has five models in its outdoor home security camera range and I've been
looking at the floodlight cam the biggest and beefiest of the lot so
across rings range the central camera module looks pretty much identical on
all of rings devices the big difference comes in how they're powered and the
illumination that they provide at nighttime here on the floodlight camera
it connects up to your house wiring has to be connected to your wall and the
illumination comes to these two large floodlights where the other cameras in
the range of spotlight cameras just have little LED lights down the side of the
camera box that means that this provides a lot more illumination in nighttime it
looks a lot like a traditional home security blight system and that's
probably not a coincidence because that's exactly what its intended to
replace if you've got one at the moment just take it off the wall this one will
mount straight into the same junction box if not you're gonna need a junction
box on your wall or in your wall and you're gonna have to run power to it
that's because there's no battery option with this light but assuming everything
set up on the wall installation was pretty easy
you'll also need a good Wi-Fi signal where you're putting it in because there
is no Ethernet socket on this light but most homes have a pretty decent Wi-Fi
connection around their edge so when we got it going what was it like similar to
rings or other products we got a great picture during daylight nice colorful
sharp images and at nighttime there's a couple of small infrared LEDs at the top
of the camera and they provide illumination for a night vision mode you
don't see quite as much with the night vision but it gives you a chance to see
what's going on outside your house when it's dark now if motion is detected
that's where those two big LED flood lights come in they switch on and they
illuminate the area with 1800 lumens of light that's about 4 to 5 times more
light than rings spotlight cameras which are the other cameras in its series
there is no dimming control on the system which is fine for a security
light but if you're hoping it'll do double duty say to illuminate an outdoor
entertaining area then you're probably going to have to come up with something
else the infrared sensor on the bottom has a detection range of 270 degrees
that's a very wide range when anything happens in that range in its detective
those lights will come on but the camera on it only has a range of a hundred and
forty degrees so stuffs going on at the edges the lights will come on and that
might be enough to scare anyone away if they're lurking in the bushes around
your house but you're not necessarily going to see them unless they come into
that central area and when the lights do come on the camera stays in night vision
mode no you don't get a color image of what's going on in front of it to cut
down on false positives you have motion detection zones you can draw these on
the app and keep detection to just the areas that you've defined that's useful
if you've got something moving out in your garden that's always triggering the
camera in terms of range we measured it to at least 12 meters about 40 feet from
the camera system and sometimes it was detecting things a little bit further
too so you've got a decent detection range around your house if someone does
come into that range and you see them there's a two-way talk feature in the
app you can press a button and you can say something it comes out of the camera
and you can listen to what they're saying - and if that doesn't scare
someone away there's also a hundred and ten decibel alarm on the unit as well
the camera costs two hundred and fifty dollars but that is not the end of your
spending oh no a lot of these home security systems these days try to lock
you into a contract for storage of things ring is no different if you want
to review any recorded video you're gonna have to pay three dollars a month
or thirty dollars a year per camera there's a slight discount if you have a
lot of these cameras ten dollars a month or a hundred dollars a year for an
unlimited number which is basically then if you have four or more it's cheaper to
do it that way but if you just have this one then using it over five years the
camera and the subscription you're talking about a total investment of four
hundred and fifty dollars you don't have to have the subscription but if you
don't have the subscription it's not going to record anything and you're not
going to be able to go and review things the lights will still come on trigger on
motion you'll still be able to watch live but that's it so consider that when
you're looking at prices tech I've rated the camera at three and a half out of
five we think it's a great addition if you already have a ring home security
system it integrates straight into the app and you can see it alongside other
ring outdoor security cameras and the video doorbell if you don't have ring
systems at the moment then there are some other cameras that are worth
considering the Maximus floodlight cam has a couple of large LED panels similar
to this one but gives you a color image at nighttime and the Notaro presence has
a big LED light panel and records images onto an internal SD card there are no
cloud subscription cost with that you can find reviews for those you can run
through reviews for this on techyv.com