by Ring Alarm is Ring’s first DIY family safety system. Although Ring is most famous for redesigning the doorbell, Ring Alarm goes further: Ring Alarm actually redesigns your whole family’s safety.
The five-piece security kit allows you to monitor and protect your home through your smartphone. Ring Alarm is easy to install, and its flexibility means that Ring Alarm will be suitable for most home layouts.
Table of Contents
What is Ring Alarm?
Ring’s most famous may be the video doorbell of ring alarm, which was the company’s first product sold on shark tank in 2013, but since then, ring alarm has become a pioneer in the home safety market.
Since Amazon acquired the company for more than $1 billion in 2018, the company has expanded its product line to include indoor security cameras, flood cameras, and even cameras that can fly around at home.
This is not just the camera provided by the company, because Ring also wants to end the traditional family safety systems. These ring alarm systems usually require professional installation and expensive ordering plans.
Ring alarm is one of the cheapest smart home security systems on the market, priced at 249 pounds / 199 dollars / 275 Australian dollars. With Amazon golden day, you may buy cheaper ones. Please be sure to pay close attention to our best Amazon gold day transaction overview.
Ring Alarm Pros and Cons
Ring Alarm Pros
- Low-cost professional monitoring: we sound like breaking the record here, but in fact, the minimum rate of 24 / 7 professional monitoring provided by Ring is $10 per month or $100 per year. We also like that we can choose self-monitoring, and some companies need more expensive professional monitoring.
- Powerful ringtone ecosystem: ring alarm can mix and match other ringtone devices, such as ring alarm’s ringtone stick camera plug-in and ringtone video doorbell 2, to strengthen our ringtone alarm security system. This eventually saved us a lot of money.
- DIY installation: like many security brands we have reviewed, Ring alarm provides a simple installation without a toolbox. For many components, Ring alarm is as fast and simple as peeling and pasting.
Ring Alarm Cons：
- Privacy issues: intelligent security systems may bring hackers. Ring is no stranger to security vulnerabilities, but ring alarm has integrated two-step authentication into the ring alarm application to reduce the number of devices attacked by hackers.
- Connection problem: when we initially set up the base station of Ring alarm, we couldn’t connect it to Wi Fi. But after several attempts, the connection succeeded. Thank God, we didn’t encounter this problem again.
Ring Alarm Specifications and Main Features
Initial price: $199.99
Color: White
Connection: Wi-Fi, Mobile backup
Power supply: battery driven sensor; The base station requires a power socket (24-hour battery backup)
Intelligent assistant support: Amazon Alexa
Professional installation required: None
Ifttt support: no
Voice Assistant Compatibility: Amazon Alexa
Warranty period: 2 years Limited
Connection: Ethernet, Wi Fi, Z-Wave, ZigBee, Bluetooth settings (plus mobile phone backup and subscription with ring protection); The equipment uses Z-Wave to connect to the base station (within 76 meters)
Power failure standby: Yes
How do I install ring alarm?
DIY installation is a major mark in the pros column. Ring alarm does not need professional installation, and ring alarm does not need installation cost. After you download the ring application, you can easily set everything. The ring alarm application guides you through each step with simple instructions and pictures, and also provides a printed instruction manual.
Each ring alarm device is equipped with everything necessary for setup, including quick release brackets, screws and tape. Moreover, the provided Z-Wave range extender and sensor have been pre paired with the base station, so you only need to register the ring alarm in the application.
How does Ring Alarm work?
Each component of ring alarm’s ring alarm suite is developed to accommodate a wide variety of homes – just find your weaknesses from a security perspective and connect the appropriate devices. Because ring alarm can easily move around the house, you can try which placement is best for you.
Motion detectors are best suited to cover large rooms and corridors, while contact sensors are best suited to be installed on doors and windows. Z-Wave range extender is not particularly cost-effective for small and medium-sized families, but if you live in a larger house, ring alarm will be very useful because ring alarm provides more range – if you want to cover a larger area, you can add additional contact sensors and motion detectors.
Ring alarm’s base station uses Ethernet or Wi Fi to connect to your home internet connection and also acts as an alarm (105 dB, reassuring sound).
