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SkyBell HD v/s Ring Pro – Comparing Two Leading WiFi Doorbells

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July 4, 2022

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Skybell HD vs/ Ring Pro. That’s the comparison that anyone who would like to implement a smart doorbell would like to read. Though both doorbells are priced almost identically, there are few key differences between Ring Pro and SkyBell HD. We promise this is going to be an interesting post. Be it as a ‘consumer’ guide to choose the best WiFi doorbell for your home or as a curious reader who would like to explore the fascinating journey of these two mega brands that conceptualized something crazy, weathered the initial tech hiccups, raised millions and then one of them got acquired  by Amazon itself. The story of these two smart home tech companies is interesting and inspirational.

If you are an average consumer who just wants to know which is a good choice for your sweet home – Ring or Skybell? Well, we’ll cover all that. Just hang on, we won’t make you wait for long.

Skybell & Ring – How They Operate in 2022 as a Company?

Both of these smart home companies are not ‘small’ startups anymore as we speak in 2022. They started at least 5 years ago and they endured their initial hiccups and have come a long way. SkyBell was co-founded by Andrew Thomas in 2013 who raised funds through a crowdfunding platform. During an interview with Andrew Warner (Mixergy) He himself admitted that the shipped product didn’t work in 40% of cases when the initial version was taken to the hands of consumers who crowdfunded the project. He realized that the WiFi chips didn’t work as they expected to work and SkyBell was a ‘WiFi’ based doorbell. You can understand the product was a ‘dud’ without internet connectivity. Well, that was years ago and SkyBell never stopped creating better, stable versions and we have their latest offering SkyBell HD which has been received with an amazing response.

However, their journey to fame was not without numerous competitors, especially the IoT was booming and companies like Philips, Nest were frontrunners in that space. One company rose a notable contender in smart doorbell space and it was none other than Ring.

Ring doorbell, on the other hand, had a fantastic start and quickly rose to fame with its constant innovation practices and kept integrating more and more ‘smart home’ features in it. What started as a company called ‘DoorBot’ ended up being acquired by Amazon.com. It makes great sense of the acquisition deal since Amazon has its own smart home system and Ring doorbell integrates well with Alexa.

Over to the Comparison and Our Choice of Products for Comparison

Now, let’s move over to the comprehensive part of this article. Our team picked up the two top smart doorbells from Ring and SkyBell to run a comparison exercises to figure out the similarities, differences and an overall conclusion for deciding which is the best one they found and of course for helping our readers to choose for their homes.

The products we picked for the comparison are,

• Ring Pro WiFi Doorbell 
• SkyBell HD 

We picked up the above devices specifically for comparison because both are matured products and underwent a lot of iterations, listened to customer feedback and incorporated dozens of features from time to time. We felt they are worth comparing with each other.

Things we Considered for this comparison of SkyBell HD vs Ring Pro

Both of these products proudly belong to the smart home category and their core aspect of functioning is through internet integration. Without the internet, they are just a piece of plastic or fiber for that matter. So, we considered ‘connectivity’ as our main aspect. Another aspect is the build quality to assess how strong they are and can endure falls and drops. We also reviewed their camera quality, integration with other devices, interference, range, and a whole host of other aspects to come up with a detailed analysis and feature-by-feature comparison of Ring Pro vs SkyBell HD.

What are Essentially Smart Doorbells, specifically?

Smart or WiFi doorbells gained huge popularity over the last few years due to their user-friendliness, internet-enabled features and they are regarded as one of the essential ‘smart home’ devices when it came to 21st century home security. They also form an integral part of the internet of things

Moving onto the core part of this article, here is the aspect by aspect comparison of Ring Pro and SkyBell HD doorbells.

Design – SkyBell HD vs Ring Pro

Speaking about design and build, SkyBell HD comes in a circular shape and looks super trendy whereas Ring Pro is rectangular and it too has an elegant look. SkyBell measures just 7.1 cms (circumference) whereas Ring Pro measures about 11cm in length. Both of the doorbells have HD cameras, motion sensors, microphones and speakers integrated within.

Both of the devices are truly unique when it comes to design and looks. Hence it really up to us to pick one that appeals to us.

One of the key differences here is SkyBell HD is a wireless doorbell whereas Ring Pro needs to be hardwired to the door wall to fix it.

Camera / Video Quality – SkyBell HD vs Ring Pro

The video, being one of the main selling points for both of these doorbells, the companies made no mistake in integrating top quality cameras in these devices. Both Ring Pro and SkyBell HD come with a 1080 px HD camera integrated and support night view vision, live view and zoom options.

SkyBell HD has a 1080 P camera (as you can see below – Image: Amazon.com)

The videos can be recorded, stored on the server and can be viewed later as needed by a case to case basis. Speaking of the camera, Ring Pro slightly outshines SkyBell due to its wide-angle HD camera.

Ring Pro has got an equally good camera as well. (as you can see below – Image: Amazon.com)

Connectivity

Both the devices work with WiFi as the main source of internet connectivity. As we mentioned earlier, Ring Pro needs to be connected with wires of the existing doorbell. However, both of the doorbells seamlessly connect with WiFi and pair with your smartphones.

