Ring doorbell

[Lovingtheglitter]

Hi all
I have been looking at the Black Friday deals online and would like to buy a ring doorbell, but I feel a bit overwhelmed of the choices and extra bits I might need. Can anyone break it down for me please? All I want is a door bell that rings that records if needed or am I missing out on something that I could need? I'm not sure what I should buy - help me out?

If you just want the doorbell then that’s all you need. If you want to store and review footage (you do) then it’s £3 or thereabouts for a single device and you get stuff stored for 6 months I think. For two or more devices that’s £8 a month, and if you get the alarm system that will include monitoring and cellular backup. I started with just the doorbell and then built up from there - have 6 cams and 11 alarm pieces scattered around the house and garden room. It’s useful for so many things - did I leave my coat at home, where was the Amazon package left and so on. Well worth the £8 a month in my view and the alarm gives extra piece of mind.

Get a doorbell and a chime

Thanks so much for replying I will look further into it. I do want a doorbell but want the recording bit too. I thought it came altogether and not sold separately which I was my confusion!

You can get a Blink doorbell which will record. You can have a subscription but you don't have to have one as it will record onto a USB. It can be linked to Alexa as well which can notify you when the doorbell is pressed.

we had a doorbell and a camera since Black Friday last year. They’re great - consider the solar charger too, we’ve not had to charge ours yet on a south facing aspect!

We have the doorbell and chime. You sign up for the recording when you set everything up. We went for the annual version. We love it! It's great if you're out when someone makes a delivery, since you can see and speak to them.

This confused me when I bought one last year @Lovingtheglitter so hope this helps:

The standard Ring doorbells that you buy on Amazon or wherever come in different versions to do with camera quality and looks and whether they are battery powered or wired but they all work the same way. When someone pressed the bell it rings on your phone - you can set it up to ring on multiple phones at once; and you can set it to also ring on your Alexa/other device. Then you can see and talk to people via your phone - you don't have to pay any extra for this. You can also (free) view the camera feed anytime on your phone.

If you want to record what's happening, so that you can look back and see what happened at 3:04am etc then you need to pay a monthly subscription fee to ring.

When we got ours we had a free one month trial of the subscription - I imagine that's standard - we liked it; but not to the point where we wanted to pay £3.50 a month for it...

I have a battery powered Ring, plug in chime wi-fi extender (or my teens would never answer the door) and pay £35 a year to keep the footage for 4 weeks. And I've just bought a spare battery pack for £30 as they take so long to charge and don't want it not filming all day. It has been used to send footage of a neighbourhood burglary to the police.

I really like mine tbh. I'm quite nosy.

We have one. Just make sure your phone is compatible. Ours was when we first got it but when the Ring app was updated it no longer supported our phone. After the suggestion on this post, I think we will be looking at a Blink doorbell with usb recording.

Thanks for the replies I think we'll get the doorbell and chime - and thank you for the tip to see if it's compatible to our phones that would have been very annoying had it not been!

@Sh1eld thanks so much for breaking it down that really helped!