Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Pro Review

About the Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Pro

• Price: $249.99
• Colors: Black, White
• Connectivity: 802.11 b/g/n @2.4GHz
• Power source: Hardwired (100-240V)
• Resolution: 1080p HD, HDR
• Field of view: 140 degrees horizontal, 80 degrees vertical
• Audio: Two-way talk with advanced noise cancellation
• Lighting brightness: Two tunable light panels at up to 2000 lumens
• Smart assistant support: Amazon Alexa
• Operational temperatures: -5 to 118 degrees Fahrenheit
• Weight: 4.9 pounds
• Warranty: One-year warranty

There’s one thing to note about the Floodlight Cam Wired Pro installation, and it’s a big one. As the name implies, it has a hardwired power source, which can make for a tricky install depending on your wiring situation. For a $20 upcharge, Ring makes the Floodlight Cam Pro Plug-In, which utilizes a standard power outlet to make installation immensely easier for certain setups.

What we like

Performance that lives up to its price tag

Chief among the responsibilities of a smart floodlight are being able to instantly illuminate an environment and capture an accurate, high-quality snapshot of its surroundings in a moment’s notice. Ring’s Floodlight Cam Wired Pro checks both those boxes with expert precision.

To be clear, Ring's new floodlight cam isn’t exactly an industry leader in the specs department. Its pair of LED floodlights produce up to 2,000 lumens of brightness, which trails both the Eufy Floodlight Cam 2 Pro (3,000 lumens) and the Google Nest Cam with Floodlight (2,400 lumens). And while Ring’s floodlight cam is on par with the Nest Cam’s resolution (1080p HDR), Eufy offers 2K video performance.

The bottom line, however, is that the Floodlight Cam Wired Pro consistently delivered clear recordings and live looks at my driveway, aided by lights that had plenty of brightness to spare. The floodlight is bolstered by features like color night vision (a feature Google’s Nest Cam notably lacks) and two-way talk, with the latter offering what Ring describes as “advanced noise reduction.” The result is the ability to clearly hear what’s happening outside your home and communicate with the surrounding world when appropriate.

Perhaps Rings’ best performance-based feature is 3D Motion Detection, which allows you to create customized motion zones for the floodlight to operate within. I was able to set a distance that stretched out to the edge of my driveway, mercifully avoiding getting cumbersome notifications every single time a car rolls down my street.

An app that gives you complete control

I’ve gone on record praising the Eufy Floodlight Cam 2 Pro’s convenient customizability. Even that floodlight’s app, however, doesn’t put you in the driver’s seat of your own security quite like Ring’s does.

The Ring app’s dashboard leaves no stone unturned. You can quickly turn the floodlight on or off and toggle features like motion detection, motion alerts, and motion warnings, as well as sound the floodlight’s 110db siren or jump immediately into a live view. Dive deeper, and Ring’s floodlight reveals just how intuitive it really is.

The motion settings tab lets you determine specific behaviors for when you’re home or away, and the schedules tab allows you to set your standard home/away time frames. You can enact a short snooze on motion alerts if need be, adjust motion sensitivity, set up smart alerts to only receive certain motion notifications and recordings, or manage which members of your household have access to the floodlight.

You can also link devices such as another Ring camera (in my case, a doorbell), smart locks, and lights. From there, you can choose corresponding actions whenever your floodlight detects motion. For instance, motion in your driveway could trigger your doorbell to start recording video, your porch light to turn on, and the smart lock on your front door to, well, lock. It’s not a feature that everyone will use, but it is a neat way to further automate your home’s security.

A subtle design

It's not that Eufy or Google designed a particularly bad-looking floodlight, but Ring’s counterpart presents a certain sleekness that neither competitor can quite match. There’s a subtlety about this floodlight’s footprint and appearance that will make it an attractive option for many. And while something can definitely be said for making it abundantly clear that your home is being monitored, there’s also something to be said for a fixture that just seems to fall into place at the forefront of your home a little more easily than the rest.

What we don’t like

Far from a full field of view

The Ring Floodlight Cam offers a 140-degree horizontal field of view, with 80 degrees of vertical view to match. For most folks, that will be plenty to keep a watchful eye on your home’s immediate surroundings, especially when paired with a Ring video doorbell.

That said, competitors like Eufy offer a complete, 360-degree field of view with motion tracking that follows a subject as it moves across your space. I didn’t find anything overtly wrong with the Ring Floodlight’s field of view. It’s just hard to appreciate anything else once you’ve experienced an entirely uncompromised view.

Storage comes at a cost

A Ring Protect Plan (starting at $3/month) is necessary to store and view your videos in the cloud for up to 60 days. The subscription also includes alerts when a person is detected, and the ability to save and share videos, but not package alerts like you'll find on certain Ring doorbell models.

By comparison, Google’s floodlight comes with free intelligent alerts and a three-hour event history out of the box, with additional storage options starting at $6/month. Eufy's floodlight is the unicorn here, boasting 8GB of internal storage. Granted, that’s not a lot when it comes to storage space for high-quality video. But it provides a foundation for recording from the get-go, something Ring and Google notably do not offer.

It’s Alexa or (basically) nothing

This should come as no surprise, but the Amazon-owned floodlight is designed with Amazon smart home products like Echo speakers and smart displays in mind. It doesn’t work with Google Home, Siri, or Apple HomeKit.

Technically, you can link your Ring devices with Google Assistant and use commands that range from asking about device battery life to finding out the last time your Ring doorbell rang. But that pales in comparison to being able to access a live view of your driveway or front door from any of your Amazon smart displays. It’s the type of compatibility Alexa users will cherish, and everyone else will sorely miss out on.

Privacy

The plain truth of installing a Wi-Fi-connected camera in your home is that it comes with an inherent trade-off. Regardless of which product you invest in, there will be some level of security risk to consider. Ring recently expanded its implementation of end-to-end encryption in hardwired and plug-in cameras and video doorbells. Essentially, the measure is designed to stop anyone without your smartphone or mobile device from viewing your recorded video footage.

End-to-end encryption can be enabled in the Ring app’s settings. The Ring app also has mandatory two-factor authentication to help keep your smart home safe and secure.

Should you buy it?

Yes, if you already have existing Ring gear or an Amazon ecosystem

If you’re among the countless households across the country that already have one of Ring’s various doorbell models or other security devices, it makes sense to add the Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Pro as your next layer of security. It’s a solid smart floodlight in its own right, and when you combine the potential connectivity between the devices, Ring’s handy compatibility with Amazon’s Echo ecosystem, and the ability to access all of your security cameras from the same app, it’s a compelling route to consider.

If you’re not in that camp, though, set your sights on other floodlights. The Ring Floodlight is a good product, but for $50 more, the Eufy Floodlight Cam 2 Pro outperforms it across the board, and works equally well with Google Assistant or Alexa. If you’re squarely in the Google camp, then the Nest Cam with Floodlight will simply serve as a more cohesive addition to your smart home.