Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Where to start? I'm fairly tech Savvy so I'm approaching this with that mindset. I have cable internet with 30mb down and 5mb up with a Wi-Fi router 3 feet from the Ring Pro unit. Wires at the doorbell are putting out right at the low end of the recommended range of 16V using a mechanical chime. It's been a LOOONG process of getting this Ring pro to work to the point of "OK". The first one gave me hell trying to set it up. It made my mechanical chime go nuts. Their help desk suggested getting a digital chime which I did for $50....didn't help. Returned the digital chime and put my mechanical back up. THEN the ring pro wouldn't connect to my Wi-Fi. Of course, like all companies, their help desk had me go through a script or things to try (reboot router, turn off router, connect ring and turn on router, etc.) they FINALLY referred me to "2nd level tech support" on a Sunday. I had been trying to get it to work for four days and had been on with their tech support for all of them. Well, I received an email asking me to make an appointment for 2nd level support which was on a Sunday, a week after first trying to set this thing up . Well on Sunday at the appointed 11AM time, they call right on time. I explained to him ALL of the steps I had taken to try and get the Ring Pro to connect to my Wi-Fi and the other issues. He said, "You seem to know what your doing, we'll send you another unit" (good experience with 2nd level tech). Well, five days later, I had my 2nd unit and it connected immediately. They sent a return package with a return shipping label (good customer service on this count). Once the new one was connected, the issue of the jumpy mechanical chime went away as well. I tested a few things and everything seemed go to go.....almost. The motion detection was working, the SMS alerts were working, and the SMS for an actual ring of the door bell was working. What wasn't working was my mechanical door bell. Another call to tech support and this time I REQUESTED 2nd level support immediately which surprisingly, they agreed. The next day I received a phone call from the same 2nd level tech guy. Again, he said, I trust that you know what your doing so I'm going to send you one of our Ring chimes (another Wi-Fi gadget that plugs into a wall outlet that takes the place of your mechanical chime). Well in five days, I had it. Set up was easy and it worked well. Now I had all the functions I needed; a functioning doorbell, functioning security cam with motion detection, functioning SMS alerts, and set up on four family phones so everyone gets the alerts...I was finally after four weeks satisfied.....so I thought.."sigh". Fast forward a week after my initial satisfaction with everything finally working. One night, all of us started receiving motion alerts every 5 to 10 minutes after nightfall. After reviewing the recordings, it became evident what was happening was the night vision was turning on an off repeatedly and the noise from the loud "Click" of them turning on was causing a motion activation with the associated SMS alert. So the first night I turned off the motion alerts so we could sleep and turned them back on during daylight hours. This went on for three days. Since I knew the problem was with the night vision/IR LED's. I tried a work around which worked. Since the Ring is on my front porch right fairly close to my porch light, I tried turning on my porch light "tricking" the sensors into thinking it's daylight negating the need for the IR LED's to turn on. At first it didn't work but my light was an old incan yellow-ish light. so I put one of my daylight 60W LED bulbs in it an bam, worked like a charm. To further this and to prevent me from having to remember to turn on the porch light every night, I went another step. I went out and bought the Phillips HUE system and one of their 60W connected LED bulbs. I put their bulb in the porch light and tested it. It worked well for this application. Finally, I downloaded the IFTTT app and created a recipe for the HUE front porch light - "IF sunset THEN turn on HUE front porch light" and of course the reverse, "IF sunrise THEN turn off HUE front porch light". Now everything is automated and seems to be working good with no false night vision alerts. The only drawback to this idea was that the vision from the Ring Pro is limited to the area lit by the LED porch bulb which is significantly less than that of the night vision provided by the ring. Of course it also requires me to leave the front porch light on all night. Further email exchanges with the Ring 2nd level tech support guy has revealed that that the night vision switching on and off is a known issue and should be remedied with a future firmware upgrade. My other complaint is the black screen I get when I respond to a motion detection about 20% of the time. Even some motion detections that I don't answer are nothing but 30 seconds of black screen with no sound. Hopefully this can be remedied with a firmware as well. App. Recommendations: 1.) Would like to be able to select my desired video resolution (it's currently auto). 2.) Would like to be able to view recordings as they happen when clicking on an event and not wait until the full 30 seconds is recorded and processed. 3.) Allow some setting edits on the actual website 4.) Integrate with "works with Nest" so that a pre-selected nestcamera can activate when motion or the door bell is rung. UPDATE: I figured out a workaround now with IFTTT so that this can be achieved. 