Gabe: I've always wanted my own moment in the spotlight. I think, honestly, that we
all do. I have to say that I didn't expect it to come from a security camera. Hey, I'm
Gabe at Security Baron. Today, we're reviewing the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery.
[background music]
Gabe: In today's review of the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery, I'm going to be putting it to
the Security Baron necessary features test before diving headfirst into this mobile app,
the Ring app, to make sure you have all the information you need to make the right decision.
If you'd like to see a list of our favorite home security cameras, google Security Baron
best home security cameras. If you have a question about today's review, leave us a
comment, and I'll get back to you.
[background music]
Gabe: Let's put the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery to the Security Baron necessary features test.
Here, at Security Baron, we think that every home security camera should have stellar video,
two-way audio, night vision, local and cloud storage, smart platform integration, artificial
intelligence, convenience, and value.
[background music]
Gabe: Stellar video is a Security Baron necessary feature, and the Ring Spotlight Cam does pretty
well when it comes to that. It has 1080p high-definition video, and it has that 140-degree field of
view. At Security Baron, we like to see at least 120-degree field of view, so that 20
degrees more gives you that much wider of a perspective.
On top of that, you can use your fingers to pinch and digital zoom. When it comes to stellar
video and the Security Baron necessary features test, we give the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery
full marks.
Two-way audio is a Security Baron necessary feature. It essentially means that you can
talk to and hear from whatever's going on in the vicinity of your camera. You're not
just having this experience where you can see what's happening, but can't interact with
it.
Fortunately for us, the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery does come with two-way audio, so you
can talk to those raccoons making all that racket in your driveway. We have to give it
full marks.
Night vision is a Security Baron necessary feature because you want to be able to see
what's going on in the evening time. That's when people are slinking and sneaking around.
Fortunately, it has pretty impressive night vision. Let's begin with the basic. It has
four infrared LED lights that allow you to catch what's going on in night vision black
and white.
It even gets more clear when they basically turn on the spotlight, where this thing gets
its name from. Of course, everyone knows on the block that your lights are on. It definitely
allows you to see exactly what's happening, and you can just turn it on with the tap of
your finger.
When it comes to Night Vision 4, the Ring Spotlight can be it with the spotlight on
or off. We have to give it full marks.
Local and cloud storage is a Security Baron necessary feature. You want that local storage
so you can see what's going on without having to go into the cloud or download anything.
You want that cloud storage just in case something happens to your local storage and you want
to view things when you're not at home.
Unfortunately, the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery does not have local storage, but it does have
a cloud storage option. You can get the Ring Protect Basic Plan, $3 a month or $30 a year.
With that you're going to be able to actually view your clips, even save your clips in terms
of your event history and generally have a more robust experience with your Ring Spotlight
Cam Battery.
When it comes to local and cloud storage for the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery, we have to
give it half marks.
[background music]
Gabe: Hold on. I hope you are enjoying today's review of the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery.
To be kept up to date on the newest in-home security cameras, smart home security, cyber
security, smart bulbs, subscribe to our channel, Security Baron. We're dropping new content
weekly. Let's get back to the video.
[background music]
Gabe: Smart platform integration is really important to us here at Security Baron. We
made it a necessary feature when it comes to our home security cameras. The Ring Spotlight
Cam Battery fortunately does integrate with the Amazon Virtual Assistant.
You don't have to worry about not being able to do some pretty fun and useful things like
going into your Amazon Fire TV just using your voice or watching the live view with
your voice that you've put onto your Echo show.
All of those are possible actions to do, controlling it with Amazon Virtual Assistant. It doesn't
work with some of the other virtual assistants out there, but no one is perfect. When it
comes to the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery and smart platform integration, we're going to
give it full marks.
A Security Baron necessary feature is artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence helps
you to moderate your home security camera experience by providing you with fewer notifications.
Usually, it incorporates a technology like person detection or facial-recognition technology.
Unfortunately, the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery has neither of these. It has no artificial
intelligence features. For that, we have to give it zero marks.
Convenience is a Security Baron necessary feature that reflects how easy it is to setup
and maintain the device. The Ring Spotlight Cam is very convenient, which is great. It's
an outside cam and you just want to get things going.
