last week i unboxed and installed the
ring pro 2
video doorbell next to my front door
if you haven't seen that video and are
interested in checking it out
it's popping up in the cards right now
around
here somewhere and i've also linked it
in
the video description as for this video
i'm going to take a look at what the
video
quality of the ring pro 2 is like and
fill you in on what i feel
are the best or most interesting
features of the ring pro 2 video
doorbell all right that's enough talkie
talkie
now it's time to uh walkie
wa yeah let's just start the ring pro
2's camera sports a resolution of 1536
by 1536 pixels
providing an aspect ratio of one to one
meaning the width and height of the
image is the same
as you can see it provides a nice wide
view
which includes our front door and the
sidewalk leading up to our front porch
it also has a very tall view which is
one of the things
advertised on the box as head to toe
video
i feel like they could easily call it
floor to ceiling video too because the
soffit on our front porch is at 11 feet
high
the ring pro 2 sees it our concrete
front porch
and everything in between the ring pro 2
also features
hdr which is very helpful when it comes
to improving
image clarity during the daytime the
video on the left is what it looks like
with hdr turned off it leaves everything
beyond our front porch looking like a
bright
blown out blob the video on the right
was
captured immediately after with hdr on
and now not only is our front porch
visible but so is the street in front of
our house
and our neighbor's house across the
street switching over to
night vision our front porch is pretty
well lit at night so
this isn't a feature we've really used
all that much since installing our ring
doorbell
in the ring app however there are three
different settings which we'll be taking
a look at
this first clip is of the last option
well lit area
which is how our front porch is at night
as you can see we have a great view of
our front porch
but anything beyond that is just black
this next clip is using the standard
setting
i obviously had to turn our porch lights
off for this to work
but here's how it looks the ring pro 2
uses
two infrared emitters to see in the dark
on this setting
and it was able to pick up my movement
and start recording
before i was even able to see myself
the final setting under night vision is
wall nearby this setting uses just
one of the infrared emitters rather than
both in case you get
too much infrared light bouncing off a
nearby wall
and it messes up your video picture
there is
also an option to add color to your
night vision
and here's a side by side comparison of
how the video
looks with both the color mode turned on
and off according to the information
in the app turning color night vision on
is supposed to improve the visual
clarity
as well as the motion detection as for
the audio quality of the ring pro 2
i feel it sounds pretty good it's no
studio mic
but for the purpose of being able to
communicate with people that come to
your front door
i think it does the job just fine the
ring pro 2 will obviously record
activity at your front door
anytime someone rings your doorbell but
for the time someone comes to your door
and doesn't ring the bell
that's what the motion detection is for
the ring pro 2 uses a combination of
different
motion sensing technologies there is of
course
visual motion detection which detects
motion within the
camera's field of view but it also has
what ring calls
3d motion detection which detects where
the motion is taking place
in relation to your doorbell so rather
than getting notified
every time a car drives by or a kid
rides by your house on their bike
it will only notify you when motion is
detected
on your front porch or even extend out
into your front yard
one of the first things you do while
setting up the ring pro 2
is set the motion zones i'm just using
one but you can have up to three zones
if needed
you just drag the different pick points
here around in your camera's field of
view
and highlight in blue anywhere you want
motion to be detected
any motion outside of this area will be
ignored
you can then set the motion sensitivity
so far i've found this first setting
here works great for us
and under the 3d motion detection
options you can
set the range for how far out the motion
detection should reach
i've set ours at 30 feet as this extends
off our front porch
and into our yard a little bit allowing
us to see when people are coming
toward the house but also ignore cars
and people passing by
this is also something you set up after
installing the doorbell
you have to put in your address and then
position the doorbell icon
approximately where your doorbell is
located and how it's
oriented on your house once it's set up
the bird's eye view
option will be turned on by default
which is this little window here
it doesn't provide any useful
information really but
in my mind it's mostly a visual
representation
of the 3d motion showing you when
someone came into view
and where they were at also in the
motion settings
is smart alerts which allows you to
decide
which motion events you get
notifications for
you can have it notify you of all
detected motion
or just when people are detected or
you can have it ignore people and only
notify you of
other motion uh i don't know why you'd
want to do that
but you can the doorbell will
always record events when people are
detected
this is just giving you the option to
not be pushed out a notification
when someone comes to your door in the
advanced settings you can set
motion schedules so if there are certain
times of the day
you want to receive notifications and
other times you
don't you can set those up here for
example while you're at work you'll
probably want to get notifications
however when your home or your family is
home and your kids are constantly going
in and out of your house
you probably don't want to be notified
every single time
they're detected this brings me to one
of the features of the ring pro 2 that i
understand
not many other video doorbells have
well at least at the time of the making
of this video anyway
and that is its 6 second pre-roll
feature
the camera is essentially recording all
the time
if you go to your timeline you'll see
