How can I improve the battery life of a Ring Video Doorbell?

The Ring Video Doorbell has pretty astonishing battery life. It’s measured in months, rather than days or weeks, if you get everything right. So if you’re struggling to make the battery last a decent amount of time between recharges, here’s how to improve the battery life of a Ring Video Doorbell.

How long should a Ring Video Doorbell battery last?

First, let’s nail down how long you should expect the battery to last (assuming you’re running solely from battery power).

The rechargable battery inside my first-generation Ring Video Doorbell lasts around two months – although I don’t have all the features switched on, which I’ll come to shortly.

My tests of the Ring Video Doorbell 2 found that the battery lasted roughly the same amount of time, although it’s worth noting that the second-generation doorbell has better Wi-Fi. That can help save battery life if the Wi-Fi connection to your doorbell is weak (see tips below).

How to improve the battery life of a Ring Video Doorbell

Switch off motion alerts

Admittedly, this might be one of the reasons you bought the bell in the first place, but for me motion alerts are unnecessary. They largely only alert you to people who are going to ring the doorbell anyway – or the postman – who you don’t really care about. I found the alerts were going off so often I soon switched them off, and that made a big difference to battery life. How much? Somewhere in the region of 50% longer.

Make sure the Ring is within reach of a strong Wi-Fi connection

If your router is a fair distance from the front door, chances are the Ring will be desperately clinging to a weak Wi-Fi signal. If it’s always hunting for the Wi-Fi network, that will reduce battery life and may mean you miss people at the door. It also means the video feed will be patchy.

You can see the strength of the doorbell’s Wi-Fi signal from within the Ring app. Click on the specific device at the top of the main screen, click Device Health and its signal strength will be displayed. You want the RSSI figure to be as close to zero as possible.

If you can’t move your router closer to the front door, consider a Wi-Fi extender. Or, better still…

Install a Ring Chime Pro

The Ring Chime Pro is a good investment for any Ring doorbell owner. (It costs £49 from Amazon UK.) Not only is it much louder than the ordinary Ring Chime, but it acts as a Wi-Fi extender that works exclusively with the doorbell.

When I replaced my regular Netgear extender with a Chime Pro, battery life on the Ring itself improved. Partly, I suspect, because the extender regularly dropped the Wi-Fi connection to the doorbell.

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