How long does a Ring doorbell battery last?

If you’re thinking about investing in a Ring doorbell, and you’ve no way of hard-wiring the device to the mains, you probably have one big question: how long does a Ring doorbell battery last?

As ever with such questions, it depends. It depends on which device you have, whether you turn on motion alerts, and a few other factors. But I’ve had various Ring doorbell devices installed for more than five years, so here’s my advice on expected battery life.

Ring doorbell battery life

My experience here is based on the Ring Doorbell 3. That has the same battery pack as the Ring Doorbell 3 Plus and the Ring Doorbell 4, so it’s a safeish assumption that roughly the same battery life will be found across all of these devices.

On our Ring Doorbell 3 we have all motion detection turned off. The Ring only wakes when someone presses the doorbell or we manually check the cameras from our phones or Alexa Show devices, which happens very rarely.

On that basis, I find I need to charge the Ring doorbell every 8-10 weeks.

I have experimented with switching motion detection on and that does have a big impact on battery life. It obviously depends on the level of footfall to your door and how aggressively you set the motion detection zones, but I found it cut the battery life in half, meaning we had to charge every 4-5 weeks.

It’s worth noting that there’s only a couple of metres between our front door and the pavement, meaning that even with motion detection set to its minimum, people walking past could trigger the alarm. That’s one of the reasons we switched it off, as it raised too many false flags. If you’ve got a longer driveway, the motion detection might be less active and that could improve the battery life figure quoted above.

Other factors that can affect battery life include the strength of the Wi-Fi signal to the doorbell and the weather – extreme heat or cold could shorten battery life.

If you’re a Ring doorbell owner and want to share your battery life experience, please add a comment at the foot of this page.

How to check remaining battery life

If you want to check how much charge remains in your Ring doorbell battery, you need to use the Ring app.

From the main screen, hit the menu button (three lines), then Devices, the name of your doorbell and look for the little battery icon at the top of the screen. That gives you a rough visual guide, but if you click on that battery, you’re taken to Device Health where you can see a precise battery percentage.

You should get an email from Ring when your battery dips beneath 20%, which is quite handy. It takes a few hours to fully recharge a Ring battery, so it’s best done overnight.