Finally, the keyboard allows you to arm and disarm – you can also arm and disarm on the app, but ring alarm is more flexible, especially when you need to take out your mobile phone just after you get home. You need to create a pin code for the keyboard. If you choose to use ring protect plus for auxiliary monitoring (described in detail below), you also need to set a verbal password so that the system can identify you as an authorized user.
How user-friendly is Ring Alarm?
The ring alarm application is well designed and easy to use, especially for setting the security mode of the device. Another convenient feature is that you can add shared users. These ring alarm users can access the alarm system through the application and create their own unique pin. At the same time, any visitor can also get their own pin code. Once they leave, the pin code can be removed.
However, although the keyboard and application work easily, the remote control key provided by ring alarm will be more convenient as soon as you enter the front door.
How sensitive is Ring Alarm?
Ring alarm is very based on your needs, which may be good or bad. The motion detector is described as pet safe, but owners of large pets will find that your animal friends can trigger the response of ring alarm. Strong gusts can cause ring alarm to make a loud sound in some rooms.
This is the beauty of sticking sensors with tape, because you can move sensors around the house according to your situation.
Ring Alarm: Everything you need to know
Ring alarm is the company’s first entry into the field of smart home security system, which makes things simple. The ring alarm security kit is provided as a 5-piece kit, including base station, keyboard, door and window contact sensor, motion detector and range extender.
Amazon promises that the installation program is as simple as the toolkit itself, and claims that the ring alarm system can be installed in “a few minutes” without any tools or professional installation. According to the company, you can “simply use the ring application to connect to the base station via Wi-Fi or Ethernet, install contact sensors on selected doors and/or windows, and place motion detectors to monitor motion”.
Once you set the ring alarm, the function of the ring alarm is like no decoration; Your smartphone or tablet will receive real-time notification when someone enters the room, opens a window or manually activates the alarm through the ring alarm keyboard.
Ring alarm has three different security modes. You can set and disarm the alarm using the keyboard or in the application. If you have other ringing devices, such as ring video doorbell 3, you can connect them to the ringing alarm and trigger the camera to start recording when the alarm sounds – but you need to subscribe to ring protect plus to take advantage of this feature.
Ring protect plus is an optional additional service at a monthly cost of $10 / £ 8. It can also provide mobile phone backup when Wi Fi is offline, and can choose to use auxiliary monitoring to automatically call emergency contacts in case of alarm events.
Although ring alarm provides limited third-party smart home integration and lacks support for Google assistant and apple homekit, ring alarm can certainly be used with Alexa devices, such as Amazon echo and Amazon echo dot. This means that you can enable, disarm, and check alarm status using Alexa voice commands.
Considering that the price of ring alarm is affordable, it is difficult to think of too many shortcomings. However, like any ring product, when it comes to user privacy, it is important to pay attention to tracking records; The cooperative relationship between ring alarm and the police department has been controversial in the United States. Last year, ring alarm encountered a data leak, which leaked the personal data of more than 3000 users.
On the other hand, it is worth considering that in terms of smart home security system, there is almost no competition in the market except nest secure, which is significantly more expensive.
Conclusion: Should you buy Ring Alarm?
Yes, Ring Alarm is an intuitive and affordable way to manage family safety.
For budget-friendly family safety, Ring Alarm is a terrible choice to protect your space. This setting is foolproof due to easy-to-follow instructions and well labeled system components. The system does not support Google assistant or apple Siri, but ring’s Alexa integration works well, especially when the system is armed / disarmed by voice. In the popular DIY family safety system, ring alarm also has the loudest alarm. More importantly, the non contract monitoring program is one of the most cost-effective monitoring programs, making it an economic way to protect your family and loved ones.
As for other options, if you want a simple DIY home safety system, simplisafe’s 8-piece wireless home safety system is what you want. Ring alarm provides unique features of the system, such as secret alarm, support for Alexa, Google assistant and apple watch, and the option to build your own family safety suite to realize family safety customization.
But if you’re looking for affordable, Alexa-compatible home safety, ring’s alarm system is one of the best systems you can buy.
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When this ring alarm review is published, the price of Ring Alarm is accurate, but the price of Ring Alarm may change over time.
