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You have to remember that Ring has outdoor battery-operated stickup cams. When you compare this with what else is available on the market, where often times you

You have to remember that Ring has outdoor battery-operated stickup cams. When you compare this with what else is available on the market, where often times you have to run a hard wire and have a proprietary NVR then Ring is a great option. Some devices like Swann will go on sale that are wireless or PoE and allow you to use open source applications, but running a wire through the wall in my apartment was a non-starter... the convenience/price of alternatives to Ring isn't that great.

stevenicr 5y ago
"convenience/price of alternatives" - blinkxt is pretty great - but I think they also go to amazon's servers? so in the context of the discussion I guess it's not really alternative. Arlo does good from videos I've seen shared - I had the V1 they came out with and the battery life was terrible - but I did notice some sort of open source license on the router thing. Not sure it's still a thing, and I think the price is higher, and the battery life is better, with newer versions - but may not be amazon servers?
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  I initially tried Blink, but video quality was substantially worse than the Ring cameras I ended up replacing them with and you couldn't view the videos on a desktop computer without removing the USB drive. I had to use a mobile app for Blink. Blink is also owned by Amazon as you noted so if you use their cloud service then the videos are stored on Amazon servers, but they do have an option to save to USB drive. Arlo looked good too but they were pretty pricey compared to Ring. I'm not that happy that Ring is associated with Amazon, but they do have quite a few privacy settings when configuring them. I download my videos from Ring almost daily and store them in my own encrypted cloud storage, so unless Ring keeps a copy after they are deleted then law enforcement would likely need to ask me for a copy. I've personally had a mostly good experience with Ring. If you want 4k videos and long-distance night mode then I would avoid them and go with Swann PoE 4k bullet cameras if you can find them on sale, or another brand since they are just re-branded cameras.

stevenicr 5y ago

"convenience/price of alternatives" - blinkxt is pretty great - but I think they also go to amazon's servers? so in the context of the discussion I guess it's not really alternative. Arlo does good from videos I've seen shared - I had the V1 they came out with and the battery life was terrible - but I did notice some sort of open source license on the router thing. Not sure it's still a thing, and I think the price is higher, and the battery life is better, with newer versions - but may not be amazon servers?

encryptluks2 5y ago
I initially tried Blink, but video quality was substantially worse than the Ring cameras I ended up replacing them with and you couldn't view the videos on a desktop computer without removing the USB drive. I had to use a mobile app for Blink. Blink is also owned by Amazon as you noted so if you use their cloud service then the videos are stored on Amazon servers, but they do have an option to save to USB drive. Arlo looked good too but they were pretty pricey compared to Ring. I'm not that happy that Ring is associated with Amazon, but they do have quite a few privacy settings when configuring them. I download my videos from Ring almost daily and store them in my own encrypted cloud storage, so unless Ring keeps a copy after they are deleted then law enforcement would likely need to ask me for a copy. I've personally had a mostly good experience with Ring. If you want 4k videos and long-distance night mode then I would avoid them and go with Swann PoE 4k bullet cameras if you can find them on sale, or another brand since they are just re-branded cameras.