Ring finally brings 4K video to its battery-powered doorbell camera

The battery-powered doorbells deliver better video quality to Ring’s wire-free line, which has, to date, mostly offered 1080p HD resolution. The company says a “redesigned internal architecture” helps support power-hungry high-resolution video and AI features.

The video resolution boost will feed Ring’s new AI features, providing clearer pictures to enable the devices to capture more detail. The new products also have Ring’s Retinal Vision, an AI-powered capability that fine-tunes footage. Each camera comes with a free trial of Ring AI Pro ($19.99 a month), which gives you access to recorded video along with all of Ring’s latest AI features.

These include video descriptions that send a text description of what the camera saw, and Ring’s new Familiar Faces, which adds facial recognition to the cameras. There is also an AI-powered video search that lets you search footage for specific events, such as “kids on bikes” or “black cat on porch”, and Single Event Alerts, which sends just one combined alert when the camera recognizes similar motion, such as someone mowing a lawn.

The intent here is to reduce notification fatigue caused by security cameras and provide you with the information you need faster. However, recent backlash over Ring’s use of AI in its Search Party feature has created distrust among some users, who are concerned that their video is being processed in Ring’s cloud. There are several security camera companies that offer local video processing and storage if you are looking to avoid the cloud, including Reolink and Eufy. Another benefit of this option is that you don’t need to pay monthly subscription fees.

The new doorbell cameras and accessories are now available for pre-order on Amazon and will launch on April 29th.