Jalen Sigh Tech

Verdict

The Ring Battery Video Doorbell (2024) is the company’s entry-level battery doorbell, and it’s great value. Its integrated battery makes the product a bit wider than the regular models, and it’s potentially fiddly to charge. However, you can trickle-charge via a doorbell transformer, which negates this problem. The new square video is great, providing head-to-toe footage. If you’re after a cheap battery doorbell, this one is a great choice.

Introduction

The baby of the company’s doorbell line-up, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell (2024) doesn’t have a removable battery and has slightly more basic motion detection than the top-of-the-line models.

However, it’s much cheaper, integrates fully into the Ring ecosystem and gives you the necessities. I’ve been testing the Ring Battery Video Doorbell (2024) over the past few weeks, and here’s my definitive verdict.

Design and Installation

• Quite a wide fit
• Optional no-screw mount
• Can work with wired chimes

The follow-up to the ageing Ring Video Doorbell 2nd Gen, the Battery Video Doorbell (2024) is housed in a similar case. As this model doesn’t use the Ring Quick Release Battery Pack, it’s shallower than battery models that do, such as the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro.

That makes this doorbell look a little sleeker, although the downside is that this model is quite a lot wider. If you’ve got narrow door frames, such as the ones on my Victorian house, then you may want to buy the Corner Kit (£17.99).

Installation is simple. First, the camera should be charged via the USB-C port on its rear, and connected to the app. Then, it’s time for physically mounting the doorbell. A screw-in mount is provided in the box, but there’s the Corner Kit I mentioned, a Wedge Kit (£17.99), and a No-Drill mount (£17.99), which uses strong adhesive.

The Battery Video Doorbell can be installed using battery power alone, although it’s also compatible with existing doorbell chimes and transformers, trickle-charging the battery automatically.

If you already have a wired doorbell, it’s well worth using its transformer as it should mean that you don’t need to remove the doorbell for charging. And, you get the benefit that your existing chime will sound when the doorbell is pressed.

There’s also an optional solar charger mount (£49.99), which will keep the doorbell’s battery charged using sunlight, although this will only be suitable for homes where the door gets enough sunlight. Once installed, everything else is managed through the app.

Once clicked into place, there’s no screw to hold the doorbell in place, but a hidden clip instead. You’ll need the removal tool (provided) to get the doorbell off for charging. The slight complication here is that if you’ve wired the doorbell to a transformer, but the battery has run flat because of the number of alerts generated, you’ll need to turn the power off and disconnect the cables from the doorbell before you can take it inside for charging.

Features

• Basic motion detection
• Works with a Ring Home subscription

This doorbell, like all of the others, is controlled and used through the Ring app, which is home to all of the company’s products from doorbells to the Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam and the Ring Alarm.

Although the doorbell can be used without a cloud subscription, you only get basic notifications and incoming doorbell rings. It’s best to subscribe to a Ring Home plan, which costs £4.99 a month (£49.99 a year) for one device (up to 180 days of video history) or £7.99 a month (£79.99 a year) for Standard, which covers all devices at your home, plus gives extra features for the Ring Alarm.

A single device subscription is expensive, but Ring is great value once you have two or more devices.

As the doorbell is largely cloud based, it works in pretty much the same way as any previous doorbell. In the app, there’s a thumbnail image that shows a recent still sample from the camera.

Tap this and you’re taken through to the timeline view, where you can scroll through previous clips and start a Live View session. There are filters to choose the date, and type of motion you want to search for, and any found clips can be downloaded for storage.

In its default setting, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell (2024) will send a lot of alerts your way. To cut down on this, you can set activity zones and adjust the motion sensitivity. And, with a Ring Home subscription, you can turn on person alerts, so you’ll only get an alert when a person is spotted.

This feature works well, but as doorbells tend to face the street, I found that the Ring Battery Video Doorbell (2024) gave me a lot of alerts for people just walking past the house. With the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro, I get fewer alerts as its radar-based 3D Motion Detection lets me lock down motion detection to within my front garden.

Incoming rings come through quickly on your phone and can be answered directly, or I could use a Quick Reply. These have standard options, such as “Hi! We’ll be right there”. There are also seasonal replies, available, such as specials for Christmas.

The Ring Battery Video Doorbell is compatible with Alexa, but not the Google Assistant or HomeKit (unless you use the unsupported HomeBridge, that is). With Alexa, smart speakers can act as chimes, and with a smart display, you can answer the doorbell without having to fish your phone out.

That’s the same on a Fire TV device, where the doorbell feed will pop-up with video-in-video. It’s quite a frustrating and annoying experience, so I turn this feature off.

If you don’t have Alexa devices and don’t have a wired doorbell, then you can buy Chimes from Ring and plug them in around your house.

Performance

• Sharp video during the day
• So-so full-colour night vision
• Good resolution

The Ring Battery Video Doorbell (2024) has a resolution of 1440 x 1440, whereas its predecessor had a resolution of 1920×1080. That’s actually the same number of physical pixels, but the square resolution of the 2024 model, gives a better view of what’s going on outside your door with a head-to-toe view of callers.

The video quality isn’t bad at all. During the day, the video is sharp and clear, and the doorbell even did well on my south-facing door. Quality tends to drop off into the far distance of the frame, but close-up for callers at the door, there’s a lot of detail.

At night, there’s an option for full-colour video, but it relies on there being enough ambient light. In my house, despite a bright street light over the road, I found that the background turned green, while the foreground relied on IR lights and black and white footage.

Even so, people in the distance were hard to make out, but people close up at the door looked sharp and in focus. Overall, the image quality is much improved over the previous generation product.

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