It’s a product that’s not only designed to capture and record suspicious activity, but to ward off would-be burglars by casting a light on them as they approach your property as well. And it’s possible to tweak the motion sensitivity, so it’s not set off all the time by swaying bushes or people walking past your house on the pavement. As with the rivals mentioned above, the Ring Spotlight is designed to run on battery power, which is a boon to DIY smart-homers. There’s no need to connect an extra hub to your router, as with the Arlo or D-Link systems – simply pair it with your wireless network and you’re off and running. I was able to connect the camera to my wireless network and associate it with my existing Ring account in a matter of minutes. I mounted the camera on the outside of my garden office, some 30m and a brick wall away from my nearest mesh Wi-Fi node, and it was still able to maintain a strong enough signal.
This screws to the wall via a circular plate and holds the camera via a stubby arm, angled slightly down, with a ball joint at the end to allow for fine-tuning the position. In the end, I settled on the compromise of positioning it just above door height on my garden office but even here the camera would lose sight of anyone getting too close.
The benchmark in this sector is the Nest IQ and Hello doorbell cameras, which capture far cleaner, clearer and sharper footage. Traditional IP cameras allow users to draw boxes around areas to detect motion in, which would be a more effective system here.
I was able to recognise the faces of people approaching it, day and night, and both email and app-based alerts were issued in a timely fashion. The live feed pops up reliably and quickly, too, which is something I’ve experienced problems with on other camera systems.
It’s easy to install and setup, doesn’t require an extra hub to be attached to your router and is powered by an easy-to-charge lithium-ion battery. If you already have a Ring doorbell, it integrates nicely with the rest of the system, plus, the camera itself is very reasonably priced, especially as it also doubles as a security light and offers twin battery bays.
The caveat is that Ring’s subscription prices will hit you in the pocket harder than rivals, and especially if you want to run more than one camera.
Ring Spotlight Cam Battery Review
This is a rubric that I apply to all of my home security cameras to make sure they’re up to snuff in terms of video, audio, night vision, and more. The Ring Spotlight Cam Battery has 1080p HD, standard in the security camera industry, plus a wide field of view of 140 degrees. This can be useful just for chatting with someone in another room or scaring away intruders, so it’s fortunate that the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery comes with two-way audio. While the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery doesn’t come with any cloud or local storage, you can buy it for as little as $3 a month. Of course, this plan only makes sense if you have the larger Ring Alarm security system. Still, I’m giving the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery full marks for its smart platform integration. When it comes to home security cameras, artificial intelligence is typically used for person detection and facial recognition. This creates more specific and smarter notifications, as you’ll only be notified when people move in front of your camera, not pets or inanimate objects.
Overall, the process only took a few minutes, so I’m giving the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery two thumbs up for convenience.
Ring Spotlight Cam Battery Review
With the Spotlight Cam Battery ($199), Ring continues to grow to its already impressive stable of home security devices. This battery-powered outdoor security camera is completely wireless and offers motion detection with triggered recording and compatibility with IFTTT and other smart home devices. There’s a setup button on the top of the enclosure and a 160-degree (horizontal) motion sensor on the bottom that covers the battery compartment.
It uses four infrared LEDS to provide up to 30 feet of night vision and has a built-in 110dB siren, an 802.11n Wi-Fi radio, and a speaker and microphone for two-way audio. The camera comes with one battery pack, a mounting bracket, wall screws and anchors, a screwdriver and drill bit, and a setup guide. The Spotlight Cam appears in the list of installed Ring devices in the app: tap it to access its dashboard screen where you can turn motion alerts on and off and check the battery level.
Tapping the Live View button launches a live video stream in landscape mode with buttons for turning the spotlight on and off, sounding the siren, recording and sharing a clip with neighbors, push-to-talk (two-way audio), muting the sound, and ending the stream. Tap any event to play a clip and share it with friends and family or with your neighbors by pressing the Ring Neighborhoods button.
