Between their outdoor cameras and their new line of smart lights, Ring relies heavily on LEDs to make sure their devices are working properly. Their cameras and floodlights are rated for 10-20 years of realistic use, while their new smart lights are expected to last for over 20,000 hours. After Ring was purchased by Amazon, they instantly shot up to being the single largest smart home tech grouping out there. Ring products are designed to work seamlessly with Amazon’s Alexa which only goes to further bolster how popular this tech is on the market today.
Like pretty much every other smart home tech company, Ring relies on LED lights for many of their devices. We’ll get into how you can maximize your LED longevity in a bit, but first let’s take a look at Ring’s newest LED-based product.
It’s clear that Amazon and Ring have noticed the market share that is currently held by Philips Hue and other rivals and have moved into this new space. Ring states that the A19 smart LED bulb has a life expectancy of 25,000 hours winds up to being about three years (if they’re on 24/7), but again we have to ask what the actual use of these lights are. Ring’s Pathway and Steplights have a similar lifespan – over 20,000 hours of continuous use or 20+ years of actual use, according to their help pages:
Ring’s LED lights are often housed in their outdoor camera products and alongside motion sensors or other smart tech.
Make sure to follow the recommended guidelines for your product and you’ll be able to keep these lights going for years to come. General rain and the odd storm is fine, but persistent thunderstorms will shorten their lifespan.
General rain and the odd storm is fine, but persistent thunderstorms will shorten their lifespan. LED lighting that can be hit by a stray basketball or otherwise damaged on accident is much more likely to break than more safely placed tech. Whether you got a lemon or it has finally reached close to that 25,000 hour lifespan, these lights eventually fail even though they can last for decades.
Because these lights last practically forever, one of the leading ways they fail is when they come with a factory defect.
If your smart LED light burnt out within the warranty window, it’s time to make that return and get your product replaced. Whether you’ve got the Ring Floodlight or Spotlight Cam systems, there are guides online for hacking together new LED lights that wind up working just as well as the original device.
Philips Hue and LIFX are some of Ring’s biggest smart lighting competitors and that’s for a good reason. Their products have also gone through much more “real world testing” by users than Ring’s which could buy smart home enthusiasts that all-important peace of mind. If you’re looking for dedicated smart lighting systems, it might be worth waiting a few generations for Ring to catch up with the LED lifespan of the competition. This means that an LED has no mechanical parts, nothing to heat up, and can be built into one, sealed, secure unit. The latest non-smart LED lights are rated up to 100,000 hours and that number is probably only headed upwards. Whether it’s cost, longevity, or efficiency, LED lights are the clear winner no matter which smart tech brand you go for.
Ring Floodlight Cam Review
As we powered up the camera for the first time, it asked us to update its firmware (which seems to be the norm these days), and within five minutes we were in business. To get a firsthand view of how Linked Devices works, we decided to focus on the neighborhood friendly feline. That way, if our mysterious neighborhood cat happened to run through our yard at any point overnight, there’d be a good chance our cameras would catch it! At that point, we thought, two things would happen: we could get a good look at how the camera’s infrared night vision works in tandem with those super-bright floodlights; and we could see the elusive kitty’s path for a few seconds after motion was detected.
Pro Tip: We recommend cameras with infrared night vision because they don’t rely on ambient light. It’s worth mentioning that the ability to link devices together is pretty typical in home security cameras these days. It’s another perk of building your own smart home ecosystem with a brand like Ring; all of their devices tend to communicate with each other pretty effortlessly. Clearly, our Spotlight Camera in the front of our house failed to pick up the cat before she entered our backyard; we surmise she must have walked in from another neighbor’s yard that backs up to ours. As a standard feature in most security cameras these days, we’ve seen the extraordinary images captured with 1080p HD resolution. This is most evident from Ring’s floodlight model, where we viewed refreshingly clear and crisp video 24 hours a day, rain or shine. When it comes to audio on the Floodlight Cam, it tends to work pretty well with one exception: we noticed a lot of interference when there was background noise on either side of the conversation. The truth is, ambient noise5 is a challenge for any outdoor camera, as it’s largely unpredictable (we can’t exactly tell the garbage truck to quiet down!).
Even the brands that promise Cadillac-level features in every camera (think Nest Cams) still pick up wind gusts and tree branches, so we consider this a minor issue. Ring is known for giving its users sweeping control over how their cameras detect motion, which alerts you receive, and how much data you get.
Ring Floodlight Cam Brightness: Is 3,000 Lumens Enough?!
