phones?
I've seen the @2.50 / £8 monthly charge - do you pay a service charge per item or for the system as a whole?
I immediately thought Ring due to the adverts on TV, but is there a better or cheaper system?

Many thanks for your help.

I’ll try my best…

Yes to the mounting on brick - ours is. Ours is the battery potion so pretty simple to install you just have to make sure your wifi is strong enough being just outside. If you want one running off the mains you’d probably need an electrician or a handy friend

It’s linked to an app so when you change phone it goes with you

The £2.50 per device is for the full device so for keeping footage for thirty days. If you just want it to see who is at the door before you answer, you don’t need it. The £8 is for unlimited devices so if you had four or more Ring devices it would work out better value

We have Ring as it was on offer when I got it. There are other options though, I’d just Google to research 😊

*full service

Also, you get a 30 day trial of the full service do you can work out if it’s worth having

I'd also add that if you don't own a smartphone, don't even attempt to set up a Ring doorbell.

We have a ring doorbell and a few ring cameras dotted around the house and garden. We pay the fee and therefore we can watch the videos back as they are stored. You also get new camera if yours break if you pay the fee (happened twice with us for the light/camera ones the rest have been fine). We have a ring battery camera in the chicken coop which would work well for your puppy watching. You just need to charge the battery up every now and then. We also have the lights/camera one on the house and in the garden. These work like a motion sensor light so you can see where your going and record at the same time. They do need a smart phone and decent wifi to work well.

We installed a ring doorbell with the aim of deterring an annoying neighbour from hammering on our door and shouting nonsense through the letterbox. Since installation it's had a 100% success rate.

We have screwed it to the front door itself. Had to buy a wifi booster which has sorted out the issue of it regularly having very weak or sometimes no connection.

have to charge the battery around every 3 weeks which is more frequently than I'd hoped. We have optimum battery saving settings too.

overall, I'm happy with it.

Thank you everyone.

So the ring doorbell part that’s attached to near the door - this can be battery powered? And it’s connected to the WiFi?
does it still send the notifications to your phone when you are out and your phone is working off it’s 3G??

I have Arlo cameras as the ring doorbell I tried out wouldn't connect to the WiFi. I find them brilliant and very easy to use and set up, you can get as many as you like.

It sends a notification when something moves on camera and you can also go and watch live whenever you want.

My front door is quite close to a busy road. Won’t the Ring notification go off all the time if it detects movement - or does it only trigger when someone presses the bell?

Sorry to ask maybe an obvious question but I’m also researching the product too.

You can adjust this on settings

Also, do you have a separate plug in chime so you can use it as a conventional door bell?

Many thanks.

We have a Eufy doorbell and a Eufy security camera at the back of the house. Both are battery so no mains wiring required and connect to the Wi-Fi perfect. The app is really simple to work and notifies when they're activated. We've set the distance on the doorbell so it doesn't go off with people passing by, only once they're within our gate and coming up the path! Got them on offer on Amazon a while ago and decided they were worth a try at a cheap price and had no issues with them whatsoever!