With the Ring cam, you take out your smartphone, make sure your WiFi is turned on and you can
have it setup in a matter of minutes.
It is pretty straightforward. They walk you through the entire process. There is even
a video. When it comes to physically installing it, the first thing you're going to make sure
is you have your batteries set up. You can have one battery in one side or the other
and then you put another battery, one to last even longer outside.
When it comes to maintaining this device, it's really easy because it's going to last
6 to 12 months just on one battery. So, once you have that ready to go, your battery fully
charged, you take your mounting plate and drill it where you'd like it to see. You can
of course move it around and boom, you're done. Nothing to think about.
When it comes to the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery and the Security Baron necessary features
test for convenience, we have to give it full marks. The final Security Baron necessary
feature we're going to look at today is value and we honestly think that Ring Spotlight
Cam battery delivers.
It comes in retail at a $199 and that Ring Spotlight battery is going to provide you
with IP55 weather rating. So, we're talking of basically waterproof and dust tight. It
can handle temperature from -5 to 120 degrees and it just generally is a solid camera overall.
It even has a 110-decibel siren on top of all of its other features like the fact that
it has a big old spotlight on it.
So overall, we're pretty big fans of the Ring Spotlight Cam and give it full marks for value.
[background music]
Gabe: Now that you've run the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery to the Security Baron necessary
features test, let's check out this mobile application, the Ring Always Home App. Now
the Ring Always Home App is where you're going to be doing most of your interfacing with
the actual camera.
Of course, you can control it with your voice, but anything you want to do in terms of settings
or setting something up, it's going to be done right there in the mobile app. People
generally seem to like the mobile app, but it doesn't have the best ratings that we've
seen.
In the Google Play Store for Android users, it has 3.3 out of 5-star rating. In the Apple
App Store, it has 3.2 out of 5-star rating. I would just say adequate.
Let's go ahead and check it out on my iPhone 7 Plus. So, here I am checking out the Ring
app on my iPhone 7 Plus. Now you know in the dashboard, it tells you where I am. It tells
you about what's going on in the neighborhood, your history, the cameras that are setup and
lets you go ahead and setup a new device.
Let's go ahead and look at the device itself. We'll call this one SP room and if I want
to just check out a live view what's going on at this moment, I just tap on live view.
It's pretty straightforward, pretty obvious. Here I am, see a live view. Ola, and let's
go ahead and get out of here.
Now I'm out and I can go ahead and look at some of the other icons right there. You've
got two battery icons, you note that only one is lit up because the other battery is
optional, you've to buy that separately for the spotlight cam. You'll see that I have
a pretty decent battery right now, I charged it up a bit this morning and you'll see that
you have the [inaudible 8:50] turn on the lights and the motion alerts.
Let's go ahead and just turn on the motion alerts. Now, they're snooze, but now they
are on. Now, if you event history, device health, motion snooze, motion settings, let's
go ahead and check out the motion snooze first so as to not get too many alerts in the process
of looking at this.
We hit that for two hours. Now without having to setup a routine or schedule, I'm able to
just setup or bypass any motion alerts because I know I'm here in the room. If you want to
set that up for the long term, you can do so. It's called Motion Schedule.
If you'll see here, I have one already made called the Premier League Rule. To make the
Premier League Rule, I know I'm at home between 6:00 AM and 2:00 PM every Saturday and Sunday
morning to early afternoon to watch soccer and that is what I use and make sure that
I don't get any motion alerts during that period distracting me from what's most important.
If you look below that, you have motion frequency. This allows you to actually change how frequently
you get motion notifications. Right now, I have it at standard, which is about standard
battery life. If I get frequent motion alerts, of course, that decreases the battery life.
If I just go to light motion alerts, I'll get the maximum battery life possible for
the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery.
One interesting element is the motioned zones. They do in a different moment. I would not
call these activity zones, something you may have seen with other cameras. With motion
zones, with the Ring Spotlight Cameras, more of what is the cone in which it will see things.
You see here, this is the minimum, very skinny cones only going to capture a few things and
then you can even make that maximum so you capture everything. Let's go ahead and keep
that about in the middle, maybe a little bit more towards the max direction and hit save.