I wanted to answer that question in this video, which compares it to other outdoor lights and also talks generally about when the Ring Floodlight Cam’s brightness will (and won’t) be sufficient for you. So I recently installed my Ring Floodlight Camera, and I wanted to film this video today just to talk through and to show you just how bright it is, because it’s quite an important decision, the fact it’s marketed as a flood light, means it has to be fairly bright.
So I thought it was important to film this video and show you how bright the Ring Floodlight Cam really is. So 3000 lumens of light for the Ring Floodlight Cam sounds pretty good.
Now that is fairly good considering that you can effectively combine the total to 3000 lumens, but it does also mean that each individual light isn’t all that much brighter than a ceiling bulb. And this works fairly well and I quite like it, as we’ll see later, but it does also mean that the light is a little bit more focused than you might think.
But the benefit to this as well, is because you’ve got two sources of light, they both project in slightly different directions, you actually get a wider sort of cone, or wider sort of distance of light that’s projected from the Ring Floodlight Cam, compared to a traditional LED floodlight, that’s a lot more focused in how it projects the light out. What this means is, in my opinion, the Ring Floodlight Cam is really good for a backyard or for a patio or things like that, but perhaps it’s not so much good over a really long driveway or really narrow driveway, where a traditional LED floodlight is probably a little bit better.
I’ve got it installed in my backyard and when it comes on, it brightens up the area a whole lot more than my previous light, which was only, I think it was only 800 lumens, which isn’t very much.
But of course, it depends on your own circumstances, if you’ve got a really long, really massive, really impressive backyard, course that’s what I’m on about, really big impressive backyard, the Ring Floodlight Cam’s 3000 lumens of light, probably won’t be sufficient for you. In that case, on Amazon you know, you can get LED floodlights that go up to 10,000 lumens or sometimes beyond, and they might be more suitable if you’ve got a particularly big backyard. Okay, so I come outside, instantly the motion sensor kicks off, ’cause it’s a lot better, and this is the Ring Floodlight Cam, you can see it’s really bright there.
But obviously it’s a more direct hone in light, it’s more suitable for my driveway, which has my cars in it, and as you can see, things are quite well illuminated by this floodlight.
Will the Ring Floodlight Cam Work Without Wi-Fi?
The Ring Floodlight Cam provides a reliable camera and lighting combination for today’s smart, connected home. Keep reading to learn how the Ring Floodlight Cam functions and how Wi-Fi is important in these situations. Whether you are looking for live video of what’s going on outside your home or unexpected activity on your property, the Ring Floodlight Cam requires both power and a Wi-Fi connection to function. The Ring Floodlight Cam requires a 2.4 GHz Wireless 802.11 b/g/n for all connected services.
For example, if your children get an early bus or ride to school, you can schedule the camera and floodlight to come on to light their way at the same time every day. After the Ring Floodlight Cam is installed in your preferred location, you will need to turn it on and make a connection with the app.
Navigate to your Settings tab on your phone, and select the Ring Wi-Fi network your devices will connect to. After completing the setup procedure, you can now visit the app and set up any specialized zones, test the camera’s live view, and any other configurations you wish to explore. Although it’s not wireless, its powerful floodlight, along with multiple camera features, allows for a customized experience, especially once paired with your home’s Wi-Fi.
Ring Floodlight Cam review: An excellent choice—if you’re living in Ring’s ecosystem
This appeal of this feature wasn’t immediately clear to me, but a Ring spokesperson explained that it will be valuable “for customers that want to be extra careful to avoid recording miscellaneous conversations or audio that does not pertain to their home security.” While Ring emphasizes that subscriptions are optional, you’ll be restricted to real-time viewing of what the camera sees if you don’t opt in to one after your 30-day free trial.
Its Presence camera has onboard storage in the form of a 16GB microSD memory card, and you can download recorded video to your smartphone via the app. The Maximus Camera Floodlight that I reviewed in earlier in 2018, which is based on Kuna’s technology, allows you to look back in time two hours and download up to three videos per month without a subscription. Costlier plans increase the number of cameras covered and extend the time you can look back at recorded events. We previously reviewed the Ring Spotlight Cam, which is designed to be plugged into an outdoor outlet and has a single LED light. Like the aforementioned Netatmo and Kuna products, most people will install the Floodlight Cam as a replacement for an existing outdoor light. That’s a whole lot easier than cutting a hole in your exterior wall, installing a junction box, and running Romex to it.
It’s relatively easy to replace an existing outdoor fixture, and Ring makes it even easier with excellent instructions and videos covering every step of the process that you can watch on your phone. These lights are rated to produce a combined 3,000 lumens of brightness, but to my eye, the dual floodlights on the Maximus covered more area. This could be due to the cone-shaped shades on the Ring product that focus the beams more tightly than the flat LED panels on the Maximus, which are rated to produce 2,400 lumens. The Floodlight Cam’s motion sensor detects movement over a 270-degree radius and can be fine-tuned to reduce or increase its sensitivity (you can, for example, set it to respond only to humans and ignore cars or four-legged visitors).
