Ring Spotlight Cam Pro, Plug-in (newest model), Home or business security, Retinal 4K with wide-angle video, 10x Enhanced Zoom, and 600 Lumen Spotlights, White

Massive upgrade for ring!
I do think this is actually a pretty massive upgrade for ring cameras and here’s why.Pros4k quality for obvious reasons better digital zoom and much better video quality.Wifi 6 chip inside gives a much better rssi value when placing the device in the same spot of the first gen. My front camera which is furthest went from 61 to 43. I also notice the notifications are much quicker and the light reacts faster to motion.To confirm the light is much brighter I would agree with the stats of being 2x more lumens I would actually say I turned it down 3/4ths of the way due to it making the image too bright around the edges.As far as AI I have to say im impressed even though my motion area includes part of the street just like my first gen this one seems to understand the diffrence between the street and the end of my driveway and automatically knows not to bug me of cars driving by. This is especially true of night time when the lights of cars would flood my driveway and trigger the camera at the front or side of my house, but no more it determines the diffrence perfectly. I also like now when im mowing the lawn the ai determines it’s the same notification so it stops sending them so I don’t have to mute the notifications while mowing.ConsYes it could use a better speaker and microphone but I think I would much rather have seen a better microphone just because the audio pickup can be lacking sometimes for background noise like cars passing.With this new version no longer having battery backup I could honestly care less only because theres not a real purpose when you loose power you loose wifi and you can’t record either. So I understand why ring didn’t implement this it’s kinda a waste and besides I would much rather see an actual DVR get released. Also 4k and all the new ai features I think the power draw was too much for the older batteries and would require new one which I know people would be upset about also you’d need much larger batteries to power it.

Good high-resolution video; good AI; amazing HDR night vision; bad sound
UPDATE: I found a fix (on my own). I setup a hotspot from a phone, connected the camera to that WiFi…which worked. The camera then updated its firmware. After that, I was able to connect the camera back to my original WiFi (which has 100+ IoT devices, none of which ever had an issue to connect or setup, including other Ring cameras I own). So, as I suspected, it was most likely a firmware bug with the camera. It now works flawlessly on that respect, zero issues.The video quality is excellent, although “4k” is perhaps stretching it. It’s a little over-sharpened with some artifacts, but other cameras do that too (e.g., Wyze).The 4K high-definition only works if you have a really good WiFi network. Otherwise it compresses aggressively and goes down to 1080p or less. Which isn’t unexpected due to bandwidth demands. So, the camera needs to be either close to your router, or preferably a wired mesh network (i.e. Ethernet between access points). For me, it’s not a problem because I do have a wired mesh network, and I get the highest definition it’s capable of. But, can I read a license plate of a car passing by? No. So, it’s better than a 1080p camera for sure, but not making a major difference in my particular situation. There are cameras that are not wide-angle for that purpose (Wyze I believe has one). If your camera is close to the street and you need to check a license plate of a car coming to your house (e.g. theft incident), it’s possible that the new Ring cam would allow you to read it, while an older cam may not; it depends on distance and whether the subject is moving or not.Night vision is way, way better than Nest Google cams; although I haven’t tested their brand-new 2K camera (I will soon and post an update/screenshot comparison). Night vision is on par with the latest Wyze cameras. Night vision with HDR is really impressive: you can see the clouds in the sky, which isn’t visible with the naked eye. However, it’s no longer 2k/4k definition at night. Which isn’t the camera’s fault, as technology-wise, it just isn’t possible yet. It prioritizes seeing things in extremely low light outside at night, which is exactly what I want.AI is good, but not as good as the new Gemini features that Google/Nest released in the past month. Ring detects and labels people well, big animals (deer), etc reliably. Gemini, since October, has now much better voodoo-level magic: it’s literally like a human telling you precisely what they saw: you wearing a red jacket while mowing the grass and spreading fertilizer on the left side of the lawn, your kid was dribbling a basketball on the driveway with his friend, etc. It’s impressive, but not that useful in practice because Google Nest lacks some VERY basic features which even with Gemini and its automation capabilities, is unable to do: I need to have notifications based on a schedule in addition to presence sensing. For example, if it saw an animal at 3 am in my yard (e.g., deer eating all my plants) or a person in front of my garage in the middle of the night. Nest/Google can’t do that yet. It’s been a request for years. Ring and Wyze can: only notify me if you ever see a person in front of my house in the middle of the night…not dozens of notifications of me and my family on a weekend during the day! I’m baffled that Nest isn’t willing to offer that as an option. On the other hand, Nest has a specific category for “animal” detections which Ring doesn’t label as such (it’s persons, vehicles, and “motion” for the rest which is basically animals, not the old “motion” of dumb non-AI cameras).Back to this Ring cam: The sound is terrible. As posted by another reviewer, I get lots of weird static sound. It’s even worse when a car drives by.The Ring app could use a few additional polishes/functions. For example, a custom preset selection by camera: for camera A (backyard) only show me animals between midnight and 6am; for camera B (front of the house) set a filter for persons detected between 8am and 6pm; etc.Critically, and perhaps MOST important: Ring now offers 24/7 recording, albeit at a premium. Scrubbing through the timeline is finally possible, like a decade after Dropcam pioneered it (it’s now Google Nest). It’s very smooth and even better and finer than Google which has gotten worse compared to when it was under the “Nest” umbrella only. Wyze doesn’t have the option at all and it’s a major drawback.So, for now: excellent video resolution and better than other cameras, but not necessarily what I would call “breakthrough”; Amazing HDR night vision; good AI person / animal detection and notification options; terrible sound (could be my camera, or it’s a software bug).~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I pre-purchased the camera and installed it the day after it was released…and it can’t complete setup. It stays stuck at 95% when connecting to WiFi. I have a wired mesh network, I have other Ring and Nest cams connected to the same access point. It shows full WiFi strength where it’s connected. Rebooting, resetting the cam, rebooting the phone, physically moving both devices, etc doesn’t work. iOS 26 up to date, Ring app as well. Either the camera is faulty or there’s a problem on their backend server, or some other software/firmware glitch — although there’s really nothing specific about my setup. That’s why I typically never buy anything released on day 1…but in 2025, setting up a camera to connect to WiFi isn’t rocket science. I’ve bought 20+ security cameras over the past 10 years, it’s the first time one isn’t able to complete setup.

Good Camera, But Not Worth the Extra Effort for PoE
I purchased the Ring Spotlight Cam Pro expecting noticeably better video quality and faster performance, especially since I went the extra mile to hard-wire it. I ran Cat6 Ethernet, which took extra time and effort, purchased a PoE capable Ethernet switch, and paid extra for the camera to have the PoE capability.While the camera does work and the connection is stable, the live view often starts blurry, takes time to clear, and the video quality does not feel significantly better than my previous spotlight pro camera via wifi.Overall, it’s a decent camera, but given the extra expense and work required for PoE, the performance did not fully meet my expectations. I was hoping for faster response and clearer video.