Whether you live in an apartment, or anywhere that has peepholes, this camera works almost exactly like a video doorbell, but it modifies the peephole on your door instead of requiring you to hook it up to a doorbell fixture. Plus, you can still use your peephole as a regular peephole. Ring Peephole Cam features: Of course, the best part of the Ring Peephole Cam is that it uses the peephole you already have for installation. As such, this camera comes in two parts: the exterior part that goes on the outside of your door, and the interior part that holds the battery pack and lets you look through your peephole the old-fashioned way. The Ring Peephole Cam has the standard motion detection capability, but it takes a step further with knock-sensing. This camera can detect when someone’s knocking on your door, even if they don’t realize they could just press the button on the device to “ring” your “doorbell.” Knock-sensing might not sound like that big of a deal considering the camera could just tell you when it senses motion. But listen: it is kind of a big deal. If you live in an apartment building with lots of people walking through your hallway all day long, then motion alerts can get really annoying really fast. Those motion alerts can get so annoying that you might just want to turn them off entirely. But then how are you going to know if someone’s at your door? Especially if they skip the button on the Ring cam and just . . . knock? That knock-sending feature ensures you get an alert on your phone when someone knocks on your door. So if you want to turn off the motion detection feature, you can do it without worrying you’ll miss half of the visitors who show up. The battery pack lives on the interior side of the Peephole Cam. When it needs to be charged, you just remove it from the housing and charge it with a micro-USB cable. It takes about five to ten hours.3 If you live in a house, it’s usually not a problem. But in apartment buildings, it’s hard to adjust your camera’s motion detection so that you don’t get a push notification every single time someone walks down the hallway. The Ring Peephole Cam does offer adjustable motion zones. But unlike some doorbell cameras, like the Google Nest Hello, the motion zones aren’t customizable. You can’t precisely adjust which areas you want the camera to watch and which you want to exclude. It’s more like a single area of coverage you can shrink or expand. The Ring Protect plan is what allows you to save video clips to the cloud. The Ring doesn’t offer any local storage options, which means you can’t save video clips anywhere else either without the subscription. Features that require a Ring Protect subscription:
Video saving Photo capture Extended warranties (with Plus plan) 10% off certain Ring products (with Plus plan)
That low monthly price is for just one camera. If you have multiple Ring devices, then you’ll probably want to upgrade to the Ring Plus plan. It covers all the devices in your house, plus includes professional monitoring for your Ring Alarm home security system. Ring Peephole Cam installation steps: Once you’ve got the actual camera set up, you can connect it to your Wi-Fi network and adjust the settings through the Ring app. The app will ask you to scan the QR code on the camera, and from there, it will walk you through the rest of the process. Features: The Ring Peephole Cam has features we expect from all worthwhile doorbell cameras, including two-way audio, night vision, 1080p resolution, and motion detection. It can also sense when people knock on your door. Pricing: The Peephole Cam itself is pretty affordable, but Ring’s monthly subscription plans cost extra. Plan on spending at least three bucks per month on a Ring Protect plan. Installation: Installation requires some wrangling of your existing peephole, but is pretty easy overall. Ring includes the tool you’ll need to unscrew your peephole apparatus so you can replace it with the camera. Do you prefer a peephole camera or a doorbell camera? Do you think the peephole camera is a good replacement for the traditional doorbell model? Let us know what you think in the comments.
