The best solution I’ve found to poor Smart Home wifi connectivity, is a dedicated 2.4GHz only WiFi network for those devices. The issue comes when your router says “hey switch to 5GHz” or similar, which it doesn’t support. I’ve had 99% less disconnects since doing it (albeit with other devices)
I run a dedicated 2.4 only IoT network for these things. The issues didn’t stem from any kind of steering (I’m not sure that would have any bearing on it tbh), it’s simply poor connection quality no matter the variables.
I’m rural, so there’s very little interference on 2.4 from neighbours, either. Some cameras had line of sight to their AP, too. I think they just have a very cheap poor quality WiFi chip.
The only variable that changed in swapping to Nest was the camera vendor. They’re mounted in the same locations, connected to the same AP.
I agree that cloud-based processing is sub-optimal. If there is one thing I’d like improved with Ring I wish they offered an in-home hub that could be used for processing. But typically I get notifications within about 4 seconds of event starting. Is it instantaneous with Nest cameras?
Do you live in a harsh environment? I’m in London and have had 4 outdoor Ring cameras for more than 5 years. None have needed replacing.
What storage / event history do you actually get without a subscription? The following page explains what you get with a subscription but not without…
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Possibly. I wouldn’t say so, but perhaps for the cameras it might be. I think Google’s are rated better for weather. Ring blamed the local climate for the failures, but I say they just didn’t build them well enough.
You get 3 hours of cloud backups for event history, and still get all the same live features (notifications, streaming). An archival backup of all events isn’t something I need for my use. Just the notification. For anything important, I save it to my phone after viewing the event.
You get the basic on device event detection (people, animals), but not the more advanced cloud based detection like familiar faces face identification.
You don’t get features like heard events (sound detection for things like burglar alarms) or continues video recording, but these don’t work unless you wire them in anyway.
All the info is here:
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My doorbell’s WiFi was a bit unpredictable to start with but then I locked it to the nearest mesh hub and the signal has been in the 40s ever since. My mother’s and sister’s have been fine, although both of theirs are in the 50s but still green. A friend had trouble with the signal but Ring replaced it and the replacement has been fine.
I’ve not tried any of the cameras so I’ll take your word on those 
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For those interested, there’s a review here of 8 different video doorbells
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I’ve got the Nest battery, had it for almost 3 years and overall it’s been ok. 3 hour history without a subscription is good enough for me and the live viewing on the Nest Hubs works well.
Battery life is less than I’d like (started at around 3 weeks on a charge, now down to less than 2 weeks) and started to get connectivity issues lately despite no changes to WiFi setup and other devices (including outdoor cameras further from the AP) all working fine.
Both of those issues could just be the environment it’s in, age of device etc though.
I’ve been eyeing up the Reolink doorbells and waiting to see what price they drop to on black Friday as I have other cameras from them and have been impressed for the price.
I’m keen to move to a wired one but not sure I can be bothered with the hassle of drilling through the wall and running a cable to the closest mains plug.
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I have the Logitech one and have no complaints. It still doesn’t seem to be available in this country so I just bought it from Amazon US and they shipped it with no issues.
I wanted one that worked with HomeKit without any hacky extras or I’d have gone for the Google one.
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Decent roundup but would have been better if he included information on vehicle detection.
This is one of the areas I’d like to see Ring improve. Currently smart alert options for Ring are limited to “person” and “other motion” (and some also have “package” alerts), so if I want to be alerted when vehicles enter my driveway I have to enable “other motion” which also leads to alerts I’m not interested in (e.g. alerts triggered by animals on driveway).
I believe Nest and some other doorbells have a specific vehicle alert option.
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Is there any integration between the Ring doorbell and the Google ecosystem?
I thought Amazon had refused to do this…
It used to be possible to add via the Google Home app and get a basic level of integration. But looks like even that has now been removed…
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