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 de

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.