You probably know Ring from the popular video doorbell series that can help keep an eye on what’s happening at your front door. But the company offers a wide variety of other home security products like the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro. The camera offers some nice features like dual-band Wi-Fi and Bird’s Eye View video, but a similar Ring camera is much less.
Ring Stick Up Cam Pro
The Ring Stick Up Cam Pro provides 1080p video and can be used indoors or outside. Ring includes both an indoor and outdoor power cord along with all needed equipment to mount the camera on the wall or ceiling. It can also be used on a flat surface. Dual-band Wi-Fi can provide a strong wireless signal even while outside. 3D Motion Detection and Bird’s Eye view uses built-in radar to show exactly where a person was seen in the motion zone.
Made for Use Indoors or Outside
The Ring Stick Up Cam Pro is made to keep a watch on pretty much anywhere besides your front door.
About the size of a larger aluminum can, the Stick Up Cam Pro is 6.06 inches tall and 2.76 inches diameter. It’s available in a black or white color. It provides 1080p video, which is somewhat of a disappointment as many other video cameras on the market at the same price range offer 2K and even 4K video quality.
I took a look at the plug-in version of the Stick Up Cam Pro. That includes both an indoor and outdoor power cord. There is also a battery version available for the same price. While the battery version doesn’t need a cord, you’ll need to worry about charging the battery. To help alleviate the problem, if you’re placing the camera outside, you can purchase a bundle that comes with a solar panel that will continuously juice up the battery with the power of the sun.
Along with both power cords, Ring includes all of the mounting hardware you need to install indoors or outside. For a simple installation, you can place the camera on a flat surface with the mount. You can also install on a wall or ceiling. The mount can adjust the camera for the best possible angle.
During my testing inside, I just used the mount on a flat surface. For use outdoors, I used the mount on an eave. It took just a few minutes to install and get the camera angle to show my backyard.
After installing the camera, you’ll need to download the Ring app for iOS or Android. The app overall is well-designed and easy to use. You’ll need to add the camera by scanning the QR code in the documentation or the camera itself. There are a few more steps, including further customizing the camera’s motion detection areas. Privacy-focused features include setting a zone where the camera won’t record and disabling audio recording entirely. you’re able to even create a schedule and choose when to receive a motion notification.
Motion zones are an especially important function when using the camera outdoors. I was able to adjust the camera to only keep a watch on my property instead of what’s happening at the neighbors across the small lot.
While using inside, I was able to create a zone that would only alert me when motion was detected near the front door. You can also choose to record when just a person is detected or all motion events.
Though that’s a nice option to have, it didn’t work out well in real-world testing. While using both inside and outdoors, I received a notification of a person only to find that it was one of my two dogs or even a squirrel running across my yard. That’s not exactly what you want to see. Other cameras, like from Arlo, use on-device AI to determine whether the motion is from a person, vehicle, animal, or something else.
Passable Video Quality That Could Be Better
When using it indoors, the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro video quality is unremarkable. Even with HDR video, many sections of the video near my windows were blown out and difficult see, even with cloudy conditions. At night, it was also hard to see some of finer details before color-enabled night vision kicked in. When it did, it was a big difference and worked well.
I was also somewhat disappointed with the 139-degree horizontal field of view. The Stick Up Cam Pro replaced my much older Apple HomeKit camera with a full 180-degree field of view, and the difference was very noticeable. Previously, I could see every part of the living room. But the Ring camera cut off large portions of the video.
Whether indoors or outside, a camera in this price range should have a larger field of view.
Another issue when using indoors was how large the actual camera is. I have many similar cameras inside my home, and the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro is at least twice the size of any of them. That makes it difficult to conceal or install in a location without much space, like on a table.
When outdoors, the camera’s video was better. One of the highlights of the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro is dual-band Wi-Fi support on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Dual-band brings a faster and more stable wireless signal to the camera. Even with a mesh router system, I typically have issues connecting a live feed. But I had no issues with the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro. Your results may vary depending on several factors.