Integration with IoT / Smart Home Devices – SkyBell HD vs Ring Pro

As we mentioned earlier that a smart doorbell is essentially an important aspect of IoT and smart home setups, both Ring Pro and SkyBell HD connect well with other smart devices. Speaking of smart devices, Ring does a great job in this segment since it has deeper integrations with many connected devices such as Alexa for instance. Being acquired by Amazon, Ring Pro’s connectivity with Alexa is a pretty much in-house thing.

SkyBell HD is doing amazing too when it comes to integration aspects. In fact, it’s partnered with big names in home security space such as Honeywell, Alarm.com for B2B partnership deals. Owing to SkyBell HD’s wide range of integration options, we felt SkyBell HD fared better in the integration aspect.

SkyBell HD has following home security /IoT features integrated into their latest offering SkyBell HD

• Motion sensors
• Two way speaking
• Integration with other home security devices such as Nest etc
• Works with Smart lighting devices
• Works with smart locking devices such as Kwikset
• Works with voice operated devices such as Alexa
• And few more…

Ring Pro doorbell features some impressive integrations too

• Works with Alexa
• Has an impressive app called ‘Neighbourhood app’ for smart detection of neighbor’s movements
• Infrared night vision
• 2 Wau HD video talking
• Motion-activated alerts directly to your smartphone
• You can create a security ‘ring’ using a video doorbell and a few other sticks up cams
• And few more smart features

Durability – SkyBell HD vs Ring Pro

Doorbells are supposed to be withstanding an array of physical forces such as strong winds, rain, dust etc. And both Ring and SkyBell got this pretty early on and their design is rugged, strong.

Speaking of theft protection, Ring Pro has an edge over SkyBell since Ring Pro is hardwired to the wall. And Ring Pro also closely resembles a traditional doorbell which might be that appealing to thieves. SkyBell HD, on the other hand, looks futuristic, stylish and can be an easy target for thieves. And no worries, SkyBell has got a theft protection plan for you.

Ring  Pro can sustain weather between -5°F to 120°F (-20°C to 48°C) and it’s also Weather-resistant

We rate Ring Pro bit higher than SkyBell in this aspect.

Installation Process – SkyBell HD vs Ring Pro

Usually, wireless doorbells are a lot easier to install than their wired counterparts, simply because they are compact and don’t need wires to connect. This fact is true in this case as well. SkyBell HD is much simpler to install and make it up and running in a few minutes whereas Ring Pro needs a bit of effort to get things deployed and make the whole thing functional.

And there are smartphone apps that you would need to download and integrate your doorbells with the app so that you start leveraging the full functionalities these smart devices have to offer. Again, it’s all one-time effort to set these things up and once you got them correctly, start receiving alerts from these devices.

We have grabbed a few videos that help to understand the simplicity or complexity (for that matter) involved in the installation process of both of the doorbells.

Comparison Summary – SkyBell HD vs Ring Pro

Conclusion & a $200 Question

In this review and comparison of SkyBell HD vs Ring Pro, I hope you are now quite knowledgeable about what these two devices have to offer and how they can help you to make your life easier and secure with video alerts directly to your smartphone.

We think both of the products are great, futuristic, they have come a long way and are in a matured state right now. There’s a price difference between these two devices. SkyBell HD is relatively cheaper than Ring Pro. If you are a first-time buyer of smart doorbells and want to ‘try’ out by investing small cash, then SkyBell HD is a no-brainer.

>> Check Latest Price of SkyBell HD on Amazon

Now, a $200 question – Do You Really Need a Smart Doorbell?

Let’s untwist that question. Do video doorbells or smart doorbells really helpful? Well, looking at the way home security space has evolved from its ancient CCTV, alarms and motion detectors, the internet started playing a more vital role in the last few years since the concept of smart home started taking big strides. You can smartly turn on or off lights with the phone, command your voice assistant to do certain tasks and a whole lot of other tasks that were ‘simplified’ by the introduction of technology.

And a doorbell surprisingly was untouched till a few years ago and then an idea of installing a small camera within doorbell and transferring the video captured by that camera to the smartphone made a lot of sense. Especially, if you are away from home and want to understand who is at the door. Better yet, you can watch the video logs of people who visited your home when you were away from town. And most importantly, you can see and talk with people live using your smartphone. Isn’t it cool? It is.

Though there were hiccups and issues with WiFi connectivity with their earlier releases of the products, fast forward 5 years, we have got few really solid offerings with Ring Pro and SkyBell HD.

>> Check Latest Price of Ring Pro on Amazon

So Which One? Ring Pro or SkyBell HD?

If you are already into smart home things (that’s a fast-growing market, believe us) and want to get top-notch products regardless of how much it costs (it doesn’t cost that much though), Ring Pro would be a great pick. This really doesn’t mean, SkyBell HD is an inferior product. It’s just that it’s pricing a little different than that of Rings.

You have got great tech behind both of the products and we recommend you to go through the above comparison factors and the quick comparison table to get a sense of features and capabilities before you make the final move to buy one of them.