Professionals
-
Movement-activated mild
-
Constructed-in siren
-
Two-way audio
The great thing about the Ring Highlight Cam Professional lies past its audio and video efficiency.
Concerning the Ring Highlight Professional
Credit score:
Reviewed / Nick Woodard
The Ring Highlight Cam Professional has built-in LED mild strips and a siren to assist safe your own home.
- Coloration: Black, White
- Connectivity: 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi connection @ 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz
- Energy Supply: Plug in USB-C energy adapter.
- Decision: 1080p HDR, HDR
- Subject of view: 140° horizontal, 80° vertical
- Audio: Two-way discuss
- Brightness: Two 3,000° Kelvin spotlights
- Good assistant assist: Alexa
- Operational temperatures: -5°F to 120°F
What we like
It’s one of many simpler spotlights we’ve put in but
Credit score:
Reviewed / Nick Woodard
All you want is a couple of screws and a close-by energy supply for a profitable set up.
A part of why the Ring Highlight Professional’s ridiculously straightforward set up course of is that this specific model’s energy supply—so long as you may have an outlet inside about 15 ft of the place you need it to be, you’re 4 screws away from being mounted and able to go.
In the event you don’t have an outlet close by, then one of many Ring Highlight’s three different iterations (battery, photo voltaic, wired) is perhaps a greater route.
It’s not simply the ability supply, although. Ring has streamlined the in-app setup of latest gadgets, to the purpose the place I had the Highlight Professional up and recording roughly 5 minutes out of the field.
A tip from me to you: Arrange the Highlight Professional earlier than putting in it in your most popular location round your own home. Between scanning a barcode discovered on the highlight and establishing a Wi-Fi connection, it’s simply that a lot simpler to plug into energy and set issues up within the confines of your front room, then enterprise out into the weather to safe the system into place.
It information detailed video with clear audio
Credit score:
Reviewed / Nick Woodard / Getty Photos / Davyd Volkov
With the Ring app, you are in a position to entry the digital camera’s 1080HD video dwell stream and two-way audio.
Bluntly talking, the Highlight Cam Professional checks the containers in relation to efficiency. It information 1080p HDR video that fell in need of knocking my socks off, however was nonetheless sharp sufficient to be happy.
The highlight presents Two-way discuss with what Rings describes as “superior noise cancellation,” which pairs effectively collectively to generate a stable audio expertise.
The 2 3000° Kelvin spotlights constructed into the Ring Highlight Cam Professional, I used to be wowed by the brightness that such a (comparatively) compact highlight may produce.
Oddly sufficient, the Highlight Cam Professional had a couple of considerably important efficiency options that have been toggled off by default. I needed to enterprise relatively deep into the app to change each HDR and Coloration Night time Imaginative and prescient on, two options that most likely ought to have been activated out of the field.
As bizarre of an omission as it’s, it’s a comparatively fast repair if the place to look.
First, faucet on the Highlight Cam Professional from the house display of the Ring app. Then, faucet the Settings icon and scroll to System Settings.
From there, faucet Video Settings, which brings up a display with options which you could toggle to your tastes.
The highlight is anchored by glorious options
Credit score:
Reviewed / Nick Woodard
The Chook Eye’s Zones characteristic permits customers to observe a 30-foot, prolonged aerial view across the residence’s perimeter.
The great thing about the Ring Highlight Cam Professional lies past its audio and video efficiency which, whereas undoubtedly good, doesn’t tip the scales in direction of excellence the way in which opponents just like the Eufy Solocam S40 do.
Nevertheless, the Highlight Cam Professional makes up for it with some intriguing options, beginning with Chook’s Eye Zones.
To make use of this characteristic, you’ll pinpoint the place the Highlight Cam Professional is in your property with a Google Earth-like view, then draw a protection zone that you just’d just like the highlight to observe. This zone isn’t restricted to the Highlight Cam Professional’s 140° area of view, although.
Utilizing radar-powered detection, the Highlight Cam Professional’s zone coated my whole (admittedly small) yard although it was pointed squarely at my patio. The zone had a 30-foot radius, that means I may have prolonged protection into my neighbors’ yards if I so selected. However I used to be in a position to mildew the zone to finish at my fence line.
There are a number of extra options to talk of, however the different one I discovered most helpful was Mode Settings and the power to automate them with geofencing.
Ring has three accessible Mode Settings: Disarmed, the place all indoor and out of doors cameras should not detecting movement; Dwelling, the place simply out of doors cameras are monitoring; and Away, the place all cameras are energetic.
