Ring Video Doorbell 4 Review

The Ring Video Doorbell 4 is the most-bought doorbell camera in the world, and for good reason. It's not the cheapest, it's not the highest resolution, and it does require a monthly subscription to unlock its best features — but it does almost everything well, it's extremely reliable, and it lives inside one of the most mature smart home ecosystems available.

We've been testing it for several months. Here's what we think.

Specs at a Glance

Design & Installation

The Ring Doorbell 4 has a clean, modern look that blends well with most front doors. It's available in Venetian Bronze, Satin Nickel, and Polished Brass finishes. The unit is solidly built — it feels premium in hand and doesn't wobble once mounted.

Installation is straightforward. The box includes a wedge kit for angling the camera up or down, mounting screws, and a security screw to deter theft. If you have existing doorbell wiring, connecting to it takes about 15 minutes and provides continuous trickle charging. Battery-only installation is even easier — no wiring needed.

The Ring app walks you through every step of setup, including Wi-Fi pairing, motion zone configuration, and chime settings. First-time smart home users will find it genuinely painless.

Video Quality

In daylight, the Ring Doorbell 4 delivers crisp, colour-accurate 1080p HDR footage. Faces are clearly identifiable at typical doorbell distances (3–10 feet), and the 160° wide-angle lens captures a good chunk of the porch and approach path without excessive fisheye distortion.

The headline feature for the Doorbell 4 is colour pre-roll. Previous Ring doorbells could only capture pre-roll in black and white — the Doorbell 4 captures 4 seconds of colour footage before the motion trigger fires. In practice, this means you see the full approach of a visitor, not just their face after they've already rung the bell.

Night vision uses infrared LEDs supplemented by ambient light. In well-lit street conditions, you get decent colour; in full darkness, it switches to black-and-white IR mode. It's adequate rather than excellent — Eufy's 2K doorbell resolves more detail at night.

Motion Detection

Motion detection on the Ring Doorbell 4 is excellent. You can define custom motion zones — polygonal areas of the frame that the camera monitors — which dramatically reduces false alerts from passing cars or blowing trees.

With a Ring Protect subscription, you get person detection (AI identifies human-shaped movement), package detection (alerts when a package is left), and the new "Bird's Eye View" feature that uses radar to track motion paths through a top-down map of your property.

In our testing, person detection was accurate about 90% of the time. Package detection flagged deliveries reliably — though it occasionally missed packages placed off to the side of the door. Motion latency (time from trigger to notification) averaged 3–5 seconds on a good Wi-Fi connection, which is acceptable.

App & Features

The Ring app is genuinely excellent — polished, fast, and feature-rich. The home screen shows a live thumbnail of your doorbell and recent events. Tapping an event plays back the clip immediately, and you can scrub backward in the timeline to find footage from up to 60 days ago (with subscription).

Live view launches in about 2–3 seconds, which is fast enough for practical use. Two-way audio is clear and natural — the noise cancellation works well, and callers can hear you comfortably even in windy conditions.

Alexa integration is the best in class. If you have an Echo Show, you can say "Alexa, show me the front door" and get live video in under 2 seconds. You can also have the Echo Show automatically display the camera feed when the doorbell rings, and answer the door through the Echo's speaker. It's seamlessly integrated.

Google Home integration is more limited — you can view live feed but lack the push notification and two-way audio integration that Alexa provides.

Subscription: Worth It?

Ring Protect Basic costs $4.99/month (or $49.99/year) per device and unlocks cloud video storage (60 days), person detection, package detection, and rich notifications with video previews. Without a subscription, the doorbell still rings, you can still answer two-way audio in real time, but you get no video history whatsoever.

For most users, the subscription is essential. Without it, you can't review who rang the bell when you missed it, which defeats much of the purpose. Ring Protect Plus ($10/month) covers unlimited Ring devices and adds a warranty extension — good value if you have multiple Ring cameras.

Verdict

Buy it if:

• You use Amazon Alexa and Echo devices
• You want the most refined app experience
• You're happy to pay $4.99/month for cloud storage
• You want available in both wired and battery

Skip it if:

• You refuse to pay a monthly subscription
• You prioritise maximum video resolution
• You're primarily in the Google Home ecosystem

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