5.) Allow users to select custom alerts for the doorbell and motion alerts. CONCLUSION: It is my belief that the hardware of the Ring Pro is solid. Their problem lies in their software which assuming they have talented IT guys should be able to remedy. I think where Ring went wrong was rushing their product to market too quickly without sufficient time for BETA testers which is basically what we as consumers are at this point. Consumers who spend $249 for the most part DO NOT want to be BETA testers (as displayed by all the negative Amazon reviews). I believe with sufficient time, Ring can work out the bugs and have a rock solid product. Their downfall unfortunately may be however a flood of negative reviews causing business failure resulting in a dead in the water product for those that bought it. I hope they see the writing on the wall and put a team of very angry and determined software guys on this to save their reputation and company. Anything short of this, I fear this product will fail. UPDATE 6/8/2016: I received an email from 2nd level support advising me that a new firmware update (1.1.30) had just rolled out to address the IR lights turning on and off repeatedly causing multiple motion alerts. Well, it did keep them from turning on and off repeatedly but the problem is now they don't turn on at all!....come on ring..So currently, I have no night vision/IR lights so I'm still relying on my porch light to supplement the Ring Pro to see anything at night. Update 6/16/16: Well right after I wrote the last update on 6/8, I also emailed ring to tell them about the night vision issue. While waiting for a return email, on 6/10, the night vision started working again. Also on 6/10, I received another email from ring saying that mine sounds like it needed replacing again and that a new one was on it's way. I immediately emailed them and told them NOT to send it because this one had started working again. I received a reply saying, "Great, let us know if you have any further problems." Chalk one up for good customer service on Ring's part. Well, today 6/16 when I arrived home, there it is, a replacement ring pro. I guess I'll be honest and send it back after I keep it a few days to make sure the one I have doesn't goo chichi's paribba in the short term :) All things considered, as much of a pain this process has been, THUS far Ring customer service has been pretty good; albeit a bit slow at times. More updates to come!?!??!....maybe. UPDATE: 7/27/2016: Well things have gone better for the last month. It seems Ring has worked out many of the bugs. My brother, neighbor and friend who also have the Ring Pro report the same thing. MOST of the bugs seemed to have been remedied. The bugs that seem to remain (which a potential buyer should be aware of) is 1.) the issue of some old doorbell not working properly. Like I stated above, ring sent me one of their ring Wi-Fi doorbells as a remedy and that works good for me. 2.) You'll need a good/fast Wi-Fi connection for video uploads. Mine ranges around 5mbs up and that works good. My neighbor uses ATT u-verse with a blazing fast upload speed of 0.5mbs up and all he gets are bad still shots. My brother uses another cable co. and gets 2.5mbs up and it works fine. 3.) There are still occasionally "black screen" issues when responding to motion or doorbell rings. In other words when you receive a motion detection or ring notification on your cell and you click to view, you see nothing but a black screen; no picture, no sound. It can usually be remedied by going out of the application and trying again. This presents a problem because of the time that elapses from the motion or ring until you can see whats going on. What I usually see are people walking away or nothing at all because they have left. While this is irritating, it happens about 5% of the time which I find acceptable for the piece of mind you get for the watchful eye at the door. 4.) You still cannot view a 30 second recording until the Ring server has finished processing it if you miss the 30 second motion activation or Ring notification record window. If you do miss it, you'll have to wait for about 30 seconds to view the activity. I hope this process gets faster or is illuminated completely. 9/6/2016: Last week I came home and the Ring Doorbell Pro was completely dead. I don't know if it was a power surge or what had happened. A quick call to Ring's customer service and about a 10 minute dance through the script that they have to go through and I had another Ring on the way. It took 6 days to get there but it took about 5 minutes to remove the old ring and set up the new one. Ring was even nice enough to give me an extra 3 months of cloud service for my troubles. Ring still scores highly on customer service in my book. 2-2017 - Well everything worked great for a while. For the past two months there is no longer two way communication available via any of my phones. The alerts are still good (motion and rings) but if you try to have a conversation with anyone, the video locks up. I've tried calling Ring to troubleshoot the issue but thus far no solutions have been provided. I've even upgraded my internet speed to 100mps down / 12mps up. This being said I still feel the ring is worth it due to the extra security it provides. I wish they could remedy the video locking issue. My nest cam that I have indoors has had zero issues for over 1.5 running; two way conversations and all. CONCLUSION: So the question in most minds is, "So should I get one?" If you have a good/fast internet connection and you like the idea of a watchful eye at your door, then at this point I would recommend the Ring Pro. I'm still not convinced that I'm getting 1080P quality out of the videos. Since Ring doesn't allow users (at this time) to select their video quality, it's up to the software to select based upon internet speed/bandwidth. This is fine but I'd like to be able to select it myself. One other improvement that MAY help would be the incorporation of something allowing higher dynamic range in their videos like HDR or something of that nature. If your ring is in a shaded area like mine is and facing out to a brightly lit street the camera/software has to decide which to meter to get the correct exposure. If it meters under my porch, then the street is completely white washed/blown out, if it meters the street, the area under the porch is too dark. This is NOT an issue unique to the Ring Pro. All camera's have this issue and photographer struggle with the problem all the time. It is over come by either using a neutral density filter or using a software solution like HDR. I don't know how ring would incorporate a neutral density filter but some type of HDR solution might suffice. All this being said, their customer service has been good for me albeit a little slow at times. They do follow-up to insure their product is satisfactory. The hardware seems well built, the software has most of the bugs fixed and I think the Ring Pro is finally ready finally for prime time. The same is being reported by at least six users I know. They all agree, that they like the product now. I'm happy with mine and will be keeping it and the people that I know that have them are keeping theirs. Lets hope the improvements continue.