Ring Doorbell 4
Ring improves its doorbell lineup by featuring all-new color pre-roll video previews for the Doorbell 4. Further improvements include better night vision, motion detection, battery life, and video quality.
Arlo Essential Video Doorbell
Arlo’s Essential Wireless Doorbell has a camera with a 1:1 aspect ratio and a large vertical field of view, so you can see packages on your porch and the face of anyone ringing the doorbell. In addition, when someone presses the doorbell, you will receive a video call on your smartphone.
When it comes to home security, Ring and Arlo are two excellent brands. Both design their many security peripherals around the idea of a safe and comfortable home that can be monitored quickly and simply. Apart from their traditional wireless cameras, these companies also make a few video doorbells to keep tabs on your property, parcels, and other front-door activity.
Let’s compare theRing Video Doorbell 4andArlo Essential Doorbellto help you determine which of these two battery-powered Wi-Fi doorbells is best for your home.
Price, availability, and specs
The Ring Video Doorbell 4 starts at $160 for the doorbell only. Several bundles also package the doorbell with a chime, solar panel, or security cameras. While no color choices are available, if you want to change the look of the doorbell, optional faceplates are sold separately for $15. You can purchase the doorbell on Ring’s website, other online retail sites, and big box stores like Best Buy or Home Depot.
The Arlo Essential Doorbell retails for $200 with a black or white trim piece, but is now often available for $100 or less. Like Ring, Arlo has several bundles available, including packaging with a chime, solar panel, and security cameras. Arlo’s products are also sold online and in stores like Best Buy and Home Depot.
Design and features
The Ring Doorbell 4 measures 5.1-by-2.4-by-1.1 inches, while the Arlo Essential Doorbell measures 5.63-by-1.85-by-1.45 inches. The Arlo clearly has more bulk, being deeper and taller than the Ring, but Arlo makes up for the depth by being quite a bit thinner in width than the Ring. Since it’s thinner, it may open up more installation options where space is premium, like on door trim pieces or other thin, flat surfaces. The Ring Doorbell ships only in its classic color option — silver on black. However, a variety of optional faceplates are sold separately. Arlo’s doorbell is available in a black or white trim piece.
Neither doorbell is what one would consider svelte. However, since the doorbells are wireless, the trade-off is a larger size to accommodate the battery. Aside from size, the Arlo has more of a modern round look, whereas the Ring is rectangular and looks dated. If a modern industrial design is more visually appealing to you, go with Arlo, and you won’t be disappointed.
Both doorbells share similar features and are easy to install without needing any additional ecosystem devices. The Arlo Essential and Ring Doorbell 4 are wireless, but if you prefer, you may install them in the traditional wired fashion without purchasing anything additional. Just keep in mind that the wireless nature allows them to be placed anywhere within the Wi-Fi range, including fence gates and other doors in your house.
Each also has quick replies, allowing pre-recorded canned messages to broadcast when someone rings the bell. In addition, both doorbells have adjustable activity zones and motion alerts, including smart alerts that can distinguish between people and objects like cars or animals and will notify the user accordingly. Each doorbell has its own accompanying app for Android and iOS, so your mobile platform is not a key decision-maker. Both work with Echo devices, using the speaker as a chime for the doorbell and streaming a live feed to an Echo Show.
Video and audio quality
Having high-quality video is important in a doorbell camera, and the video quality of the Ring Doorbell 4 is excellent and clear. With a wide, 160-degree horizontal field of view (FOV), you may see almost everything to the left and right of the doorbell in full HD resolution, making this an excellent choice for those with long porches in front of their home. However, with only an 84-degree vertical FOV, you may not be able to see the face of a person standing directly in front of the doorbell. The Ring Doorbell has two-way audio with noise cancellation for back-and-forth communication without excess outdoor noises.
The Arlo’s specifications list a 180-degree diagonal view for the camera, meaning it has a narrower horizontal FOV than the Ring at 127 degrees. This makes the Arlo a potentially better choice for smaller porches, as the camera wouldn’t be capturing too wide of a shot. Where it shines is the large vertical FOV and a maximum resolution of 1536x1536, which provides excellent video quality. The FOV allows for seeing packages on the ground and people’s faces at your door in high quality. Like the Ring, the Arlo also has clear, two-way audio capabilities.
One thing to watch out for in the specifications of any camera-based device is that a manufacturer may call out the diagonal FOV instead of the horizontal FOV. This is a marketing trick with Arlo, as the diagonal is always larger than the horizontal, and “bigger means better.” In reality, the diagonal field of view is meaningless for doorbell cameras.
Battery life
Most video doorbell manufacturers will claim that their rechargeable batteries can last up to six months to a full year without you ever having to charge them. In the case of the Ring Video Doorbell 4 and the Arlo Essential Doorbell, these are both newer products, meaning that battery life should be better than previous generations. However, once we start factoring in how many times a day the average video doorbell is triggered by motion detection, six months without a single charge can quickly devolve to just a few weeks.