motion events in blue
and times when you accessed the camera's
live feed in
orange between events you have still
pictures that are captured
every so often and you can set the
interval they're captured
at in the snapshot capture settings
under device settings since the doorbell
is always recording
when motion is detected it will then go
back
six seconds prior to the detected motion
and record from that point forward this
could mean the difference between
capturing a porch pirate's face
or simply getting a glimpse of their
backside as they run away with your
package of
funko pop figures and jelly belly jelly
beans
speaking of porch pirates for those
times when you're out of town
or waiting for a package delivery but
you're
unable to be home in a timely manner
there is this option
here called shared users this allows
friends or family members of yours to
receive motion
and ring alerts answer your doorbell and
even
check your ring doorbell's live view
they do have to have the ring app
on their smartphone or tablet and set up
their own ring account to do this
but since doing all that is free it just
takes a bit of their time to set it up
for the last feature of the ring pro 2 i
want to talk about i'm going to
circle back around to the audio well
sort of when someone comes to your door
you can talk to them
through the ring but this isn't
something that's
at all unique to the ring pro 2. many
other video doorbells support this kind
of intercom
functionality the feature that i believe
is unique however
and i could be wrong about this is what
ring calls
smart responses in the app you have two
different
options here there's what is called a
quick reply
which they compare to having an
answering machine for your front door
where you can choose from a handful of
default messages to be played
when someone rings your doorbell
thanks for stopping by if you'd like to
leave a message
you can do it now uh yeah i was just in
the neighborhood
making a video and uh thought i'd uh hit
the doorbell there and
see how uh this thing works is that it
am i done
i guess so all right here you can also
choose how long
the ring pro 2 will wait before it
answers the door for you
the other option is alexa greeting this
i feel
is the more interesting of the two
options because
rather than at simply playing a
predetermined message and then
recording the response of the person at
the door alexa will greet the people at
the door
take messages from them and even give
delivery instructions
you can even customize those
instructions in this field here
just for fun here's me testing it out so
you can see how it works
okay here's ring concierge welcome
this is alexa what is the purpose of the
visit
i'm just stopping by to say hello sorry
i cannot help you with that i can take a
message or assist with package delivery
what do you want to do take a message
sure
i can help you with that what is your
name brian
please provide me the contact number
i'll just
come back another time thanks you are
welcome what is your message to the
homeowner
just let him know that brian stopped by
just wanted to say hi
i will send a message to the resident
thanks for coming
bye as cool and useful as
all these features are though there is a
catch
and it's kind of a big one the bad news
about
any ring doorbell is you are required to
pay for one of their ring protect plans
in order to go back and review any video
events
or smart response messages if you get
the notification at the time the event
is happening live you can of course
review it but unless you pay for one of
their
protect plans you cannot go back
and see or listen to it again afterward
i did know about this before purchasing
my ring pro 2
and thankfully their basic plan covers a
single doorbell or
security camera for only three dollars
per month or
thirty dollars for a full year rings
protect plus plan
is ten dollars per month or a hundred
dollars per year
and covers as many ring cameras as you
want to add to your home
as well as monitoring for a ring alarm
system
there are of course many other things
you can do using the ring app like
control your alarm system assuming it's
compatible with
the ring app of course as well as
control your garage door
lights in your house locks your
thermostat
and many other things also if you have
an amazon echo
or echo show you can set up your ring
doorbell to ring through to those
devices
and answer your doorbell using them just
as you would from your smartphone or
tablet
we don't own any of these other smart
devices though so
i won't be taking a look at any of that
in this video
also i think this video is just about
long enough
overall i feel the ring pro 2 is an
awesome
video doorbell it has really good
picture quality
both during the day and at night the 3d
motion detection is
a great feature that helps limit the
notifications you get to those that are
the most
important and i think having alexa be
able to answer your door for you
and take messages from people that come
to your door is pretty cool
it does suck though that in order to
really utilize these features
you need to pay for rings protect plan
on the bright side though it isn't
exactly expensive
thirty dollars per year for the basic
plan is totally doable
but does add more to the cost of an
already
expensive video doorbell over the course
of
its lifetime what do you think is the
ring pro 2 worth its 250
price tag let me know your thoughts in
the comments
i'm always interested in getting other
people's perspectives on these types of
products
i want to give a great big thank you to
those of you
still watching at this point you guys
are the true
mvps youtube determines whether it
suggests videos to other people or not
based on how long people watch a given
video
so those of you that are still watching
right now are helping out
more than you realize there's also the
youtube things that help
and i thank you for taking a moment to
do those
and if you'd like to pick up a ring pro
2 of your very own
i have a link to my amazon store in the
video description
where you can check it out as well as a
host of
other products i've featured in past
videos once again
thank you so much for watching i hope
that you have a
fantastic day and uh we'll see
next time later
[Music]
you