The Ring Battery Doorbell Plus is a welcome update to Ring’s classic video doorbell | CNN Underscored

Ring’s new Battery Doorbell Plus looks like previous versions, but there are a couple of big upgrades inside that make for an improved experience. It has a larger field of view so you can see everything that’s going on at your door, and the video quality has been bumped up to match the company’s Video Doorbell Pro 2.

But unlike the Video Doorbell Pro 2, the Battery Doorbell Plus — like its name implies — doesn’t need to be hardwired to your home’s electrical system. Instead, you can install it wherever it has a Wi-Fi signal.

I’ve been testing the Battery Doorbell Plus for the last week and have found that it does a lot of things right, and some downright better than the last-generation models. But there are some areas where Ring’s products as a whole are falling behind.

Ring’s Battery Doorbell Plus offers a wider field of view, improved video quality and performance improvements that should help with battery life. It’s a fantastic option for anyone looking to upgrade from an older Ring video doorbell, or who already has other Ring products and wants to stay within Ring’s ecosystem.

The Battery Doorbell Plus not only has a new name, but it also boasts a bigger field of view (FOV) that’s capable of showing you what Ring calls a “head-to-toe” view.

The camera’s larger 150 x 150-degree field of view is capable of showing you what’s on the ground, directly underneath the camera. You also get a higher and wider field of view so you can see the entirety of the person standing at your door, or if someone is standing off to the side of your door after pressing the button.

The byproduct of a larger FOV is that features like package detection should be more accurate, especially if deliveries are often left at your door, out of sight of your current video doorbell.

I installed the Battery Doorbell Plus on my back porch in the same spot I always test doorbells. Normally, the video feed doesn’t show the bottom of the outdoor television I have just above it, nor does it show my buggy full of firewood just below it. But with the Battery Doorbell Plus, you can see the bottom of the TV at the top of the video and a portion of the buggy near the bottom of the frame. Not to mention, I can see across my entire backyard. It’s a big upgrade when compared to the 160 x 84-degree field of view of its predecessor, the Ring Video Doorbell 4.

Along with the increased viewing area, Ring also bumped up the video resolution to 1536p. That’s the highest resolution video for any of Ring’s battery-powered doorbells, and matches the resolution of Ring’s flagship Video Doorbell Pro 2.

Along with HD video, the Battery Doorbell Plus has Color Night Vision and HDR video capabilities, both of which offer better video quality at night and during the day, respectively.

There’s some pixelation at the beginning of captured clips or when you first start live streaming from the doorbell, but that’s standard for pretty much any home security camera and video doorbell I’ve tested. Once those first few seconds are over, I’ve found the video — both live-streamed and recorded — to be sharp and clear.

I especially like the fact that the colors aren’t over-saturated, and the camera doesn’t struggle when dealing with the afternoon sun, which often causes overexposed video. You shouldn’t have any issues with video quality preventing you from identifying who is walking up to or ringing your doorbell.

The video resolution of the Battery Doorbell Plus is a respectable upgrade from the video quality of Ring’s older battery-powered doorbells.

The Battery Doorbell Plus has the same design and even uses the same battery as Ring’s previous battery-powered doorbells. The camera lens sits above a removable door on the bottom of the housing where the battery slides into the body of the doorbell.

On the backside of the doorbell are two screws that you can use to connect it to existing wiring for a doorbell, or use one of Ring’s power adapters to provide constant power to it.

However, Ring promises that it’s made power optimizations that will improve the battery life of the Battery Doorbell Plus when compared to its previous battery-powered doorbells. Ring specifically claims “up to three times” the battery life, however, that’s a claim I didn’t have enough time to test.

And even then, there are so many variables, such as the amount of traffic, frequency of motion alerts, live view and even outside temperature that go into the battery life on a video doorbell, that it’d be hard to make a direct comparison. It’s due to those variables that Ring doesn’t list battery life for its doorbells.

The Battery Doorbell Plus is ideal for those who don’t own their home or apartment or those who don’t have doorbell wiring. Ring also offers a solar panel for the Battery Doorbell Plus that you can use to keep the battery charged if you don’t want to worry about having to periodically charge the battery.