The Ring app provides an excellent tool for creating multiple irregularly shaped motion zones, so that you can prevent objects such as shrubs and trees from triggering the lights and camera. Ring The ability to plot more than one motion zone makes it easy to prevent windblown trees and shrubs from triggering false alerts. The Ring Floodlight Cam records video with excellent quality, with just a little barrel distortion at the extremes of its field of view.
Ring attributes this limitation to the 2.4GHz frequency band’s superior range, but the fact that it’s equipped with an 802.11n adapter tells me the choice has more to do with bottom-line cost.
The Ring Protect Plus plan covers an unlimited number of cameras, so you could put one of Ring’s doorbells at your front door and its Floodlight or Spotlight cams at every other door and anywhere else you have electrical power (or not, since some of its Spotlight cams run on battery power, and with optional solar-power recharging).
Ring Floodlight Cam review: A perfect deterrent?
(Pocket-lint) – Ring is perhaps best known for its video doorbells that not only let you speak to anyone at your front door when you’re not around, but can even be used to help catch any unwanted visitors to your home. Unlike some other outdoor security cameras – Arlo, for example – the Ring Floodlight Cam only works on mains power and doesn’t have a wire-free battery option.
Whichever installation route you choose, for the simplest setup you’ll need to make sure there’s access to a power socket nearby, which will determine to some degree where you place the camera on your property. Click “set up device” and the app will then ask you to select which Ring product you want to add – you may already have existing ones, or intend to buy more – then to confirm your location.
It’s flanked by the floodlights which output at 3000 Kelvin, putting the beam into the “warm” lighting category, so is ideal for outdoor use. It also allows you to shrink the default zone so it doesn’t constantly go off and send you notifications every time a car drives past your house or the regular dog walkers go by in the early mornings.
The Ring Floodlight Cam records Full HD 1080p video – both when streaming live and when it detects motion – and saves a clip to the cloud for future reference. If you’re away from home and you do notice pesky intruders, not only will they be illuminated by the floodlights, but you can make the rest of your neighbourhood aware of their presence by activating the built-in siren. Whenever the Floodlight Cam detects motion, it will send a notification to your phone so you can immediately tap into the live view and see what’s caused it. The camera will also record a clip of the motion and save it to the cloud for you to access later through your Ring account – either through the app or on a computer. The X-Sense Home Security System makes the perfect Christmas present for your family’s safety By Pocket-lint International Promotion · 3 December 2021 It records great quality video both during the day and at night, while offering effective and clear two-way communication.
Then, of course, there’s the Cam’s pièce de résistance: the addition of floodlights, which adds an extra layer of protection to your home. As security deterrents go the Ring Floodlight Cam brings classic features into the modern tech world and it does a great job of spotting and notifying you of any potential threats – including scaring them away with the built-in alarm.
It too requires proper installation but it offers 1080p video day and night, it’s capable of detecting people, cars and animals up to a customisable 20-metres and the floodlight can be switched on manually if you want it to. It can be either mains or battery powered – the latter great for renters who don’t want to be feeding cables around the place – and offers similar alerts and recordings as the Floodlight Cam. You’ll have to buy the actual ring sound – called the Chime – separately, though, which feels like an oddity for what’s meant to be a doorbell.
At-Home Review: Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Pro
Ring makes the process as easy as possible by including a variety of different-sized screws for the electrical box (other models include a single set of screws that might not fit the holes of your electrical box) as well as both printed instructions and in-app instructions with animated GIFs to show you each step. You also have to angle the camera between 45 and 60 degrees off the wall and input its approximate height off the ground.
Ring Floodlight Cam Review: Home Security Light Camera System
Ring’s range of video doorbells is ideal not only for knowing who’s coming to your front door but also interacting with them, which is handy if you’ve got a delivery and you’re not in. It can light up your premises when motion is detected, day or night, record anything that’s happening and send an alert direct to your mobile phone. Should there be anything untoward occurring, you can remotely activate a 110dB siren, utilise two-way audio to warn off the unwanted visitor, and download the video footage as evidence.
The Floodlight Cam is available in black or white, so you can buy whichever best suits your property, whether that means blending it in or making it stand out to deter opportunists.
The Floodlight Cam must be hardwired, unlike the video doorbells that can run off battery power, and it must connect to a 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi network, with a bare minimum 1Mbps upload speed (2Mbps is recommended). Setting the motion zones for the lights works exactly the same as for the video doorbells, allowing you to adjust sensitivity on a sliding scale.
