Ring Stick Up Cam Battery review
Our Verdict
The Ring Stick Up Cam Bombardment works well, but it'due south best for those already invested in Band's ecosystem or Alexa devices.
For
- Slick app
- Ring ecosystem and Alexa Integration
- Proficient battery life
- Weather resistant
Against
- No local storage
- Useless without subscription
- No Google Home or Apple HomeKit Integration
Tom's Guide Verdict
The Ring Stick Up Cam Battery works well, but it's best for those already invested in Band's ecosystem or Alexa devices.
Pros
- +
Slick app
- +
Band ecosystem and Alexa Integration
- +
Skillful battery life
- +
Weather resistant
Cons
- -
No local storage
- -
Useless without subscription
- -
No Google Home or Apple tree HomeKit Integration
Band Stick Up Cam Battery review: Specs
Size: 3.8 x 2.4 x ii.4 inches (without stand up)
Camera resolution: 1080p
Field of View: 130° Diagonal, 110° Horizontal, 57° Vertical
Bombardment life: Months
WiFi Connectivity: 802.eleven b/1000/north @ 2.four GHz
Audio: 2-way audio
H2o Resistance: IPX5
Operating Temperature: -5°F to 122°F (-20°C to 50°C)
The third-generation Ring Stick Upwards Cam Battery joins an increasingly crowded field of affordable, battery-operated, WiFi-connected cameras, where names big and small are pushing out little white plastic tubes and boxes designed to intelligently sense, capture, and categorize unusual activity outside your home. How they each approach this task varies massively, simply the end result should always be that the people who buy them feel safer. I really got to put that to the test when the Stick Upward Cam Battery caught someone trying to open a window on the back of my firm, about a calendar week into testing. Fortunately they were unsuccessful and moved on, merely this was a startling justification for keeping security cameras effectually.
This Stick Up Cam Battery promises months-long battery, crisp video, and a robust feature set (most of which is accessible via a low monthly fee, of course). For this new 3rd generation, they've added a solar console option that allows y'all to keep the bombardment charged, which should alleviate any concerns well-nigh battery life.
It's worth noting Ring has made headlines in the final couple of years for security concerns and with its partnerships with police departments. Band has since taken steps to mitigate some of these worries, just acknowledging that, and given the packed-out marketplace in which they now compete, does the Ring Stick Up Cam continue to hold up?
Ring Stick Up Cam Bombardment review: Toll and availability
The Stick Up Cam Bombardment is $99.99 for a single camera, with 2-, 3-, and 4-packs also for sale (add about $100 for each additional photographic camera). Other available versions include the wired version ($99.99), which uses a normal iii-prong ability plug, and the new-for-the-3rd-generation solar-powered version ($139.99); it's an impressive set of alternatives for this category of cheap smart cameras.
Ring Stick Upward Cam Battery review: Blueprint and installation
The Ring Stick Up Cam was Ring's first Indoor/Outdoor camera, and looks very similar to the cheaper Ring Indoor Cam — that is, it's a cylinder that's a touch smaller than a beer tin can. Three mounting holes — one on the bottom and 2 on the back - provide some versatility, letting you mount the camera from backside and beneath. Disappointingly, if yous want to mount the camera from your ceiling, you lot'll need to buy a carve up $20 ceiling mount kit. I reviewed the battery-powered version, which comes with a quick-release battery pack that slots easily into the lesser of the camera. Included is a curt Micro USB charging cable and, of form, the mounting hardware, which consists of a few pocket-sized screws and some wall anchors.
On the front of the camera, blacked-out, glossy glass contains the camera lens, microphone, and status calorie-free, as well as the IR emitters. The camera lens field of view is wider than tall, with a 130° diagonal, 110° horizontal, and 57° vertical field, giving it skillful overall coverage. On the camera'south chin is a speaker grille that lets you talk to people in earshot of the photographic camera or blare a siren, both of which are a little quieter than I'd like - when I did try to talk to someone on the other side, they had a hard time agreement me without walking right up to the photographic camera.
The camera is waterproof to an IPX5 rating, meaning it will exist fine exposed to rain or depression-force per unit area water jets from any management, and tin can withstand temperatures ranging from -v°F to 113°F (-20° to 45° Celsius).
When not mounting the camera to a wall — for instance, when using it as an indoor camera — y'all can simply set it on its stand, which has a soft rubbery base that is nice and grippy, assuasive it to sit firmly in identify.
