Putting some Color into Night Vision

The Ring Stick Up Cam is one of the company’s most popular security cameras that it sells. And it’s finally been upgraded with a more high-end version, with plenty more features. Which also means the price has gone up, and it’s now a “Pro” model. The Ring Stick Up Cam Pro is not cheap, with a starting price of $179. However, the cool thing here is that the wired and battery versions are both the same price. Typically, the battery version would be more expensive. So this is really good to see from Ring.

Ring does also sell a solar version which comes with a solar panel for $209. Which is also not bad for adding solar to your camera. And now you’ll never need to change out the batteries.

With that out of the way, the real question is whether or not the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro is worth buying? Well, spoiler alert, since you’ve already seen that we gave it five stars, it is. But let’s go over the full review.

Ring Stick Up Cam Pro Review: Design and Hardware

Somewhat surprisingly, the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro is actually pretty bulky. It’s a lot thicker than the regular Ring Stick Up Cam. And that is likely due to the added hardware in this model. Like the radar sensor that’s used for Birds-Eye View. It does still look a lot like the regular Ring Stick Up Cam, but you can definitely tell that this is the Pro model.

It also stands out from the competition, since the front of the camera is flat. Whereas a lot of the competition is using a cylinder look. On the front of the camera, there’s the camera front-and-center, with a grille below it for the speaker. You can also see the radar right above the camera. Ring does offer this in black and white, we have the white version here, which looks pretty nice, but the camera would likely blend in better with the black version.

On the bottom of the camera is the base that you can twist off to get to the battery on the battery model. On the plug-in model, it does still twist off. So that you can choose to use the stand on the bottom or the back of the camera. With Ring’s new quick release batteries, it’s so much easier to swap out the batteries. Compared to some of the competition where you need a screwdriver just to charge the battery. Ring also allows you to buy additional batteries. Right now, I have a couple extra, so I’m able to quickly pop out the batteries on my doorbell and cameras and put in new, charged batteries with ease.

Set-up is quite easy

As you’d expect from Ring, the setup process here is actually really simple. Now, I did have a bit of trouble at first. As the app was not recognizing my camera. I’m going to chop that up to Amazon sending this camera out before it was actually available. A quick email to Amazon and everything was fixed. Then I could scan the QR code on the back and add it to my home. It took just a couple of minutes to set up. It actually took longer to decide where I wanted to put.

I decided to put it on my patio. So it’s facing my front-door, allowing me to see when packages are delivered. Since my Ring Video Doorbell doesn’t quite show me the ground in front of the door. So, I screwed the base into the fence and we were off and running. It’s pretty simple to install. And of course, if you are placing it indoors, you can just place it anywhere, and move it whenever you want.

Amazon says that the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro is actually waterproof and weatherproof. It’s now November in Michigan and we’re expecting our first snow in the next week or so. And that will give us a good indication of how weatherproof this camera really is.

Inside the box, Ring includes the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro of course. Along with a battery in our particular model since we have the battery version. If you picked up the plug-in model, it’ll have a cable for power, or a solar panel if you grabbed the solar version. It also includes a few screws and drywall anchors. Basically giving you everything you need to install the camera, except for the screwdriver.

Ring Stick Up Cam Pro Review: Software and Features

With the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro you’re getting some of the most advanced camera features on the market. This includes Audio+ echo cancelation, it also gives you high-quality two-way audio. So that you can speak to whoever is in or outside of your home and they will no issues hearing you, and vice-versa.

Ring has also included 5GHz dual-band WiFi connectivity, which is often times not included in these smart home products. A big reason for this is because these products need the range of 2.4GHz over the speed of 5GHz. But it is great to see it available here, especially with the better quality video you’re getting on the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro. As I mentioned earlier in this review, I have this camera set up on my patio, and I have not had any issues with the connection at all. It has worked as expected, and it’s even quicker to get into the live video feature, compared to the other cameras that I have around my home.

