Blink Video Doorbell (2021) vs Ring Video Doorbell (2020): What's different?
(Pocket-lint) - Amazon is going after the budget market. At their Fall 2021 hardware event, a good portion of the products announced were dedicated to selling smart devices as inexpensively as possible in an attempt at getting users to become hooked up into one of Amazon’s many subsidiary subscription services.
These include anything from the company’s Halo Fitness membership to Prime Video, Kindle Unlimited, Ring Protect, and more.
The latest offering, the Blink Video Doorbell, aims to bring the once-luxury features of the Ring Video Doorbell to a more wallet-conscious section of the masses.
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Amazon / BlinkPriced at a mere $50 / £50, it’s half the cost of Ring’s most modest offering, the titular Video Doorbell (2020), and four times the price of the company’s most premium option, the Ring Video Doorbell 4.
If you’re starting to question the feature parity between a lineup of devices as seemingly simplistic as a video doorbell, worry not, as Pocket-lint has you covered. We’ll go over all the differences and similarities between the options to help you decide which intelligent doorbell system is right for you.
What are my options?
When it comes to Amazon’s offering of high-tech doorbells, your options vary between three choices under the Ring family and the newest edition Blink, which is purposefully missing the Ring moniker. This helps to differentiate between Amazon’s more “name-brand” offerings (Ring) versus their lower-cost option as to not “tarnish” the status quo of Ring’s brief product history.
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As stated, the most budget-friendly choice by Ring is the standard $100 / £100 Video Doorbell (2020). It includes all the typical accoutrements expected from any modern doorbell system while only missing out on a few more questionably necessary features.
The next option up is the $180 / £160 Ring Video Doorbell 3, which also came out in 2020. It includes a handful of additions, such as interchangeable faceplates, a removable battery system, and 5.0GHz Wi-Fi compatibility.
And finally, for $200 / £180, prospective buyers can purchase the Ring Video Doorbell 4, which offers all the features of the lower models as well as a new feature the company is dubbing “Colour Pre-Roll Video Previews”.
Basically, that functionality will allow your Ring to begin recording before you even receive a motion detection alert on your smartphone. By the time you open the app, you can see everything that’s just gone on by your door with a pre-rolling video already playing of the event.
What’s the same?
Stripping away the extra bells and whistles (no pun intended), these doorbells all share more in common than what they don’t. For starters, they all capture video at 30 frames per second at 1080P HD, offer motion detection alerts, support two-way audio communication, and can work either wired or wirelessly.
Of course, for wireless usage, you’ll need to keep the unit charged every few months or so. Still, some of the models offer a swappable battery option, meaning you can keep a second battery home charging so when one runs dry so you never have to go without your system up and running.
What’s different?
As per what’s really different between, say the $50 Blink and the $100 Ring, the primary identifiers are the fact that the Ring offers an ever so slightly greater field of view: 155° horizontal and 90° vertical versus 135° horizontal and 80° vertical on the Blink. You’re also limited to either black or white when it comes to colour options, whereas on the Ring, you can decide between a silvery “Satin Nickel” or a richer “Venetian Brown”.
One of the better options available exclusively on the Ring lineup, for now, is something called Advanced Motion Detection. At its core, it’s a simple way for you to map out the physical area captured with the video camera and select which locations you’d like to get motion alerts from.
This brief video below explains the concept best.
Ultimately, we feel like you can't go wrong with any one of these options. Fundamentally, they'll all be able to give you a bit more security and peace of mind in your home, so unless you can pinpoint a specific feature you're interested in exclusive to one of the higher-end options, we can't imagine you'll be all too upset to save a little cash here on a Blink or standard Ring Video Doorbell.
Writing by Alex Allegro.