Video captured by the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro was of reasonable quality, especially in sunny conditions. I could identify faces and even team logos on clothing when zooming in. At night and during bad weather, night vision and color night vision worked well and gave me a great look at what was happening in my backyard.
No matter the quality of the video, be prepared to pay a monthly subscription to receive almost any use from the camera. Without a subscription, the only thing you can do is see a live view from the camera, use the talk feature to communicate with whoever is nearby, and receive motion notifications. A basic subscription is $3.99 per month or $39.99 yearly and covers just one camera.
With that, you’ll unlock video history for up to 180 days, the ability to save and share video, person alerts, rich notifications, and more. There are also more expensive subscription plans that expand the features to all Ring cameras at a location and add 24/7 monitoring.
Subscriptions are unfortunately a big part of looking for a home security camera. With each passing year, it is becoming more and more difficult an option that allows the option to access saved videos locally or free on the cloud. There are options out there without a subscription, but they are few and far between. A Ring single-cam subscription is reasonable, especially when compared to the other options on the market.
Bird’s Eye View Is a Disappointment, but Pre-Roll Is Great
One of the headline features of the Stick Up Cam Pro is 3D Motion Detection and Bird’s Eye Zones. Using built-in radar, the feature is designed to show the exact path of how someone came into view of the camera, shown on a satellite view of your location. So if someone jumps over a fence into your backyard, you can supposedly see precisely where. It will then show you the path the person took with yellow and red dots.
In practice, the feature was mostly a bust. While trying to set it up, Ring informed that there was no aerial photograph of my location and that the process will be less precise. Instead of being able to see the path of someone in a Google Street-view like setup, all I can see is a block that sor tof represents the outline of my home. If I lived in a rural area, I’d be more forgiving for the oversight. But living in a very populated Dallas suburb, there’s no reason for Ring not to have some type of aerial photography for the feature.
The radar detection worked fine, even without an aerial photograph, pinpointing where I was in my backyard. But that’s little comfort for potential buyers not knowing which locations have actual photography to use.
When playing back a motion event, the Bird’s Eye View information can appear in a picture-in-picture with the video. But you have to choose between the Bird’s Eye View and Pre-Roll option for the PiP feature. Pre-Roll on the plug-in version of the camera will show the six seconds before the motion even was triggered; for the battery-powered camera, it will only show four seconds. That worked extremely well and can be important to see what happened in the few seconds before motion happened. Even if you choose Bird’s Eye View for the PiP, the Pre-Roll video will always be available to view later.
Part of a Larger Security Ecosystem, for Better or Worse
As part of the larger Ring ecosystem, the Stick Up Cam Pro, sports several strengths and weaknesses.
As a positive, the Ring lineup of home security products is still unbeatable in the market. Along with the popular doorbell camera, you can add on a wide variety of other devices like cameras, alarm systems, and even lighting. All of the products from the Amazon-owned company can work together and can be accessed with the great smartphone app.
But then that leads to some substantial issues. While the smart home market continues to be more open with the Matter standard that is growing, Ring devices are locked in to the Amazon Alexa-based smart home system. So if you’re excited to see a view from the camera with just a voice command, you’ll have to do that with Alexa and an Amazon Echo Show.
No Ring products, including the Stick Up Cam Pro, are compatible with the two other major smart home systems—Apple HomeKit and Google Home. So if you use one of those other platforms, purchasing the Ring Stick Up Cam Pro doesn’t make much sense as you won’t be able to use it in conjunction with other non-Ring products.
Ring Stick Up Cam Pro: Features Aren’t Worth the Extra Cost
If you’re thoroughly invested in the Ring ecosystem, the Stick Up Cam Pro provides a passable way to monitor what’s happening at your home. It’s overkill to use inside, but it is a nice weather-resistant outdoor option.
While the headlining Bird’s Eye View sounds interesting on paper, it doesn’t add anything to the overall experience. Ring’s regular Stick Up Cam offers much the same functionality for a much smaller price tag.
