Ring Outdoor Camera Pro Battery review: a wireless and weatherproof smart security camera

This cylindrical security camera is designed for DIY installation. It comes with a mount that can be fitted to a wall, fence, shelf or other flat surface with the included screws and wall plugs. All you’ll need is a drill and a screwdriver to complete the installation. The mount attaches to the camera with a twist, and is held securely in place with a screw. A thief could potentially remove the camera, as it’s just a regular screw, but since Ring cameras immediately upload recordings to the cloud, and do not hold the footage locally, this would be a pointless exercise. The adjustable stand can also be secured to its base plate with another concealed screw, further adding to the robustness of the installation.

The stand offers some vertical and horizontal adjustability, thanks to a ball-and-socket connection holding the camera in place. More adjustability would be nice, but if you plan ahead and make sure you’ve found the perfect position before reaching for the powertools, you’ll be able to secure the camera in a way that gives it the correct view. One slight annoyance – and one inherently shared with all wireless security cameras – is that the battery needs charging every few weeks or months, depending on how it’s used. Naturally, this means accessing the camera, taking it apart to get to the battery, disabling the camera while the battery is charged (via the included USB cable), and reinserting the battery a few hours later. This limits the camera’s location, since you might not want to climb a ladder every time it needs charging. I would advise installing it within easy reach of an upstairs window or consider Ring’s solar panel, which is wall-mountable and keeps the camera battery topped-up.

Lastly, the Ring Outdoor Camera Pro Battery has a weather-resistant design, so it can survive being out in the rain, and it can operate in temperatures ranging from -20C to 48.5C. Camera. The camera records 1080p Full HD video with HDR. Standing for High Dynamic Range, this technology aims to boost shadows and lower highlights, helping to retain more detail in both the darker and lighter areas of its view.

In testing I found the Ring produced good-quality video that is sharp, clear, and with a nicely balanced exposure that creates plenty of detail. Colours looked accurate and, while the 155-degree lens is fairly wide, it isn’t a match for the 180-degree lenses of some video doorbells. That said, security cameras like this one tend to be mounted higher than a doorbell, so are less impacted by a narrow field of view.

Night vision is automatically enabled when ambient light levels fall. You can pick to use either the typical greyscale night vision, or use Ring’s colour version. The latter can work well, and would be useful for identifying the colour of a car involved in a late-night collision outside your home, for example. But if there’s a nearby streetlight, or you live in a city with obvious light pollution, the colour of that tends to make most of the Ring’s footage either green or yellow. I prefer using standard grey night vision to avoid this.

Features and connectivity. Since this is one of Ring’s Pro models, the big feature is how the camera uses radar for creating a bird’s eye view with 3D motion detection. The takes a bit of setting up – including some trial and error – but once complete, the result is a top-down view of your property, created using a satellite image, and an animation showing the route a person has taken. So instead of just seeing a regular recording of a trespasser looking at your car, or peering through the shed window, the Ring app also shows the route they took to get there. This could, for example, show how the person loitered around your car, or approached the house to get a better look through the kitchen window. Or, less menacingly, it’ll simply show how the courier stomped across your lawn instead of using the path.

Ring says the radar helps this camera spot movement up to nine metres away, which is a 50 per cent increase on the six metre limit of most other security cameras. In testing I found it was more reliable at alerting me to movement at greater distances than other cameras I’ve used. The Pro moniker also gives this camera dual-band Wi-Fi, which means it works with both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz wireless networks, with the latter offering higher data transfer speeds.

As with other smart security cameras, you can set this Ring to only alert and record when movement is spotted in certain areas. That way, you can configure the camera to ignore movement on the pavement and road, but record and alert you when movement is spotted on the drive or in your garden. Similarly, custom privacy zones can be created to block the camera’s view of certain areas, such as your neighbour’s door and windows.