The Ring Stick Up Cam Pro is not only a huge upgrade on the audio and connectivity front, but also in the video department. Which we’ll talk more about in a minute. But the company also makes it super simple to share your cameras with other people. If there’s multiple people in your home, you can share your cameras and doorbells with them pretty easily. Ring even lets you share individual cameras and doorbells, instead of just a blanket share across all of the products in your home. Which puts Ring above the rest, in my opinion.

Of course, Ring is owned by Amazon, so as expected it does work really well with Alexa. You’ll get notifications on your Echo Show 8 or Fire TV Stick 4K Max when someone is in the sight of the camera. You can also interact with people from these screens. So you don’t always need to use your phone to see who’s doing what. You can also use different commands like “Alexa, show the patio camera” to bring up a live video feed. There’s not as much functionality here as there’d be with a Ring Video Doorbell with Alexa, but it is a nice feature to have available. Unfortunately, because Amazon does own Ring, that means there’s no support for Google Assistant. And it’s the same for the Nest cameras, they also don’t work with Amazon Alexa.

Battery life is decent, but not incredibly long

The battery life on the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro is really going to depend on how you use the camera, how many people or things it sees everyday, and what your settings are. For me, with my settings, it lasted about two and a half weeks before I got the “battery low” notification, which is around 20%. So it would probably last about 3-4 weeks on a charge. Since this is in my patio, it does record quite often with taking my dog out several times a day, getting all sorts of packages during Techtober, etc. Also expect it to be lower on battery during the winter, as batteries don’t like the cold weather and don’t perform as well.

My recommendation for this camera is to either pick up a few extra Ring Quick Release batteries and the charger which will run you about $89.99 (the charger is $29.99 by itself). Or to get the Solar version of the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro. That will cost you another $30 ($209 total) and it’s even better than the extra batteries, since you’ll never really need to worry about charging your batteries again. Remember, this doesn’t use a whole lot of power each day, so even if you are only getting a few hours of light in the winter, it’s still enough to keep it charged up.

Some features are stuck behind a paywall

Ring has a subscription service called Ring Protect. It’s pretty cheap, to be quite honest. For a single camera, it’s $3.99 per month or $39.99 for the whole year. But the real money saver is for the “Plus” plan which gives you unlimited cameras and doorbells for $10/month or $100 for the whole year. And it gives you the ability to save your recordings for up to 180 days. Without Ring Protect, you can only see this in real-time, unfortunately.

Ring also includes person alerts, and rich notifications with the Protect plan. And finally Home and Away modes are included in Protect. These are all pretty basic features, and it sucks that it is behind a paywall, however, if you’re like me and have multiple cameras and doorbells around your home then the $10 per month makes loads of sense.

Ring Stick Up Cam Pro Review: Video quality

With the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro, the company has added quite a few upgrades to the video quality. This includes 1080p HDR video and color night vision. Both of these are huge upgrades compared to the Ring Stick Up Cam I’ve been using outside my backdoor for the past couple of years. The video quality from this camera looks really incredible. Every time I pull up the Ring app and take a look, I’m shocked at how good it actually looks. The color night vision is also quite good. It’s almost like it’s not dark outside, with the quality of this footage.

Ring has also included 3D radar-based motion detection with a feature called Bird’s Eye View. This feature allows the camera to plot someone’s path on a satellite-style view. So you can see where they walked both on video as well as with radar data. This also helps with the false notifications about someone or something being in view of the camera. This is because leaves blowing across your yard won’t trigger the motion alert now. That’s always great to see. Since I do get a lot of false triggers on my old Ring Stick Up Cam.

Should you buy the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro?

Whether you should buy the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro or not really depends on what features you want and/or need from the camera. Are you okay with the black and white night vision from other Ring cameras? If you really want color night vision, then it might be worth upgrading. Do you want the improved audio features and 5GHz connectivity? These aren’t necessarily must-haves, but for some, this might be worth spending $179 for.

It’s a good camera, but it’s also a fairly expensive one, at $179. So you really need to weigh the features here to tell if this is something you should buy or not. If you are going to buy the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro, and put it outside, I’d recommend the Solar version. For just $30 more, you won’t ever need to worry about the battery depleting and needing to be replaced. That sounds like a really good trade off to me.