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    July 25, 2016
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Chris's Reviews
 
Our hardwired doorbell with advanced security features and an ultra-slim design. With four included, customizable faceplates, Video Doorbell Pro has a finish to match your front door and your style. Get instant alerts when visitors press your doorbell or trigger the built-in, customizable motion sensors. See, hear and speak to anyone at your front door from your smartphone or tablet. 1080p HD video, two-way audio and hardwired, non-stop power means Video Doorbell Pro gives you the ultimate Ring experience.
 
Customer Rating
1 out of 5
1
Great potential, poor implementation
on July 25, 2016
Posted by: Chris
I purchased this device with great enthusiasm for my parent whom I wanted to provide extra security. Like many folks around the country, they aren’t all that technical so I setup the device both physically and via a new router-setup I built for them specifically to integrate IoT devices. The installation is very simple, and when the device is working it does as advertised. However, in the 3 – 4 days that we’ve owned the device it’s “gone black” i.e. disconnected from my network 3 times, causing me to lose access to the camera or get doorbell notifications. The first time it went black, it only did so for 2 – 3 hours.
However, the 2nd and 3rd time it went black and stayed that way for an entire day in one case, and indefinitely thus far, on the most recent one. The last two times I’ve called their techs, and the only solution I’ve gotten was to physically unscrew the device and press the hard-wired restart button. According to the tech, the device is designed to automatically reconnect to your network, but I found that this is not the case, and there is no way to reconnect the device via software which is a huge design flaw.
Basically, if you’re out, on vacation, etc., and for whatever reason, your internet blips out (which is common in most of the country) for a few minutes, causing your modem/router to restart, the ring doorbell pro cannot consistently reconnect to your network, and thus you’ll be without sight until you can physically restart the device. Other IoT devices like the Wink/Hue/SmartThings do robustly reconnect to your network if there is a small outage/blip/etc. automatically. I can attest to that, and obviously mobile phones/tablets/laptops are the same way. So this should not be an amazing feature to implement.
And since the common use-case for this device probably involves things like being able to see your home when you’re on vacation/at work/checking up on elderly relatives etc., I cannot recommend it to the average consumer as it clearly is not robust with respect to connectivity.
For a tinkerer, techie, this may be a good apparatus to install in your home if you’re willing to forgive it’s faults and continually unscrew/screw in the device if/when it goes dark. However, purchasing this from Best Buy, I expected the technology to be ‘ready-for-prime-time’ which it is not. I suppose if you live in an area where the internet NEVER goes down or goes down say once a year (and your Router/Modem also never inexplicably restarts as they tend to do once a while), this won’t be too much of an issue, but that’s a fairly candy-land scenario for 90%+ of Americans I suspect.
The tech honestly suggested I return the device, which I plan to do. It’s a great concept, but concepts don’t win markets, implementation does, and there definitely are many bugs to work out on this device.
My Best Buy number: 2553281714
No, I would not recommend this to a friend.
+11points
12of 13voted this as helpful.
 
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