That being said, one of the biggest benefits of the Ring Video Doorbell 4’s size is all the extra real estate that can go towards a larger battery. With its 6,040mAh pack, Ring has gone on record to say you’ll get about six months of use on a single charge. While this may be so, we think it’s a smart idea to invest in an extra battery for those times when the included one dies since it can take up to eight hours to recharge it fully.
As for the Arlo Essential Video Doorbell, Arlo also claims you’ll get around six months of usage (or less), depending on how often the camera is triggered and what settings you’re using. As far as battery size goes, the Essential comes with a 6,500mAh pack. We guess that if you have both the Ring and Arlo doorbells configured for equal settings, you’ll probably geta littlemore life out of the Arlo Essential Video Doorbell.
Durability
When braving the trials and hardships of Mother Nature and her many seasons, you’ll want a video doorbell that’s outfitted to handle extreme temperatures, dirt, debris, and precipitation. Unfortunately, Ring is not transparent about providing official IP ratings for most of its products. However, thesupport pagefor the cam mentions that it’s weather-resistant and can operate at temperatures as frigid as -5 degrees to as hot as 120 degrees.
Regarding the Arlo Essential Video Doorbell, we have another missing IP rating. However, like Ring, Arlo claims that both versions of the Essential Video Doorbell are weatherproof and can be operated at temperatures as cold as -4 degrees to as warm as 113 degrees, giving the Ring Video Doorbell 4 a slight advantage in this category.
Voice assistants
The best video doorbells are compatible with today’s leading voice assistants, including Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri. Both Ring and Arlo video doorbells will work with Alexa and Google Assistant but with a few caveats.
Alexa is the voice assistant to go with when using the Ring Video Doorbell 4. Considering that Amazon owns Ring outright, we’re not surprised that the former’s digital companion is the better of the two here. You can use Alexa to view live footage from your Video Doorbell 4 on a compatible smart display or smart TV. In the event that you want to communicate with someone at the door, you can engage in two-way audio using an Alexa-powered smart speaker or display.
While you’ll still be able to connect your Video Doorbell 4 to your Google Home account, the compatibility isn’t as robust as Alexa, to the point where you won’t even be able to view live footage from a Google Assistant-powered smart display or smart TV. Ring also offers limited compatibility with Samsung SmartThings, Apple HomeKit, and IFTTT. Our suggestion: If you’re going with Ring, stick to Alexa.
As for Arlo, the Essential series works with both Alexa and Google Assistant, as well as Samsung SmartThings and IFTTT. With your Arlo doorbell linked to one of these assistants, you’ll be able to receive motion detection alerts through the assistant’s companion app and other useful features.
Subscription services
Subscription services are not required for either doorbell, but each app lacks important features without it. For example, after the free trials, neither service allows viewing video history events, and both are relegated to live views only. Is this enough for the casual user? It can be, but once you start interacting with the apps and viewing video history, it can be very difficult to return to “only” a live view and doorbell notifications.
Ring Protect’s basic plan starts at $4/month and provides 180 days of video event history. However, you can not select a specific day to watch the video. Instead, you must scroll backward in time through all the motion activities, which is a real hassle if there are a lot of events to scroll through. Ring provides a 30-day free trial of the basic plan, and we wish it were longer.
Arlo Secure plan starts at $5/month and provides up to 30 days of event history. The Library tab in the app shows days when there is an event. Users can easily select a specific day to watch events, which we found to be the primary difference in using the app. Arlo provides a three-month free trial.
Which is right for you?
Whether you go with the Ring Video Doorbell 4 or the Arlo Essential Video Doorbell, you’ll be making a great choice. Of course, a few features set both products apart, and we think the Ring Video Doorbell 4 comes out on top in more ways than one.
The aspect ratio may not seem important on paper, but Ring’s traditional widescreen footage provides a greater field of view than Arlo Essential’s squared-off aspect ratio; this ratio could crop out the activity at the far ends of your property. Moreover, the Ring Video Doorbell 4 has impressive video quality, excellent Alexa integrations, and the ability to add 24/7 professional home monitoring for your homestead with the Ring Protect Pro plan.
Classic doorbell
Ring’s Video Doorbell 4 improves its previous version by including an all-new color video preview. This model also improves motion detection, night vision, and video quality.
As far as other subscription features, Arlo has a three-month trial available, whereas Ring is limited to 30 days. Depending on how much traffic your doorbell gets, 30 days may not be a long enough test drive. We feel that a three-month trial should be enough time to get a handle on all the paid services available, as most of us don’t have a ton of flow at the front door to make use of a shorter trial. Of course, since both doorbells are wireless, you can always test them thoroughly inside your house without even installing them outside.
Modern design
Arlo’s Essential Wireless Door is an easy-to-install, easy-to-use doorbell featuring an impressive vertical field of view. This doorbell can initiate a video call when the button is pressed to easily see who is at the front door.
