5 Features I WISH Ring Added To Their Products – New Video

I love Ring products, but sometimes I wished they added some key features. After all, many of their products cost hundreds of dollars (or pounds), but the recording quality is stuck at ‘full HD’ and there’s a often issues with missed recordings due to the lack of Ethernet support and 24/7 recording support.

So today’s video covers five key features that I’d really like to see Ring roll out:

The sections of this video are:

  • 0:00 Intro
  • 0:28 Feature 1 – Better recording quality
  • 1:11 Feature 2 – More Ethernet support
  • 2:25 Feature 3 – REAL local storage
  • 3:29 Feature 4 – 24/7 recording support
  • 4:27 Feature 5 – Night vision control
  • 5:22 Wrapping Up

The Reolink camera I referred to is: https://reolink.com/product/rlc-811a/

I also mentioned Wi-Fi jamming, which I discuss more on my blog here.

Video Transcript

Hello, I’m Tristan. I am a big fan of Ring’s products – I have five of their cameras and doorbells, and the Ring alarm system too. I love how simple they are to set up, manage in the Ring app, and also integrate with other Ring and Amazon products. But sometimes I find some of the functionality and products a bit lacking – especially on their doorbells and cameras. So today’s video covers five features that I wish Ring rolled out on their products.

Firstly, recording quality. A big benefit of security cameras (or doorbells) is obviously being able to see people and cars going past. But the “full HD” recording quality that Ring offers is often not sufficient. I know that the Ring Doorbell Pro 2 improves on this slightly with 1536p quality, but this is still classed as HD. I think that 2k quality should be a minimum, but 4k would be ideal. Many of Ring’s doorbells and cameras cost a lot more than $100, and still only offer 1080p quality – which I find a bit annoying considering that you can go out and buy awesome 4k cameras costing under $100 from companies like Reolink and ANNKE. The difference in recording quality is massive, which I have looked at in another video.

It seems like right now with Ring, I can only make out detail which is 15 foot (or closer) from my doorbell or camera. And that’s during broad daylight. During the night, it’s hard to make out any real detail unless someone is standing right next to the camera. It’s frustrating, and I think that Ring should improve this.

Secondly, I’d like to see more Ethernet support. Most of Ring’s cameras and doorbells rely on Wi-Fi. But Wi-Fi can be unreliable, or it can even be jammed by a burglar or neighbor. This results in you losing all motion-based recordings that occur during this time. There are two solutions to this: proper local storage (which I’ll discuss later), and Ethernet support. By running an Ethernet cable from your router (or a network switch) to your Ring device, you are protected against general Wi-Fi issues and also jamming attacks. I’m a big fan of Power over Ethernet since this allows you to run a single cable to your device, but supporting Ethernet (alongside a separate power cord) would still be a big step forward.

Of course, Ring does offer two PoE devices – the Ring Doorbell Elite and the Ring Stick-up Cam Elite. But they are both quite expensive – the Ring Doorbell Elite is $350, five times the price of the Ring Doorbell Wired, even though they both have pretty similar features. It would therefore be nice if Ring added an Ethernet option to most of their cameras… or at least dropped the price of their current “Elite” products.

Thirdly, I’d love real local storage. Yes I know that Ring brought out “Ring Edge” in 2021, but this requires you to have the Ring Alarm Pro (costing $250) AND pay $20 per month for a Ring Protect Pro subscription. Over 3 years, you’ll end up paying almost $1000 in total. But REAL local storage should be free – just add an SD card slot to each Ring camera/doorbell, then people can record locally without being dependent on the cloud. Or add support for streaming to a NAS – either via simple FTP functionality, or RTSP support. There’s various different ways of achieving local storage, but the point is, Ring don’t offer any of these. Ring Edge is overly expensive and restrictive, and it isn’t available outside of North America either.

This is partly why I love my Reolink camera – it supports FTP, streaming to a NAS, local SD card recording, and more. Now, I understand why Ring don’t offer real local storage (this is where Paul Hibbert would shout “CORPORATE GREED”!), but it’s still frustrating.

My fourth gripe is 24/7 recording support. In other words, being able to record continuously – even if no motion is detected. This would be especially important because Ring doorbells and cameras do miss motion at times, meaning that you sometimes get no recordings at all of something really important that happens around your property.

Ring promised everyone 24/7 recording support back in 2018, and they… seem to have given up on it! Yes I know that it would cost them more to store the extra videos on the cloud, but since they now offer “local storage” to people in North America (but no-one else in the world… #totallyNotBitter) you’d think that they’d actually offer 24/7 recording as an option to Ring Edge users. Who knows – maybe they will deliver this at some point, but right now it seems as distant as the HomeKit support they also promised but never delivered. #totallyNotBitter

Okay, my fifth and final point is night vision control. Many cameras allow you to choose when night vision will come on – or they even allow you to disable it completely. Ring sadly don’t offer either of these features. Now, I know this doesn’t sound too important because if it’s pitch black, then you obviously wouldn’t see anything when you disable night vision. But sometimes there are light sources nearby that make the night vision quality pretty terrible. But if this affects your Ring recordings, you currently have no control over it. It would also be nice to have control over when night vision mode kicks in – this is called lux (or daylight) control. After all, sometimes there’s still some daylight left, but the Ring camera has already switched to night vision mode and the recording quality isn’t great as a result. Adding a little more control over night vision shouldn’t be hard for Ring, and it’d be a really nice feature for some users.

And that’s pretty much it. I do really like Ring’s products – they look good, they’re easy to install, and are easy to control and use. However sometimes they feel a little bit dated too – being stuck at 1080p recording, having no 24/7 support, no local storage, no Ethernet support and no night vision control seems to contradict Ring’s premium price tag. But maybe that’s just me – what do you think? Do you agree with the five feature requests I mention? Are there other features you think Ring should introduce?  Let me know in the comments below.

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About Tristan Perry

Tristan Perry is a software developer who is passionate about tech gadgets, DIY and housing. He has therefore loved seeing smart homes hit the mainstream. Tristan also has an academic background (in Math & Computer Science), and so he enjoys digging into the technical ways that smart home devices work.

Tristan owns close to a dozen Amazon Echo devices, way too many Philips Hue bulbs and lightstrips, a boat-load of Ring Cameras and Doorbells... and a bunch of other smart home devices too (from Reolink, Google Nest, GLEDOPTO and others).

If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions about this article, please leave a comment below. Please note that all comments go into a moderation queue (to prevent blog spam). Your comment will be manually reviewed and approved by Tristan in less than a week. Thanks!

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