Ring Outdoor Cam Plus review: All in the details

Ring may have established itself as a dominant home security player thanks to its video doorbells, but has been rolling out comprehensive home security camera options over the years as well.

The latest model is the Outdoor Cam Plus, a versatile camera that can be used either indoors or outdoors, and has either battery or wired options as well.

There are some nice additions here that make it a solid investment, including the inclusion of 2K video recording, which was rolled out to some of the brand’s other cameras earlier this year.

But it also sacrifices some features in its other outdoor camera models, like the Stick Up Cam Pro.

But there are benefits to the simplicity. By focusing on image quality and ease of use, the Outdoor Cam Plus is an easy product to recommend.

What is the Ring Outdoor Cam Plus offering?

The Outdoor Cam Plus comes in either a battery-powered model or a wired version, both available in black or white colours. There’s also an option of grabbing a solar panel to remove the need to charge the battery if you can’t be bothered with that.

There’s not a lot to the camera itself. It looks just like most of the other Ring cameras available, with a tall, cylindrical design.

The differentiation between other models comes in the form of its feature set. The Outdoor Cam Plus offers 2K video quality, as compared to the Stick up cam or standard Spotlight cam’s HD resolution.

The sacrifice here is that there’s no LED spotlight on this camera, and there’s no radar for the Bird's-eye view feature that underwhelmed me during the Stick Cam Pro review.

You do get standard features like Live View and two-Way talk, as well as motion detection and real-time alerts. There’s also a remote activated siren if you want to scare the crap out of anyone breaking in (or a family member, if you find that kind of thing funny).

The camera measures in at 67 mm x 67 mm x 128 mm, including the stand. That makes it small enough to discreetly place around your home for security.

Installation here is incredibly simple. Because I tested the battery version, there was no need to have it located near mains power. It’s a simple two screw installation that should only take 10 minutes to do. What’s more, it can be mounted on a wall or on a ceiling for a versatile setup.

The other big difference here is that the Outdoor Cam Plus is the first security camera from Ring to support dual-band Wi-Fi. While all earlier models have been limited to the 2.4GHz network, this model also supports 5GHz, meaning it should be easier to keep a secure and stable connection.

What does the Ring Outdoor Cam Plus do well?

Vision from the Outdoor Ring Cam is pretty good. It’s not mind-blowingly good, with impeccable fidelity that gives you a clear view of every blade of grass in the shot, but you can make out people’s faces well enough.

It has a broad field of view, letting you capture a pretty wide vista from a single camera. The diagonal field of view is 160º, while horizontally you get 140º, and vertically you can see 80º. Because you’re probably not using this to detect packages, I found it to be plenty for viewing a section of my backyard.

Ring’s setup process is effortless, with a simple QR code to kick off the process in the Ring app, which guides you through each step of the way.

Once you’ve done the software part of the setup, I also appreciated just how easy the physical setup of this camera is. Two screws and you’re done.

The motion alerts and person recognition are on par with other Ring cameras, with prompt notifications and clear recordings. I popped the camera in my garden hoping to catch footage of some of the birds that drop by to munch on my camellias, but they were all a bit too quick, even with the motion sensitivity cranked up.

All the other pros of this camera really come down to the ecosystem. Ring makes solid hardware and has a robust app that lets you track video from all its videos in one place.

It seamlessly integrates with Alexa and Echo devices like the Echo Hub, and gives you control over things like the area in the camera’s view you can block from getting motion alerts.

What could the Ring Outdoor Cam Plus improve?

Ring hasn’t changed its battery design for ages. This is a good thing in some ways because it means you can use a spare battery across the entire range of products.

But it also means that even with this new product, you still have to use a micro-USB cable to charge the battery, which is slow and tedious. I have one microUSB cable lying around, and it can be a pain to try to find it to charge my spare Ring battery.

And like with every Ring camera, it’s important to realise that most of the key features, like cloud storage of video clips and people alerts, require an active subscription. If you have more than one camera, that subscription will cost you $149.95 a year, which is almost the same price as this camera.

There’s no local storage or way to get around that cost, either, which means you’ll be stuck on the hook for $150 a year just to use your camera as it was intended.

Verdict

The Ring Outdoor Cam Plus is a decent home security camera. It’s easy to set up, offers good 2K video quality and decent battery life.

Priced at $179, it’s a reasonable product to add in to an existing Ring network of cameras, or could be the foundation of a new home security network for your home.

But it’s still disappointing that so much of the Ring’s offering is tied to a subscription service that costs almost as much as the camera.

Compare prices for the Ring Outdoor Cam Plus

Ring Outdoor Cam Plus

RRP: $179

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