Amazon is revamping its subscription offerings for its Ring video doorbells and cameras.
A new service, called Ring Home Premium, will include features like 24/7 recording and AI-powered video search, starting at $19.99 per month when it launches on November 5 in the U.S. Less-expensive tiers, Ring Home Standard and Ring Home Basic, will bundle in several capabilities, but not 24/7 recording or the upgraded search.
Ring’s subscription revamp comes as the Amazon subsidiary flies high under its new CEO Liz Hamren, a former Microsoft executive. Ring is now the second-largest seller of security systems in the U.S., according to research firm Parks Associates, and it recently became profitable, Hamren told Bloomberg in May — six years after Amazon acquired the company for $1 billion.
Ring’s new subscription plans
The old Ring Protect Basic plan is becoming Ring Home Basic ($4.99 per month). Ring Protect Plus will become Ring Home Standard ($9.99 per month). And Ring Protect Pro will become Ring Home Standard with alarm professional monitoring ($19.99 per month) or Ring Home Premium, depending on which customers choose.
All Ring Home subscribers get person and package alerts, video preview alerts (short GIF previews of camera motion alerts), and 180 days of video event history. Ring Home Standard customers can view video streams up to 30 minutes via “extended live view.” And both Ring Home Standard and Ring Home Premium subscribers get “doorbell calls” — alerts that look like a call on your phone when a visitor presses the doorbell.
The changes are a bit of a mixed bag for some Ring owners.
Those subscribed to Ring Protect Pro will lose local video storage, internet backup, and Amazon’s Eero Secure suite beginning November 5. If they don’t have a Ring Alarm or Ring Alarm Pro device, they’ll also lose SOS emergency response (which is a part of alarm professional monitoring).
All these features and more — including various monitoring capabilities of Amazon’s household robot, Astro — are now gated behind Ring Home Premium.
For new customers with a Ring Alarm or Ring Alarm Pro, Amazon will also start charging (after November 5) $10 per month for the aforementioned alarm professional monitoring. (Ring Home Premium doesn’t include it — but does include SOS emergency response.) Ring Protect Pro customers subscribed to Virtual Security Guard, Amazon’s $99-per-month corporate security plan with call center monitoring, will get this at no charge, as will Ring Protect Plus subscribers with the Virtual Security Guard add-on.
Ring Alarm and Alarm Pro owners who signed up for Ring Protect Plus in 2021 or earlier will be automatically transitioned to Ring Home Standard with alarm professional monitoring starting March 1, 2025. That’ll effectively double the subscription price for customers previously signed up for Ring Protect Plus, which was $10 per month — but Amazon says they’ll be able to cancel the alarm professional monitoring add-on before the change.
To soften the blow, Amazon is offering existing Ring Protect Pro customers a one-year trial of Ring Home Premium with alarm professional monitoring. To keep alarm professional monitoring once the trial ends, subscribers will have to shell out for the full price: $10 per month plus $19.99 per month for Ring Home Premium.
AI-powered search
One of the headlining features of Ring Home Premium, Smart Video Search, can help users find specific moments in recorded video footage, Amazon says. Rolling out to select Ring customers in public beta starting Wednesday, Smart Video Search lets you type queries into the Ring app to pinpoint noteworthy moments.
“You might search for ‘raccoon in the backyard last night’ and find the answer to why those trash cans were knocked over,” wrote Eric Kuhn, Amazon GM of Ring experiences, in a blog post shared with TechCrunch. “Searching for ‘red bicycle in the driveway’ might turn up endearing videos of your oldest child teaching your youngest how to ride a bike.”
Initially, Smart Video Search will be limited to search queries about animals, locations, packages, people, time, vehicles, weather, and activities (e.g., jumping, running, playing, or riding). Amazon said it has implemented safeguards to block searches for potentially offensive or harmful content, and it will fine-tune the search feature over time.
Amazon didn’t say what steps it has taken, if any, to mitigate potential biases in the AI models powering Smart Video Search.
A study from MIT published in August found that commercially available models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 were more likely to recommend calling the police when shown Ring videos captured in minority communities. The study also found that, when analyzing footage from majority-white neighborhoods, the models were less likely to describe scenes using terms like “casing the property” or “burglary tools.”
“Ring is a leader in delivering privacy features for customers, and we’re also committed to developing responsible AI,” Kuhn wrote. “We have a long history of listening to and learning from our customers.”
The launch of Smart Video Search comes ahead of Google’s promised AI updates to its Nest cameras and doorbells, which will bring detailed captions for camera footage and similar natural-language search functionality.