Ring Neighborhoods is a feature that lets you share recorded events with neighbors who have downloaded the app and signed up to participate. Within seconds the camera will connect and you’ll have the option to view a video tutorial that will walk you through the physical installation, or you can skip this step and use the written instructions. The internal siren was certainly loud enough to scare away any would-be intruders, and the spotlight did a great job of lighting up an otherwise dark area in my backyard. The Ring Spotlight Cam Battery is ideal for users who want to monitor what’s going on outside but don’t want to be bothered with electrical wiring.
The Spotlight’s motion sensor shined bright in testing, and the camera’s 1080p day and night video was sharp. If you can live without the spotlight feature, consider our Editors’ Choice for outdoor security cameras, the Netgear Arlo Pro 2.
Ring Spotlight Cam Battery review: goes anywhere, lights up anything
Besides that, you get the same slick and intuitive Ring app that comes with all the other products from the brand, plus an impressive list of features: two-way audio, a 110-decibel siren, and 1080p HD video footage that looks crisp both in the day and during the night. The device is listed as “weather resistant”, which sounds more vague than you might hope, but Ring does market this as an outdoor camera and we can confirm that it survives rain showers unharmed.
The main job of the Ring Spotlight Cam is to ping your phone whenever motion is detected, as well as letting you tap into a live video feed through the app whenever you want to. You can adjust the motion detection sensitivity, and get the camera to focus on a narrower or wider field of view if you need to – so even if you are getting hit with more notifications than you’d like, you can quickly tone them down.
Some of the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery’s competitors film in 4K: extra video quality is always welcome of course, but it’s debatable whether you actually need that sort of higher resolution for a security camera. The big selling points of the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery – in a crowded home security camera market – are in the name.
We do like the dual battery pack option, which means you can keep monitoring even while you’re recharging, but don’t forget you’re going to have to pay money to keep your recordings available in the cloud (which is true of most home security cameras, to be fair).
Ring Spotlight Cam Review
Improved software, too, provides greater control over recording and reduces the number of notifications you receive. A slightly fiddly app interface makes finding old recordings a little tricky – but, otherwise, the Ring Spotlight Cam is an excellent camera. Ring has built up an impressive array of security devices that are designed to protect your home inside and out. With the Ring Spotlight Cam, the company is adding to its range of dual-purpose cameras with security lights built in. Improved software and a decent price make this a handy utility camera, particularly for those who already have a Ring subscription. As an outdoor camera, the Ring Spotlight Cam is designed to be mounted on a wall or fence post. There’s space inside the unit itself for a second battery pack, to extend run-time, with the added advantage that you can have one cell charging while the other is operating your camera. If you don’t want to bother with charging at all, you can buy the solar panel pack to keep your camera’s battery topped up.
As with Ring’s other battery-powered cameras, the Spotlight Cam features a large PIR sensor that’s used to detect motion.
The main issue with this kind of product is that any motion will trigger the camera to wake and start recording, and you can’t draw activity zones. Even so, if you face the camera towards a busy street then you’ll find it’s triggered often, thus impacting battery life . To further limit being bombarded with notifications, the Spotlight Cam lets you set up a motion schedule, defining when you do and don’t want to receive alerts.
Trying to find one event, even using the filters to choose the type of recording (motion, triggered by live view, or favourites) is still cumbersome. Amazon Alexa support is available via a skill, which lets you view the camera’s feed on a screen-enabled Echo.
In my experience, it’s worth turning on the camera’s HDR feature, even if this does slightly reduce battery life.
HDR smooths out the image and makes it easier for the camera to cope with varied lighting as a result of changes in the sun during the day.
