Ring’s Video Doorbell Pro 2 has built-in radar
And can follow a visitor's pathway to your door.
The next generation of Ring’s smart home doorbells is here, with better sound, a bigger field of vision and, most interestingly, radar. The Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 replaces its immediate predecessor as the flagship of the range, offering new features dubbed 3D Motion Detection and Bird’s Eye View. Both harness the new radar sensor — with a range of up to 30 feet — to better identify and track people approaching your home. The former is designed to make motion detection far more accurate, while the latter uses radar to track a person’s movement across your front yard in real time.
Specs-wise, the Pro 2 has a new 1,536p HD video camera with a fish-eye lens, enabling you to peer down and see the floor of your porch. Whereas other Ring bells have 90 degree vertical field of vision, this model is 150 degrees in both directions, letting you actually see the parcels on your porch. The company added that a new array microphone will help reduce sound distortion for clearer audio when talking to visitors.
Because they use a camera to detect motion, Ring doorbells can often be overzealous with its motion alerts. Look at your app’s activity log and you’ll see alerts triggered by birds flying past, a large truck blocking out the sun for a moment and people walking on the sidewalk. Using a radar sensor for 3D Motion Alerts will, hopefully, cut down on those incidents, since it’ll only look for motion within the range you set up to 30 feet.
Bird’s Eye View, meanwhile, uses the sensor to track a person’s journey toward your door to make sure they’re not straying from the path. Watch the footage back and you’ll see an inlaid map with a breadcrumb trail, presumably to check they haven’t gone snooping around your property. If you’re feeling a tad nervous at the privacy and surveillance implications inherent in this sort of tracking, get in line.
The longer Ring is part of Amazon, the tighter the integration between your doorbell and the retailer’s digital assistant. Now, users can set Quick Replies and Alexa Greetings, that lets you offer a pre-set request, or lets Alexa take messages like an answering machine, without talking to the app yourself. In one example, Alexa could ask a delivery person to set a package down on the step when you’re otherwise indisposed.
The Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 is, like its predecessor, a wired-only entrant, and looks like it’s the same size and shape as the first version. It is available to pre-order from today and will begin shipping to customers on March 31st, 2021, priced at $250.
