Are ring doorbells worth it?

[healthanxietynightmare]

Are ring doorbells worth it? Not sure if it would be worth me buying one or not.

On balance, yes, worth it, and we picked ours up really cheaply at Costco, but there are a few really annoying things about our Ring doorbell.

You have to pay a subscription if you want to be able to look at historic videos (I know there are other brands you don't have to).

It regularly drops offline, and you get no warning or alert at all, so the first you know about it is when the Tesco driver is phoning to ask why you aren't answering the door. So irritating.

You need two batteries (or be prepared to have no doorbell for a few hours while it charges).

There isn't enough time to respond to the phone notification when you aren't home. By the time I've worked out how to speak to the person they are half way back down the drive.

It records some events, but then randomly ignores others. I can walk down the drive, get in my car and drive away.....nothing. But then a random bus goes past in the distance, and I get a nice recording.

So....could do better, Ring.

I have a eufy which is brilliant, we chose this over the Ring due to no subscription charges.

Yes but I have a horrible neighbour so it helps to keep him in check. I now have two lots of footage of antisocial behaviour. I do pay the subscription though which is annoying.

I were you, I'd look into the free one.

That's what I have. Had it now for about 3 years roughly.

I think so. Mine is five years old and still going strong. I pay for the subscription as I'm away fairly often.
I've got a spare battery and a chime so the dc's know when the doorbell is pressed.

Can't say I've ever felt the need for one given I can see my front door from my lounge. I actually really dislike them. I can see from footage other people post on local FB pages that they cover half the street when they're only meant to cover your own property. I find them really invasive and dislike the idea of people watching strangers go about their business or just doing their jobs. Privacy is a thing of the past it seems.

We have Aqara rather than Ring and wired in. I don’t know much about which I’d go for as DH huffed and puffed over it but having something at the door to catch parcels, trespassing etc - absolutely. We had an interesting one last week where we had apparently received a huge parcel for a neighbour - actually the driver had propped it up against our wall, taken a photo as proof and then taken it away again. We showed the neighbour, they were able to follow up.

I had a parcel delivered. The courier put the parcel on my doorstep, stepped back and took a photo of it and then picked the parcel back up. She then noticed the camera, stared at it and then put the parcel back on the doorstep.

I do wonder if she was going to pretend it was delivered and take it away.

It would have been no use to anyone as it was all personalised gifts for Christmas so worthless to anyone else, and I wouldn't have had time to reorder in time for Christmas.

Interesting there's a case on the news the past few days where a cat went missing. When the owners checked their ring doorbell an amazon driver had picked it up and made off with it.

The cat has since been returned but without that footage they'd have had no idea what happened.

Why he took the cat I dont know, but without the ring door bell, they'd never have known

Wouldn't touch a ring one but we have a eufy- no subscription and can add an sd card to save all the footage. Has been very useful!

No. I don’t see why I need any kind of camera doorbell. I just answer the door if I’m in , and if I’m not it doesn’t matter. I never have my phone on me and by the time I’ve found it it would’ve been quicker to answer the door. I don’t see the need to record people, not that many people come to the door anyway. Just the postie , and deliveries.
Ive got an old fashioned clockwork bell push one, I love the sound of it.

It is very handy for parcels, especially as a lot of delivery drivers never actually ring the doorbell, they just dump and run, and they could be sitting there all day if I'm at work.

So my phone alerts me that someone has been detected, I can see them put the parcel down....then let DH know to go and retrieve it (he's usually head down in the study working).

Did you see that story today about the people who saw an Amazon delivery man on theirs - stealing their cat? So maybe. (Cat is now home, unharmed).

I fancy one as it would mean I wouldn't have to run down stairs to see who was there when I'm ill in bed and I could just ignore the various cold callers we get.

And yet if you were burgled or something else unpleasant happened to your properly, id hazard a guess you would be very interested to see if anyone had any footage..

Not really. What are the police going to do about a bulglary? They all wear masks anyway.
Besides I've thankfully never been burgled in my 50 odd years on the planet.
Helps that I live in a very modest house with no flashy car near some much nicer houses with much more expensive cars. I should imagine a burglar would go there first.

We have five cameras fixed to the soffits. Overlapping fields of view and professionally fitted. Around £1500 but with it. Hik connect. There is allegedly sound recording ability but not sure on this.

You'll get the usual - it's against to law to cover anything one centimetre outside of your garden but "it's a grey area " was what our lawyer and a police inspector friend said so....

@Inthefuturenow - "watching strangers go about their business".....well, if their business involves traipsing about on my front driveway then you bet I want to know what they're doing.

I mean, I don't just sit there with a cup of tea watching random postmen, but it's reassuring to know that there's video footage should something happen. There's no walkable pavement at the bottom of my drive, so by and large nearly everyone the Ring camera picks up is on my property.

I have a ring doorbell. It is good because there are a lot of doorstep sellers in my area. However a massive downside for me is that i get a notification on my phone every time that someone walks past. I don't want to watch footage of my neighbour walking his dog.

All you ring owners have a look at what they're rolling out now, mass surveillances by facial recognition using your doorbell. Well done slow hand clap

For us it’s worth it, especially as It links up to our CCTV system we already have around the front of our house.
We live in a 3 storey house and DH WFH on the top floor so if there’s a delivery or something, he can “hold” them there whilst he gets downstairs/ask them to put it somewhere convenient to grab later. We are also kind of on a main road so it’s a good deterrent and along with the CCTV all the motion/movement is downloaded straight to a recorder device.

Great!😊

Yes

You do know there are non-surveillance doorbells available that do all that and won't be sold to ICE as a way of finding immigrants in the USA? You're ok paying for a service that makes you the collector of data which will be sold and someone else will profit? You might as well offer to pay to run an Amazon server in your house and for that data to be sold too.

Not many ICE agents staking out my semi-detached in a UK suburb as far as I know