What you'll see in event history is just the events that have taken place today. If I wanted
to go ahead and look at a video from another time, I can do so. Viola, now you see me there
in the dark. Just go ahead and go back now. You've seen this video. Here in the event
history, you see all the other videos that have taken place today in the last few days.
You can, of course, change your light settings where you turn the lights on with the motion,
which could be used to deter any potential intruders like in your driveway or just like
a raccoon or something like that that doesn't want that bright light shining in his face
and it is bright. You can turn that off and then you have video settings.
Video settings, you can see that it's all in HDR but that does decrease your battery
life. You can change that high dynamic range and you can even turn off live view which
will also increase your battery life. This is our look at the Ring Spotlight Cam and
all that it has to offer in the Ring gap.
Here I am checking out the Ring Spotlight Cam's daytime vision and it's pretty solid.
It's at 1080p clear vision. I can grab my phone, pinch in, get a little bit better view.
I can look at the TV over there and give it a little globe test.
We got here, "What is pointed towards you?" Looks like Sudamerica, little Africa, little
North America. It's not bad. Even a little Western Europe. I'm a pretty big fan of that
140-degree field of view. You can see the camera is about five feet away from me and
capturing basically everything that's going on in here. That's how I look at the Ring
Spotlight Cam's pretty impressive daytime vision.
Here I am checking out the night vision on the Ring Spotlight Cam. I don't know why I
always want to be quiet when I'm checking out night vision but that's just the case.
Maybe it's just the way I was raised. I don't know I'm afraid to talk in the dark but you
see it's pretty solid. Now, this is the Ring Spotlight Cam with just a little bit of the
infrared lights going off.
There's about four of them in the Spotlight Cam Battery and you can see things pretty
well. We give a little globe test, a little zoom-in action. You can see that pretty well.
You got toggle right here. You've got all of Africa well in frame. We like that. We
like that at Security Baron.
One thing about this particular camera is that you can actually turn on the lights.
Let's go ahead and check out what that means. Well, look at that. We're still in night vision
but we've turned on the lights and this might even be better than daytime vision, super
bright. There are no other lights in this room. This is exactly what you're getting.
I've not turned on. I've not put another infrared in here. This is just what you're getting
from the spotlight on the Spotlight Battery Cam. It really does provide this much light.
You can see so well. You're going to capture any raccoon trying to open up your trash can.
That's our look at the night time vision without the light and with the light with the Ring
Spotlight Cam Battery.
[background music]
Gabe: Let's review how the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery performs on Security Baron necessary
features test. Stellar video, full marks. The Ring Spotlight Cam Battery has an impressive
1080p high-definition video and 140-degree field of view. Two-way audio, full marks.
The Ring Spotlight Cam Battery allows you to speak and be heard by whoever is in the
vicinity of your Ring Spotlight Cam.
Night vision, full marks. The Ring Spotlight Cam Battery has four infrared LEDs to give
you that traditional night vision look but it also has a spotlight to give you color
night vision. Local and cloud storage, half marks. The Ring Spotlight Camera Battery does
not have local storage but it does have cloud storage as long as you're willing to pay three
dollars a month.
Smart platform integration, full marks. The Ring Spotlight Cam Battery integrates well
with the Amazon Virtual Assistant. Artificial intelligence, zero marks. The Ring Spotlight
Cam Battery does not bring anything like person detection or facial recognition technology
to the table.
Convenience, full marks. It's really easy to setup the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery and
maintain it over time. Value, full marks. The Ring Spotlight Cam Battery retails at
$199 but we think it's a pretty good value considering its robust feature set.
[background music]
Gabe: OK, I've taken you through the necessary features test and shown you some elements
of the mobile app for the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery but you want to know, "Gabe, is this
the right camera for me?" I'll say this, if you would like a durable, convenient, indoor-outdoor
wireless camera that's going to fit right into your Amazon ecosystem maybe you have
to look no further.
However, if you're someone who really wants those artificial intelligence elements, be
it person detection or facial-recognition technology or free cloud storage, you're going
to want to look somewhere else.
Overall, I enjoyed my experience with the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery. I think it's a
solid contender for your outdoor camera.
[background music]
Gabe: So, that concludes our review of the Ring Spotlight Cam Battery. If you appreciate
today's video, give us a like and hit the subscribe button. As always, this is the Gabe
at Security Baron. [snaps fingers] Be secure.