Ring Stick Up Cam Battery review: Video quality
Perhaps the most of import part of a security photographic camera is its video quality. Most, like the Stick Upwards Cam, have a resolution of 1080p, simply the actual end-result can exist dirty and full of artifacts. During my testing, I found the footage from this camera was a lilliputian rougher than others I've used in this cost range, but you'll still get a clear enough moving-picture show of your average porch pirate.
Night vision on the Ring comes in two flavors: infrared and non-infrared. Either has the option to permit Ring colorize the paradigm for you. I institute that night vision was practiced all around, and the prototype was nearly as articulate every bit it gets with your typical consumer-grade Wi-Fi HD smart camera. The colorization wasn't especially successful at guessing the colors it was seeing, but information technology was skillful plenty to differentiate objects from each other.
Ring Stick Up Cam Battery review: Bombardment life and Wi-Fi
I had initial problems with bombardment life — the camera'due south accuse had dropped to 36% inside three days, just thereafter began behaving commonly. After inquiring with Ring, I was told by a representative that what I experienced was the camera self-calibrating, and that the problem was likely an inaccurate reading and that over a few recharge cycles, accurateness should increase.
Ring offers no specific battery life claims, only that it can go months between charges during normal use, and every bit far as I tin can tell from my subsequent tests, that is likely true. That said, should you observe yourself regretful nearly having purchased the bombardment-powered version, Ring does sell kits to catechumen the photographic camera to solar-powered or wired.
Like almost smart cameras, the Ring Stick Up Cam is limited to a 2.four GHz connection on the outdated 802.11n, or Wi-Fi 4, standard. I would like to see devices like this begin to adopt newer Wi-Fi standards, as Wi-Fi 4 is incompatible with WPA3 which, while problematic in its own correct, remains generally much more secure than the very old WPA2 security standard. Still, at that place are things you lot tin and should do to minimize the gamble to your network when using such devices.
Ring Stick Up Cam Battery review: Features
Smart cameras tend to range from elementary, local, record-it-and-store-it affairs to crowd-sourced mass surveillance. Somewhere in the eye, though, there'southward not much a camera can do as well be a photographic camera. How information technology accomplishes that chore is where much of the special sauce, then to speak, is mixed. In the case of the $129 Arlo Essential, for example, users tin specify whether they desire the camera to notify of and/or record not merely people that the camera spots, but also cars and animals. The Stick Upward Cam is less granular, but can still be set up to detect only people. A bummer, perchance, merely I've found that pet/car detection can lead to a sort of photographic camera-who-cried-wolf scenario, and notification fatigue isn't adept for a security photographic camera.
The Ring Stick Upward Cam comes with other features that accept become indispensable for security cameras in recent years, such as adjusting motion sensitivity and setting detection zones and motion-detecting schedules. From the main device screen, a gridded tile interface lets y'all, among other things, chop-chop access event history, customize settings for unlike modes (designated Disarmed, Domicile, and Away), or set the size of your Geofence. Hither, yous tin can too check device health or look at power settings. The device wellness section lets you easily update the photographic camera'due south network settings and view Wi-Fi signal strength, represented by its Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) number, making information technology easier to identify the photographic camera in a place with the strongest connectedness.
From a privacy standpoint, I was disappointed to learn that the end-to-end encryption offered by Ring on many of its wired devices does not extend to their battery-powered offerings, presumably because it presents power drain problems. Withal, despite the guff Ring has gotten on other aspects of privacy, it does have some absurd options in this arena, like Privacy Zones — a feature that lets you black out areas of the camera's field of view, so that you don't record neighbors' activity. It's non the simply photographic camera with this feature, of course, only information technology's a nice characteristic, nonetheless.
Of course, Band offers more than merely camera-specific features: it has its own proto-social network chosen Neighbors. In terms of usefulness, I'm not specially convinced Neighbors is where it's at; while information technology may provide some superficial condolement and could even take legitimate potential every bit a offense-fighting tool, information technology is littered, as so many public online forums are, with paranoid speculation and unfounded accusations. Other aspects of it are nice - posts are completely bearding, and the tiles at the elevation of the feed provide a lot of useful information on local crime and safety bug, equally well as a handy list of crisis hotlines and COVID-19 information.
Ring Stick Up Cam Battery review: App
Owners of Ring gear volition know that the Ring app often shines where other camera makers' do not. Particularly when looking at a given camera, the app is responsive, and videos load very chop-chop, even every bit you lot scrub through video history. Loading the live feed is near as fast as on a HomeKit-based camera. Sometimes it'south too pretty, though, as information technology's not immediately clear how to, say, download a video or activate the siren, simply with a little mild dedication, y'all figure it out quickly enough. That said, while it's dainty to take a pretty app, where home security is concerned, I experience controls ought to be conspicuously delineated and functional.