However, since the Ring Spotlight Cam has two bright LEDs on the side, which light up the surrounding area, the camera is able to capture footage in full colour. The result is that night-time images are almost as good as those captured during the day, presenting in full colour and displaying plenty of detail and sharpness. If you have other Ring cameras already, then adding this into the mix lets you get cloud storage for one monthly subscription, saving you money. Specs ‹ UK RRP Manufacturer Size (Dimensions) Voice Assistant Battery Length Smart assistants View Field Night vision Light Power source Ring Spotlight Cam £199 Bionaire 69.1 x 75.9 x 126 MM Alexa 4380 hrs Yes 140 degrees Yes Yes Battery ›
Ring Spotlight Cam review
The Ring Spotlight Cam is a great option if you want to deter intruders but don’t have power nearby to hook up a mains-operated security camera? As soon as motion is detected, it will automatically record footage in full HD video and activate both bright lights and a loud siren should you choose. Simple to use, you will need to subscribe to Ring Protect for $3 / £2.50 / AU$4 per month to view the footage after it’s been recorded, and the camera is bulky and slightly tricky to install. The Ring Spotlight Cam is a great option if you want to deter intruders but don’t have power nearby to hook up a mains-operated security camera?
As soon as motion is detected, it will automatically record footage in full HD video and activate both bright lights and a loud siren should you choose. Simple to use, you will need to subscribe to Ring Protect for $3 / £2.50 / AU$4 per month to view the footage after it’s been recorded, and the camera is bulky and slightly tricky to install.
These include ‘customizable motion zones’ so you can, for example, tailor the areas where you want the Spotlight Cam to detect movement and ‘people only’ mode so it doesn’t capture unwanted footage of birds flying across the sky or squirrels climbing the fence. The Spotlight Cam is a versatile outdoor camera ideal for monitoring your property, and while it is a few years old now, the device’s software has been updated considerably to give you all the options you need to use as part of a comprehensive home security setup.
As we’ve already mentioned, if you want to review video after the camera has recorded it, you’ll need to subscribe to Ring Protect. A chunky, rectangular-shaped outdoor camera, measuring 4.96 x 2.72 x 2.99 inches / 12.6 x 6.91 x 7.59 cm ( h x w x) and available in black or white, it’s fair to say the Ring Spotlight Cam is not a thing of beauty. However, what it lacks in looks it makes up for in terms of versatility, with a large two-way speaker underneath the main lens and two bright spotlights either side and one below. Ring claims installation time is around five minutes but, in reality, it took us closer to an hour once it was angled properly.
During the day, the full HD footage was clear and detailed, although after dark the images weren’t the clearest we’ve seen. However, the two-way audio was very loud and clear (the Spotlight Cam has one of the best speakers we’ve seen on a security camera) and the lights powerful enough to illuminate the entire garden. Perhaps it’s the influence of Amazon, which bought Ring in 2018, but the user interface is extremely intuitive with clear options you can toggle on and off.
As with most home security devices, the easiest way to set up the app is to scan the QR code inside the battery compartment. This brings up the model name within the app and, after inputting your address details and WiFi code, you should be ready to get started. Other useful options include power setting so you can see how much charge your battery has before it needs recharging and a new geofencing feature.
Ring Spotlight Cam Review
Ring’s equipment is spot on, which you might expect from a well-established home security company whose bread and butter is cameras. This outdoor security camera comes with an integrated spotlight, motion detectors, and a built-in 110-decibel siren as well as a mic and speaker for two-way audio.
Ring Spotlight Cam Battery
The mounts for the cams seem a little flimsy, and I was reluctant to tighten the screws too much in case they snapped the housing. You’ll usually save money this way, and you won’t have several tools laying around after you’ve completed the installation.
Once you have your batteries charged and inserted into the cam you link it wirelessly with your home WiFi – by placing it right beside the modem, and this can cause a bit of consternation. My real pet peeve is that one cannot user programme the amount of time that the lights stay on for … and this is frustrating.
My other pet peeve is that, unlike the Arlo’s these can’t be simply turned off and back on … in our experience they’re pretty well always running, and all you can do is momentarily pause notifications.
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