New Ring indoor camera with motorized pan and tilt—remote control from phone
Amazon-owned Ring has long offered more that its most famous offering. Yes, it's famous for some of the best video doorbells, but they have one of the biggest ranges of indoor and outdoor cameras which can create a complete picture of your home – a picture you can view remotely via your phone, as well as an alarm system (all, of course, offering better functionality with a subscription Protect Plan if you want more than a live view).
Now, though, they're adding a new category with the launch of a new Pan-Tilt Indoor Camera which can be remote-controlled via the same app. This isn't an entirely new concept for the home – in fact Blink, a very similar company, also owned by Amazon, offers a pan-and-tilt base for its Blink Mini, which I reviewed at launch. Blink and Ring have the same parent company, but a slightly different approach.
Many, however, prefer the Ring ecosystem (or, at least, are embedded in it), and it does make life easier to have one app for all your cameras. The Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Camera provides 1080P 'Full HD', and can be rotated 360-degrees and tilted 169-degrees, so anyone (but perhaps pet owners especially) should be able to see the entire room by picking the right vantage point.
Other features include color night vision, two-way talk with noise cancellation, advanced pre-roll (for subscribers), and the characteristic manual privacy cover which also switches off the microphone as it physically blocks the lens. Given the various travails of home security companies in privacy battles – not least Ring as recently as last week – this is a reassuring feature for many.
At the same time, Ring has announced three charming new colors to the 2nd Gen indoor camera so it can fit into home decorations more easily; they're calling the colors blush, charcoal, and starlight. If you're not in the interior decoration game you might go with pink, gray, and cream, but they certainly provide more flexibility than the stark black-and-white choice typical or Ring's camera range.
The price for the newly chic Ring Indoor Cameras remains the same at $59.99 / £49.99 / AU$99, and the cameras will be available on July 24.
The new Pan-Tilt Indoor camera, however, is available to purchase from May 31 for £69.99 / AU$129, with US pricing and availability yet to be confirmed.
See our guide to the best indoor security cameras.
