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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  St-Ring-s Very Much Attached, Unfortunately

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  PROS + image quality is good, even in low lighting conditions + neat features (almost all paywalled) + build quality feels decent + wide FOV + two-way talk works well for the most part CONS - all the neat, useful features are paywalled - the subscription cost can get pretty steep if you want ALL the more advanced features - live feed quality can dip pretty low sometimes - can't integrate with other smart home systems (HomeKit, Google Home). Only Alexa or the Ring app itself This is my first-ever Ring device, but I'm not new to security cameras! The Ring started with a good impression, the unboxing was pleasant and came with no plastic (yes!), and was relatively painless to set up (double yes!), though I did feel there were a lot of screens to get through. The camera itself is sleek-looking and very much unmistakably a security camera, which is great since you don't want to freak out guests or company out by secretly recording them. It comes with a little base that has a good amount of tilt and rotation and has a surprisingly wide field of view, at least compared to the cameras I've been using, so you really can get a strong sense of what is happening in a larger space like a living room. It's also a little bit larger than I expected, but not bulky or clunky-feeling at all. Moving on, the app is easy to navigate, and the event timeline feature is quite intuitive. I find it easier than the Blink camera ecosystem's way of handling video feeds. I appreciated that notifications were usually quite quick, though not instant, and that there were some pleasant features sprinkled throughout the app: AI scene descriptions (usually hit-or-miss, but generally accurate in a broad sense) and the "Neighbors" community feed (where your neighbors can share clips related to broad categories like lost and found pets or crime alerts — it's a bit like Nextdoor but only for video clips from Ring cameras) are the main ones that are useful. However, the AI scene descriptions can sometimes be hilariously inaccurate, and if you rely on them to get a sense of a clip, you may end up missing some important information. As an example, it labeled a clip of both of my cats running across the room as "A white cat is walking in the room" and labeled another clip of just one of my cats as a person, which may be because of the TV confusing it. Again, neat feature and broadly useful, but not enough so to discount actually checking clips manually. It seems to do better with people, however, and can consistently label activities like a person walking across the room. Onto the camera itself, the image quality is sharp enough to clearly read faces and detail, and beats my older 1080 Blink minis by a wide margin. I will admit that the "2k" marketing did set my expectations perhaps a tad unreasonably high, but I still find that the image quality is more than most people will need for an indoor security camera and sufficient even when zooming in on details. It works fine in low light and dark conditions as well. The speaker is also very loud and clear enough to talk through (it is actually a bit too loud on setup and even spooked me at first), and I appreciate that recordings include audio from both ends of the two-way talk feature. If you have pets, kids, or other family members you might want to talk to through the camera, this is a great feature and works quite well. I only noticed very occasional issues with audio dropping out. The biggest downside here is the subscription model. Almost every useful feature, including accessing the video event history in the timeline, is behind a paywall. You get a 30-day free trial, which you can't even manage in the app (likely to skirt app store fees, which is inconvenient but whatever), and after that you need to pay at least $4.99 a month to access the "basic" plan, which includes said event history. If you want local storage, you will have to buy the Ring Alarm Pro base station ($250), a microSD card, and *still* pay a subscription to use the dang thing. You will never "break even" on subscription fees, even if you opt for local storage. With my (cheaper, and admittedly crappier) Blink Minis, I had to shell out $50 for the sync module and $15 for the storage drive, but it took me under two years to "break even" on subscription fees. You will literally pay nearly the cost of a new camera every year in the *lowest* subscription tier model for the Ring, and that doesn't even include all the fancier features like AI scene descriptions, extended live view, or smart video search (some of which are only available in the highest tier, which is a whopping $19.99/month). Another downside is that the Ring camera does not play nicely with other ecosystems. I use an iPhone and would like to control and access the camera in HomeKit, but unfortunately, unless you use third-party apps like Homebridge, there is no way to do so right now. You can technically add the Ring camera to Google Home, but you can't do much with it at all, and you can't even access live video feeds through a Nest Hub. You're basically locked into the Amazon/Alexa ecosystem or the Ring app itself, which isn't a huge downer but is a bit annoying for anyone wanting a device that could integrate into their existing ecosystem. Lastly, live view quality was sometimes a bit of a letdown. Shockingly so, in fact. I have a gigabit connection, and even on the same connection, sitting in the same room not more than fifteen feet away, the stream would occasionally drop to a low resolution with choppy, laggy playback, worse than I've ever seen on my older cameras on lower bandwidth connections. It does usually even out on its own, but it is not what I expect for the price point. Overall, this camera does a lot well. It has good image quality, the alerts are helpful and informative (if you've ever had a camera that alerts you of every single movement with "Movement detected in X room" and nothing else, you can imagine how nice it is to get actual descriptions of what the recording might show!), it has a decent two-way audioi experience, and some useful features on top of it all. But needing a subscription for what I genuinely feel is a more basic function — and what's worse, preventing a reasonably affordable way to use local storage for this camera without a subscription — is one of the biggest drawbacks of this camera and detracts from its value significantly, especially compared to more value-oriented competitors (like Wyze). If you're already in the Ring/Alexa ecosystem or don't mind the subscription fee, which admittedly is not that high at its basic level, then this is honestly not a bad pick. I really do like using it, and it works generally quite well. However, if you aren't in the ecosystem and prefer to avoid Amazon/Alexa, if you are rabidly anti-SAAS, if you are looking for something more value-oriented, if you care about specific features that are paywalled and aren't willing to pay, this is not the right pick for you.

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  Posted 1 week ago by R Tanaka

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Great indoor camera solution with 2K resolution!

