Whether bought for security or convenience, the popularity of smart video doorbells has exploded in recent years, and one of the biggest names behind the boom is Ring.

The Amazon-owned smart home brand has a large range of doorbells to suit just about every situation and every budget, but the new Battery Doorbell Plus is their first battery-powered model to offer head-to-toe video capture, as well as improved 1536p video.

This allows it to send package alerts, for when things are left on your doorstep – something that was previously only possible with the wired Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2.

That extra functionality does put it at the top of the pack when it comes to price, taking the spot from the Ring Video Doorbell 4 – so is it worth the extra outlay? Let’s take a closer look.

Design and installation

• Dimensions: 12.8cm x 6.2cm x 2.8cm
• 5800mAh battery
• 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi connection, 2.4GHz
• Drill required for mount in box

Ring hasn’t strayed too far from what it knows in the design here. In fact, the Battery Doorbell Plus is exactly the same size and design as the Ring Video Doorbell 4, with the two-tone outer shell, and the camera up top with the bell button below.

That camera offers a 150-degree field of view, both vertically and horizontally, which is a massive improvement on the 84 degrees the Video Doorbell 4 is capable of vertically – though the horizontal axis is also mildly wider at 160 degrees.

That greater vertical vision is the big USP here, in that it can capture a head-to-toe shot of people at your door, and also keep an eye out for parcels – all while offering the convenience and ease of installation that a rechargeable battery setup offers over wired.

In the box you’ll get the doorbell and the 5800mAh battery, of course, plus both a standard and corner mount (and all the fixtures and fittings), a microUSB charging cable, and a Torx screwdriver for securing the battery in place.

There are other accessories you can buy separately, including spare batteries, separate chimes and a solar panel mount to reduce charging need, but one you may want to bear in mind in particular is the wedge, which comes in handy if you have a step up to your door – as I do. I’ll touch more on this later, but it helps to ensure you truly do get a head-to-toe picture, and without it your view might fall a touch short.

Getting the Battery Doorbell Plus installed is really simple – you just need a drill to secure the mount to your wall or door frame. If you don’t want to drill holes, you can buy a no-drill wall mount separately that promises to be durable and weather-proof for securing to all surfaces except glass – great for rental properties or the truly DIY averse.

It should come as no surprise that you will need to download the Ring app to get the device up and running, scanning the Doorbell’s QR code to kick things off and get the device onto your Wi-Fi network as a first port of call.

It’s worth pointing out that the Battery Doorbell Plus is single band only, with support for 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi only, rather than the dual-band offering of the Video Doorbell 4. I’m not entirely sure why Ring decided to ditch this from its most advanced battery-powered model but I also didn’t experience any drop outs or unstable behaviour during testing, so I have no real complaints.

Setup and features

• Easy setup via app
• Person, package and other motion alert options
• Instant alerts included, but recording requires subscription
• Ring Protect Basic (one doorbell) cost: $3.99/£3.49 per month or $39.99/£34.99 per year

How well the Ring doorbell performs depends on you spending a little time digging into the menus when you first install it.

In particular, Motion Settings is worth dipping into as a priority in order to set motion zones that you will receive notifications for. This is as simple as mapping some lines around your driveway, or pathway, so you don’t get a notification every time your neighbour comes out of their door, or someone walks along the public pavement.

As the Ring Battery Doorbell Plus also offers package alerts, you can set a separate Package Zone in which you’ll get package alerts. You can tweak the motion sensitivity to suit – it defaults in the middle but you can change this if you’re getting too many or too few alerts.

There’s also a separate package sensitivity slider, but increasing the overall motion sensitivity will also help improve package alerts – though this comes at the detriment of battery life.

In fact, battery life is impacted by a few things, including how long the doorbell records video for when it spots motion, and how often it takes snapshots outside of any motion alerts. I used the recommended settings and found they worked pretty well for the majority of situations, though I’ll touch on that more in the next section.

You can also decide what you get alerts for. Ring doesn’t have quite as much granular control over this as something like Nest, which can tell the difference between people, vehicles and animals, and can even recognise individual people (with its Nest Aware additional subscription), but Ring simply offers you Person, Other Motion and Package.

You can tweak this to decide if you want to just get a notification, or to record it too – though the recording depends on you having a Ring Protect subscription, which starts from $3.99/£3.49 per month or $39.99/£34.99 for the year if you just have a doorbell (more devices will require the Plus subscription). You get a 30-day trial with the doorbell so you can see if you’ll make the use of it.