I arrange a geofence primarily based on my cellphone’s location that may allow Dwelling mode once I obtained again from work, and Away mode once I left the premises, which I discovered actually helpful.
It’s a considerably refined characteristic, but it surely does effectively to chop down on pointless notifications whenever you’re hanging out at residence.
What we don’t like
There is a subscription payment
As well-liked because the Ring lineup is, the model’s defining handcuff is its insistence on requiring a month-to-month subscription to entry one of the best features of a tool. To document video on a Highlight Cam Professional, a $3.99/month Ring Defend Fundamental Plan is required.
To place it one other manner, you may’t execute probably the most core performance of this system (recording movement) with out paying an additional $50 a yr on a subscription.
And when you have, say, a Ring Video Doorbell 4 sitting subsequent to your entrance door, you’ll need to improve to Ring’s Defend Plus Plan, which covers video recording on all Ring gadgets for $10 monthly.
There’s different settings you unlock as effectively with these plans, equivalent to Snapshot Seize and Particular person Alerts.
My foremost beef is the idea of shopping for a $230 safety digital camera, then having to tack on $50 a yr simply to have the ability to use the one characteristic you purchase a safety digital camera for.
It solely works with Alexa (for now)
Credit score:
Reviewed / Sarah Kovac
With the assistance of the instructions you give to Alexa, you may discuss by means of the speaker to work together with visitors on the entrance door.
It received’t essentially matter for somebody like me, who’s absolutely engulfed in Amazon’s sensible residence ecosystem.
Google and Apple sensible residence house owners of the world, nonetheless, will discover that Google Assistant and Siri don’t straight combine with the Highlight Cam Professional.
There are cameras that cater to these demographics, just like the Google Nest Cam with Floodlight or the Eve Cam Outside, respectively. The Highlight Cam Professional simply isn’t one among them.
Privateness
Wi-Fi-connected cameras are, purely by default, a privateness danger. That being mentioned, many of the main sensible safety manufacturers are actively taking measures to mitigate that danger.
Ring, for instance, expanded its implementation of end-to-end encryption in hardwired and plug-in cameras and video doorbells.
Basically, the measure is designed to cease anybody with out your smartphone or cell system from viewing your recorded video footage.
Finish-to-end encryption could be enabled within the Ring app’s settings. The Ring app additionally has obligatory two-factor authentication to assist hold your sensible residence protected and safe.
Do you have to purchase the Ring Highlight Cam Professional?
Sure, particularly if you have already got a Ring safety ecosystem
Credit score:
Reviewed / Nick Woodard
The Ring Highlight Cam Professional performs greatest when it is aside of a extra advanced safety system.
A part of the enchantment of Ring gadgets generally is how easy it’s to string them collectively into an ever-expanding safety system round your own home. Abruptly, you can have a Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Professional watching over your driveway, a Ring video doorbell overlaying your entrance door and the Ring Highlight Cam Professional monitoring motion in your yard. That’s when Ring gadgets take advantage of sense, as an ensemble.
That’s to not say the Ring Highlight Cam Professional isn’t a decent standalone digital camera. It’s, particularly when you think about how straightforward it’s to put in, its stellar audio and video efficiency, and its thrilling security measures.
But when I didn’t have already got a Ring system to construct off of, I’d most likely be extra intrigued by one thing just like the Eufy SoloCam S40, since it could actually do most every little thing the Highlight Cam Professional can, runs on photo voltaic, and doesn’t cost you a month-to-month premium to document video.
On the finish of the day, discovering a safety digital camera that meets your wants is an important factor to think about. For a lot of of us, the Ring Highlight Cam Professional meets these wants.
By design, although, it simply makes extra sense if it already has a couple of Ring friends to associate with.
The product specialists at Reviewed have all of your purchasing wants coated. Observe Reviewed on Fb, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or Flipboard for the most recent offers, product critiques, and extra.
Costs have been correct on the time this text was printed however might change over time.
Meet the tester
Nick Woodard is a tech journalist specializing in all issues associated to residence theater and A/V. His background features a stable basis as a sports activities author for a number of every day newspapers, and he enjoys climbing and mountain biking in his spare time.
See all of Nick Woodard’s critiques
Checking our work.
Our group is right here for one function: that can assist you purchase one of the best stuff and love what you personal. Our writers, editors, and lab technicians obsess over the merchandise we cowl to be sure to’re assured and happy. Have a distinct opinion about one thing we advocate? E mail us and we’ll examine notes.
Shoot us an electronic mail