  • Tech Insider Network Member
  • Top 250 Contributor

  Adding new Ring cameras to an existing Ring ecosystem is always nice and simple, Ring has the process down! This is the new Ring Indoor Cam Plus, it's a plug in camera designed to be used, as you guessed it, indoors. I have this one set up in our living room and is replacing a competitors camera that we've used for about 10 years. What drew me to this is the increased 2K resolution of the camera for better image capturing, better video quality and overall piece of mind. Coupled with this are real time notifications* and low-light sight as well. *the real time notifications were a little slow upon set up, but they did get better the more the camera was used and worked better when I was actually away from home, bizarrely enough! As mentioned, set up was easy, you can scan the QR code on the back from the Ring app, and if you have a Ring Chime (which we do - but you do not need to have in order to use this camera), it connected to that right away. Voice prompts along the way from both the Ring Camera and the Ring Chime made it really straight forward out of the box. Now as soon as it's all set up and connected, there will be a software update to install. This takes another minute or two, not intolerable. From there, you can go into the app and use live view to help position your camera. There are mounting instructions within the app to aid with installation, if you are not placing it on a ledge, shelf or furniture. I have this one set up on the fireplace for now, as the power cord was not long enough for me to reach the ideal location that I want it in relation to a power source, so I will need to order a longer power cable. Live view initially had some lag in it, I wasn't that far away from my router in all honesty, but a couple of times, the lag was 8-10 seconds when timed. This got better and better the more I used it, but I hadn't experienced that lag with the other Ring cameras I have in my ecosystem. The image quality is really nice, being able to zoom in further (4x zoom) and maintaining a nice crisp image is great. And the low light visibility is good as well, especially when you may have just some accent lights on in your house, making visibility for other cameras challenging. This camera performed well in lower light for me. The visuals are color, and not the 'ghost grey' looking color of older models. Motion detection works very well indeed, and notifications were prompt when it happened. You can adjust the motion detection areas within the app, so if you have a high traffic area, you can map that out of the view to lower you notification frequency, if desired. Live view is always great, it's nice to check in remotely, if you are away or just out for the evening, you can check in on pets, family members, or just the house in general, to check if you left lights on etc. Two way talk has been a feature of Ring cameras and I feel like it's gotten better with each generation. I know my Ring doorbell camera which is about 10 years old, sometimes it's hard to understand what someone is saying, but with this new Ring Indoor Cam Plus, the voices are a lot clearer through the small speaker. And for those times that you don't want to have the camera running, there is a shutter that slides over the front of the camera to block its sight and maintain your privacy, very handy indeed, however, it doesn't have a smooth action and came off in my hand when I first slid it across. I have since finessed my approach to closing it over. If you subscribe to the Ring subscription (we do) you can have additional storage and ability to save and share your video history. This is convenient for capturing moment that are longer than one week out from happening. That subscription also allows you to have more cameras in your ecosystem as well, so it's definitely worth it. Overall, the Ring Indoor Cam Plus is a great addition to a Ring camera set up or a wonderful first step into the Ring camera world! With stunning 2K resolution, color images in near-dark conditions and a really easy to use set up and interface, it makes it a no brainer to check out!

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  Posted 5 days ago by Cupra

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Small but Mighty 2K Security Cam

  • Top 500 Contributor
  • Tech Insider Network Member

  The Ring Indoor Cam Plus, plug-in, retinal 2K, low-light sight security camera is a very small but mighty piece of home security. It measures 1.96"w x 3.78"h x 1.96"d and weighs 0.18 lbs. It is plug-in only, so be sure to place it where it can remain plugged in. Setup was quick and easy after downloading the Ring app. It took me through step by step and after that, I was ready to setup my preferences. There are so many settings for this cam - the most important to me are the video settings. You are able to record 24/7 or record based on motion (my choice). Then you can choose which events would trigger an action. Surprisingly, the smart alerts are only able to differentiate between people, vehicles and other motion. There is no option for pets/animals, which would have been my choice. You can choose recordings, alerts or both for each of those. You are able to set the length of recordings - up to 120 seconds and you choose the quality for recording - 1080p or 2K. That is only a sample of what you can do with this. You can monitor your cam via Live View through the app - observe when you want to. It does record when in Live View and I haven't found a setting to stop that, but it is easy to delete recordings if you want to. You are able to chat back and forth or set off an alarm in Live View. A really cool feature is having the AI automatically caption the videos to give a description of what happened. For me, this has been amazingly accurate and saves me the time of having to look at a video that doesn't show what I'm looking for. This is 2K and that makes for very clear video - especially since this is an indoor camera. This camera works well even in low to no light situations. With low-light, the video is still in color, but with no light, it is B&W, but still quite clear. That is fantastic for me as I got this to monitor my fur babies (cat x 2). They have a room just for them where they have their litter boxes and I wanted to see which one did what and where. This Ring Cam does that for me - even when it's dark. Very important to note, without a subscription to the Ring service, you are only able to get Live View, get motion notifications and two-way talk I believe. It is difficult for me to know at this time specifically what you get because it automatically sets you up on a trial plan for 30 days when you get the device set up. Customer service informed me that I am unable to cancel the trial plan. So it is difficult to assess if I will need the plan or not after the trial. I am fairly certain though that recording videos will not be allowed. This is actually a pet peeve of mine. Why can't more companies make their cameras with a micro SD slot so that videos could be stored locally? Then cloud storage wouldn't be necessary and we wouldn't have to pay for it. The Ring Indoor Cam Plus, plug-in, retinal 2K, low-light sight security camera though small, provides good camera coverage for a room and more. It has an ample field of view at 115° horizontal and 60° vertical and viewing/recording quality is good at 2K. With a paid subscription, there are many options/settings to personalize, but very few without. I would recommend this camera for its quality.

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  Posted 1 day ago by BBReviewer