Advanced settings also include setting motion schedules, to avoid you getting unwanted alerts during certain times or days, snoozing motion for between 30 minutes to 12 hours (though video will still record if you’re a Ring Protect subscriber, and a new Smart Responses option.

This allows you to leave a Quick Reply when you know you’re going to be unable to answer the door either in person or virtually – sort of like a doorbell answering machine.

When switched on, it will play your choice of preset message when someone rings the doorbell, and can also record their response – though again, a Ring Protect subscription will be required for this. At the moment there is no option to leave your own message though, and responses are currently only available in English, with an American accent.

Performance and battery life

• Video: 1536p with HDR
• Field of vision: 150° vertical, 150° horizontal
• Audio: Two-way with noise cancellation

The Ring Battery Doorbell Plus is a fantastic addition to any busy household, giving you freedom to chat to delivery people from afar, to keep an eye on deliveries being made and, of course, to add a much-needed level of security to area in front of your property.

Being owned by Amazon, it’s a particularly good option if you have already bought into any of its smart ecosystem – for example, you can call up your doorbell’s view at any point on a Fire TV or Echo Show, and have an Echo speaker sound a chime when someone is at your door.

There is no Google or Apple HomeKit compatibility here, though, so if you’ve bought into those ecosystems, you may be better off looking elsewhere.

I’ve been testing the Battery Doorbell Plus for a month and found it to be a great addition to our house. The 1536p video with HDR is super clear (an improvement on the 1080p Video Doorbell 4), even at night, and has a really wide field of view that allows it to easily capture all of our drive – and then some. HDR helps to

However, I do have a step up to my door, so I could’ve done with the wedge to get a full shot of the step (it was out of stock during our testing period) – it can capture the front edge of the step but not closer in towards the door. It meant that if any packages were left further on the step, we often couldn’t see them.

Speaking of package detection – it wasn’t totally reliable that a package would be flagged every time one was delivered, though it did improve when I increased the motion sensitivity and opened up the package detection zone to be bigger. I think this allowed the Battery Doorbell Plus a longer period of time to recognise a package being brought to the door.

When I had just had it focused around my doorstep, I had a delivery of a very large box and it wasn’t flagged as a package alert (though I got the person alert, so the end goal was the same). However, several other package notifications were delivered just fine, and for smaller boxes.

Ring says it should pick up packages that are 10in/25cm in length so there are some limitations here. However, if you have person alerts switched on, I found package alerts a bit of a moot point anyway.

Because motion detection for people is spot on, and when you set your detection area it is pretty great at not giving you any false alerts from outside of that. I’ve had one or two during the test period, with people walking very close to the motion boundary but that seems to have settled since I tweaked the border inwards slightly.

Battery life has also impressed. After four weeks of use the battery level was at 60 per cent, with recommended settings (which included having HDR switched off too) – except motion sensitivity tweaked up slightly and package sensitivity up to the maximum. I’d guess that’ll mean around 10 weeks of use before I’ll need to charge the battery, though that will of course change depending on your usage and settings.

At $179.99/£159.99, the Battery Doorbell Plus is the most expensive of Ring’s battery-powered doorbells, but does offer the best quality video, the head-to-toe field of view, and colour night vision – though there’s no pre-roll video as you’ll find on the Video Doorbell 4. Still, I’d say it’s worth the $20/£20 uplift in price on the Doorbell 4 if you don’t need the pre-roll feature.

The price difference is more sizeable when compared with the most basic Video Doorbell (2nd Generation) at $99/£99, which still offers a lot of the same features as the Battery Doorbell Plus, but maxes out at 1080p and has an 84 degree vertical field of vision like the Doorbell 4.

Probably the most irksome thing here though, is you have to take the whole doorbell down to charge it, which isn’t as convenient. I have to say – even with patchy package detection aside, the wider vertical field of vision and improved picture quality feels worth the extra outlay to me, but those with a stricter budget will still find lots of what we like here in the cheaper device.

Verdict

The Battery Doorbell Plus is a fantastic addition to Ring’s battery-powered doorbell line up, bringing the head-to-toe field of view and an improved 1536p resolution that performs almost perfectly – except for one thing.

Its headline package detection feature is a little bit flaky from my experience, but can be improved by tweaking some of the settings – though this will impact the battery life too. Still, we have found similar features on competitor products, like Google’s Nest Doorbell, to also be hit and miss, so Ring is certainly not alone here.

Package alerts aside, the Battery Doorbell Plus is the best battery-powered doorbell from Ring yet, and a great addition to any house. Assuming you can afford the extra outlay for the slightly more premium offering here, I’d wholeheartedly recommend it.