But for the cameras you can draw onscreen exactly where you want it to pick up motion, which makes it possible to prevent you getting a notification every time someone passes by or a neighbour pulls on to their drive. In our testing with the Ring Floodlight Cam it worked flawlessly, picking up any motion on our driveway and instantly notifying us via our mobile phone.
Perhaps more importantly, when the Floodlight Cam does pick up motion its recording of the event is crystal clear with a 1080p video feed.
That makes it simpler to find, download and share just the portion of the stream you need, but if action is happening just outside the motion zone it may not pick up all the incriminating footage you’d like.
Ring Smart Lighting System Review
The Ring Smart Lighting System joins the company’s impressive roster of security devices and is designed to help keep your home safe and well lit. You Can Trust Our Reviews Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. It measures 2.3 by 2.4 by 0.7 inches (HWD) and has a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi radio to connect to your home network and Wi-Fi-enabled Ring cameras. There are two signal strength LED indicators on the front and a mini USB power port on the bottom.
It uses a dimmable 400-lumen LED bulb with a 3,500K white color temperature and its motion sensor has a 120-degree field of view and a 30-foot range. A dimmable 80-lumen LED bulb with a 3,500K white color temperature sits inside a 4.1-by-4.1-inch fixture and is affixed to a pole that holds the four D-cell batteries needed to power the light.
The Pathlight has a motion sensor with a 140-degree field of view and a 15-foot range and has a dusk-to-dawn glow setting that will keep the light on at reduced brightness at night. It uses two LED bulbs to provide 2,000 lumens of 3,500K white light and its motion sensor has a 180-degree field of view and a 70-foot range.
The small Steplight Battery is designed to light up stairways, walkways, and decks when it detects motion.
The Motion Sensor doesn’t illuminate anything but it provides an early trigger mechanism for smart lights and other Ring devices.
The sensor is powered by three AAA batteries and comes with installation tools and screws, a user manual, and a security sticker. I plugged in the Bridge and waited a few seconds for the LED to blink blue, then selected my home Wi-Fi SSID when prompted.
I attached the Spotlight to the side of my house using the included mounting screws and repeated the setup process for the Pathlight and the motion sensor. Whether you want to illuminate driveways, stairways, or patio areas, there’s an option designed to light your way, and with most of these DIY devices, you don’t have to run any wires.
You can also link these lights to Ring doorbells and cameras to trigger video recordings when motion is detected.
It would be nice if Ring added support for IFTTT applets so you can do things like have lights turn on when a lock is opened or when an alarm is sounded, and rechargeable battery packs would be a welcome upgrade, but neither gripe prevents the Smart Lighting System from earning our Editors’ Choice.
Ring Smart Lighting System 4.0 Editors’ Choice See It $24.99 at Amazon MSRP $24.99 Pros Easy to install.
Ring Floodlight Cam Review
As we powered up the camera for the first time, it asked us to update its firmware (which seems to be the norm these days), and within five minutes we were in business. To get a firsthand view of how Linked Devices works, we decided to focus on the neighborhood friendly feline. That way, if our mysterious neighborhood cat happened to run through our yard at any point overnight, there’d be a good chance our cameras would catch it! At that point, we thought, two things would happen: we could get a good look at how the camera’s infrared night vision works in tandem with those super-bright floodlights; and we could see the elusive kitty’s path for a few seconds after motion was detected.
Pro Tip: We recommend cameras with infrared night vision because they don’t rely on ambient light. It’s worth mentioning that the ability to link devices together is pretty typical in home security cameras these days. It’s another perk of building your own smart home ecosystem with a brand like Ring; all of their devices tend to communicate with each other pretty effortlessly. Clearly, our Spotlight Camera in the front of our house failed to pick up the cat before she entered our backyard; we surmise she must have walked in from another neighbor’s yard that backs up to ours.
As a standard feature in most security cameras these days, we’ve seen the extraordinary images captured with 1080p HD resolution.
This is most evident from Ring’s floodlight model, where we viewed refreshingly clear and crisp video 24 hours a day, rain or shine. When it comes to audio on the Floodlight Cam, it tends to work pretty well with one exception: we noticed a lot of interference when there was background noise on either side of the conversation. The truth is, ambient noise5 is a challenge for any outdoor camera, as it’s largely unpredictable (we can’t exactly tell the garbage truck to quiet down!).
Even the brands that promise Cadillac-level features in every camera (think Nest Cams) still pick up wind gusts and tree branches, so we consider this a minor issue. Ring is known for giving its users sweeping control over how their cameras detect motion, which alerts you receive, and how much data you get.
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