Ring has been behind the competition when it comes to offering a wide range of smart alerts to keep you informed of what’s going on in front of its cameras. For example, the Nest Doorbell comes with the ability to recognize and send you alerts for motion, people, packages, animals and vehicles. Actually, that range of smart alerts is fairly common amongst other video doorbells and home security cameras. Heck, even the $60 Roku Video Doorbell has that same alert offering.

But with Ring’s Battery Doorbell Plus (along with the rest of its camera lineup), you’re stuck with motion, people and packages. The latter two alert types require you to sign up for one of Ring’s subscription plans, which start at $4 per month or $40 per year for a single camera. Otherwise, you’ll only have the option for motion alerts (and lack other features like cloud recording and rich notifications, to name a couple).

The Nest Doorbell’s smart alerts that I just mentioned don’t require any sort of subscription. You set up the doorbell, turn on the alerts you want, leave the rest disabled and you’re set.

The benefit of having access to more smart alerts is that you’re able to better customize which push notifications make it to your phone. If the doorbell overlooks your front porch and driveway, it might make sense to receive people and vehicle alerts so you know when someone pulls into your driveway before they even get out of the car.

Or maybe you want to know if your neighbor’s dog has made its way into your yard, yet again, and have video proof that your neighbor needs to clean up after their four-legged friend.

Without the ability to identify more than just people or packages, you’re left to rely on and check every motion alert, a practice that leads to notification exhaustion to the point where you turn off or ignore the alerts altogether. It’s not ideal.

In order to get a larger field of view, Ring essentially put a fish-eye lens on the Battery Doorbell Plus. It definitely helps you see everything that’s in front of the camera, including what’s directly below it. But, when someone is standing close to the camera, there’s a warped effect that’s reminiscent of a Blink-182 or Busta Rhymes music video from the ’90s. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially if you grew up on MTV and Total Request Live as I did, but the distortion of the fish-eye lens feels a bit heavy-handed at times.

To be clear, Ring’s Video Doorbell Pro 2 has the same exact 150-degree field of view, but for some reason, it doesn’t feel as aggressive as the Battery Doorbell Plus.

Alas, there’s nothing you can do about it, and perhaps after a long time using the Battery Doorbell Plus I wouldn’t even notice it.

Motion alerts have been fine on the Battery Doorbell Plus even without Ring’s more advanced motion detection tech that’s used in the Video Doorbell Pro 2. But I’d love to see Ring bring 3D Motion Detection with Bird’s Eye View that maps the path that someone walked as they approached the doorbell to the Battery Doorbell Plus.

I realize that battery life concerns are likely the reason why we didn’t see Ring integrate its more advanced motion hardware in the Battery Doorbell Plus, but keep in mind, you can hardwire the doorbell in place of your home’s existing doorbell — providing constant power and forgoing the need to worry about draining the battery.

Cost is probably another factor, with the Video Doorbell Pro 2 normally priced at $250. However, it’s on sale right now for $175, which is less than the standard price of the Battery Doorbell Plus.

Power	Battery or wired	Battery or wired	Battery or wired
Video quality	1536p, HDR, color night vision	1080p night vision	960 x 1290, up to 30 fps, HDR, night vision
Field of view	150 degrees x 150 degrees	160 degrees x 84 degrees	145 degrees diagonal
Smart alert types	Included: Motion Subscription: People, packagess	Included: Motion Subscription: People, package	Included: Motion, people, packages, animals, vehicles Subscription: Familiar faces
Smart home support	Google Assistant, Alexa	Google Assistant, Alexa	Google Assistant, Alexa
Subscription cost	Plans start at $4/month or $40/year	Plans start at $4/month or $40/year	Plans starting at $6/month or $60/year
Dimensions	2.4 x 5.1 x 1.1 inches	2.4 x 5.1 x 1.1 inches	1.8 x 6.3 x 0.95 inches
Price	$180	$160	$180

Ring’s $180 Battery Doorbell Plus offers a wider field of view, improved video quality and performance improvements that should help with battery life. It’s a fantastic option for anyone who’s looking to upgrade from an older Ring video doorbell, or who already has other Ring products and would like to stay within Ring’s ecosystem.

Ring’s lack of smart alerts outside of people and packages is a letdown, however. For someone who wants a smarter video doorbell, Google’s $180 Nest Doorbell — one of our best video doorbell camera picks — comes in wired and wireless versions and includes additional alert options without the need for a subscription.