There is also a Band desktop app, which I looked at on Mac OS. This app is squeamish in ways the telephone app is not; as a defended camera-only app, there is no backlog here. Y'all get a list of videos, which are like shooting fish in a barrel to select and save, with tabs for categories of video. Improvements could be made here, of grade — I wouldn't mind beingness able to batch-relieve videos, or picket on a timeline, but the straightforward approach is prissy, regardless. Additionally, I'1000 particularly addicted of the characteristic where, so long equally the app is open up, if the camera detects motion, a small-scale live video window will pop up to show it to me.
Ring Stick Up Cam Bombardment review: Smart home integration
Right now, Ring'south smart abode integration is ane of its biggest drawbacks. Beingness currently limited to Alexa, the Band misses out on a large chunk of the market by ignoring Google Home and Apple HomeKit, requiring those users to resort to more complicated means of voice control, should they decide to choose Band anyway — and I don't really see any reason they would.
Users more invested in Amazon's ecosystem will be able to let their Ring and Amazon devices all piece of work in tandem. For instance, Amazon has integrated its Echo devices, letting users view persons captured on camera using their Echo Show or configure their Echo device(s) to play sounds or perform other automations. I of my Repeat Dots permit me know that someone was in my backyard any time the camera detected motion. If you have a busy lawn, such a routine tin can quickly go annoying, just there is genuine merit in using it — say, if you lot use scheduled Do Not Disturb on your phone, but want to exist notified of such things regardless.
That said, the integration with Alexa is powerful, as routines let for you to turn your Amazon smart speaker or speakers into a makeshift alarm arrangement with blaring alerts and smart lights switching on wherever you lot'd like in your firm. You could as well use your camera to trigger a notification to check for packages or something — the possibilities are slap-up, and in my testing, it worked without delay, my Repeat Dot's routine and my Ring notifications on my phone occurring simultaneously.
Ring Stick Upwardly Cam Battery review: Storage
If you've been paying attention, so you know that Ring has no local storage option without some fairly complicated workarounds. Simply put, without a subscription, Ring is piddling better than a move sensor with live video, which is even so fine for a doorbell camera, but it'southward not as easy to justify the expense for a normal security camera. I would argue that, practically speaking, this is Ring's biggest Achilles' heel. After all, how useful is cloud-based storage if your internet connectedness goes out? Additionally, many users' outdoor internet connections may exist tenuous, at all-time, and having a camera that possesses no back-up means for storing video opens perhaps too big a hole in one's home security.
Other cameras, such as the Eufycam two and the Wyze Cam Outdoor, offer local storage. With Ring, if your internet service goes, yous're upwardly the creek, whereas smart cameras with local storage tin go on on trucking, and then long as your network is nevertheless functioning.
This doesn't mean in that location isn't value to Band's cloud-based storage. At $3/month for the base Ring Protect plan, the subscription is inexpensive and accessible for single camera users, giving admission to 2 months of video history. Accessing the videos is like shooting fish in a barrel, cheers to an intuitive and fast-loading timeline that you can scrub easily. Periodic snapshots taken by the camera betwixt videos provide continuity between videos, which is nice. If you take a solid, fast wireless network, and internet service that rarely goes out, the shortcomings of cloud-only cameras largely fall away. For more information on how Ring's plan stacks up against the contest, bank check out our article on the best security camera storage plans compared.
Band Stick Up Cam Battery review: Lesser line
Ultimately, tin this camera help you feel safe? Absolutely. Move detection is consistent and in my testing I never had whatsoever issues with disconnection. As well, as far as I could tell, there were no false activations, and if it missed anything I didn't notice. The Stick Up Cam also benefits from Band'due south ecosystem and its integration with Alexa, both of which are big strong points, considering their penetration into homes. It also doesn't need a special hub, which is nice.
However, questionable partnerships with law enforcement aside, there are more firsthand, practical reasons to consider alternative cameras, not the least of which is local storage — Ring simply doesn't offering information technology as an option, while other camera manufacturers offer on-device processing and local storage. Additionally, express smart home integration and somewhat lesser video quality make it difficult to recommend Ring over other options. Ultimately, while I would definitely recommend this camera to someone already invested in Ring'south ecosystem, anyone just beginning to build out a security suite at their home should take a stiff expect at the best outdoor security cameras for other options.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/ring-stick-up-cam-battery
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