Ring Battery Doorbell Plus vs Google Nest Battery
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Ring Battery Doorbell Plus
Power: Removable Battery or Wired (AC or DC)
Storage: None onboard
Subscription: 180 days cloud storage and smart features
Best For
- Super fast notifications
- Reliable security coverage
- Long battery life
Google Nest (Battery)
Power: Internal battery or Wired (AC)
Storage: 3 hours free cloud
Subscription: 30 days cloud storage and face recognition
Best For
- Excellent package detection
- Full range of smart detection features
- Good Audio quality
The Verdict
As two of the high end cloud-based doorbell competitors, Ring and Google both present compelling high quality products. While both have a lot to offer, Ring's greater experience and tighter focus in this category shows through in the test results. There are key differences that will make it easier to choose depending on your priorities, though.
For security coverage, Ring easily takes the cake - as it does against most competitors. Ring has nailed their notification system so it delivers incredibly fast rich alerts so you can respond immediately. The wide angle lens also ensures very good coverage of larger areas, and it makes good use of this by starting recording very fast, and further out, capturing more of the event than many doobells.
When running on battery, Ring lasts considerably longer in practical use, and the easy-access removable pack makes charing far more convenient. The option of having a spare ready to go means you won't be without a doorbell for hours. The Ring app also provides a better overall experience than Google Home, with better video playback, more features, and more security and privacy controls.
Google, on the other hand, leverages their machine learning prowess to give a full range of object detection types: vehicle, package, animal, person, and familiar faces. Ring only provides person detection and packages, but the latter is not reliable. Google's detection system is rock solid, and correctly identified everything I threw at it. Unfortunately, notifying you about these events is up to four times slower than Ring.
Given the Ring Battery Doorbell Plus scores better on a wide variety of doorbell functions, and typically retails for less than the Google Nest, you'd only really go for Google if you have that ecosystem, or you care more about what is happening than when it is happening.
What do these scores mean? Learn about our data-driven scoring system.
The Quick Version
Camera: Google uses a 4:5 960x1280 camera, which makes it good for general coverage of thenporch area, but limits detail at longer ranges. Ring uses a 1536x1536 square aspect camera with a 150° field of view. This is much better for security coverage of the larger area in front of the house, and offers higher video quality than Google, particularly in daylight.Audio: Both doorbells have clean, responsive audio with no distortion of dropouts. Two-way talk is smooth and clear, with Ring taking this one by having slightly better microphone and speaker range.
Notifications: Ring rich notifications are incredibly fast, averaging on 2.3 seconds even with thumbnails included. This is twice the speed of Goolgle's basic text notifications, and up to 4 times faster than waiting for Google to deliver a thumbnail.
Motion Detection: While both doorbells offer good reliability in terms of detecting motion correctly, Ring significantly outperforms in terms of wake time and capture distance. This means you'll get more of what happened recorded, and over a wider distance.
Smart Features: Google wins on smart features with both more comprehensive detection options and higher accuracy. Indeed, Google is also perfect at identifying different objects, people, and packages.
Battery: During the full run down cycle, the Ring Battery Doorbell Plus lasted an incredible 102 days compared to Google Nest's 91. This still gives Google one of the higher battery run times in testing, but Ring is the king here. Ring's removable battery pack design is also super convenient and minimizes down-time when charging is required.
App Experience: The Ring app is very polished, feature packed, and offers best-in-class video retrieval with their Timeline feature. Google Home can feel bare-bones in comparison, and playback can be at times frustrating.
Compare The Models
Each doorbell I review is put through a series of repeated test cycles over a 30-day period. These tests give me 32 data points that make up the 7 overall category scores. These scores rate key performance requirements for doorbells like video and audio quality, motion capture performance, smart detection accuracy and the overall user experience.
Here’s how these two models compare in each category:
| Category | ||
|---|---|---|
| Camera | 6.0 | 4.5 |
| Audio | 9.8 | 9.4 |
| Notifications | 8.6 | 8.2 |
| Motion Detection | 9.1 | 7.1 |
| Smart Features | 6.5 | 9.4 |
| Battery | 6.0 | 6.0 |
| App Experience | 9.2 | 7.5 |
The specific measurements that make up these category scores are shown in the next table:
| Data Point | ||
|---|---|---|
| Video Quality | 8.0 | 5.0 |
| Night Vision Quality | 5.6 | 5.1 |
| Dynamic Range | 4.6 | 3.3 |
| Two-Way Talk | 9.6 | 8.8 |
| App Audibility | ||
| Outdoor Audibility | ||
| Recorded Audio | 10.0 | 10.0 |
| Notification Delay | 10.0 | 7.8 |
| Thumbnail Average | ||
| Doorbell Average | ||
| Text-only Average | ||
| Thumbnail Effectiveness | 7.3 | 8.7 |
| Day Success | ||
| Night Success | ||
| Missed Events | 9.8 | 9.8 |
| Day Misses | ||
| Night Misses | ||
| Camera Wake Delay | 9.7 | 7.1 |
| Frame Remaining Day | ||
| Frame Remaining Night | ||
| Event Capture | 8.0 | 4.6 |
| Record Start Day | ||
| Record Start Night | ||
| Package Monitoring | 6.0 | 8.8 |
| Package Features | ||
| Detection Success | ||
| Smart Detection | 7.0 | 10.0 |
| Smart Features | ||
| Day Accuracy | ||
| Night Accuracy | ||
| Live View Response | 8.5 | 7.8 |
| Live View Time | ||
| Doorbell Ring Response | ||
| Privacy Features | 10.0 | 8.1 |
| App Usability | 9.3 | 6.4 |
| Battery Performance | 6.3 | 5.9 |
| After 30 days | ||
| Time To Dead |
Performance Results
I test video doorbells across 7 key performance categories comprised of 16 specific scores. Each overall category can contain several scoring criteria. The 16 criteria are:
Video quality
Nightvision quality
Dynamic range
Two-way talk quality
Recorded audio quality
Notification delay
Thumbnail effectiveness
Missed events
Camera wake delay
Event capture performance
Package monitoring
Smart object detection
Live response time
Battery performance
Privacy and security
App usability
Camera Performance
Both of these doorbell models use a square format camera set up to provide for better ‘head-to-toe’ visibility useful for doorbell situations. This is particularly beneficial for package monitoring since you need to be able to see more of the floor in front of the doorbell. Ring uses a true 1:1 aspect ratio with a very wide-angle lens to give excellent side view coverage. Google uses a 4:5 vertical view giving better ground visibility.
Both Ring and Google have shied away from going for 2K resolutions as many doorbells now do. The Ring Battery Doorbell Plus runs at 1536 x 1536, while Google uses a much lower 960x1280 resolution. This hurts Google considerably in image clarity scoring, and interestingly also drags down the dynamic range results as the test swatches can’t be clearly defined. Ring actually manages a decent image with good overall color balance but falls short on the IR night vision test due to limited illumination output. This brings the two closer on score at night.
| Camera Performance | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ring Battery Doorbell Plus | 8.0 | 5.6 | 4.6 |
| Google Nest (Battery) | 5.0 | 5.1 | 3.3 |
Day Score - A weighted score based on the maximum distance a Landolt C vision test chart can be read through the live view of the doorbell.
Night Score - the same test repeated under night vision conditions. The weighting here is more favorable as this range is typically shorter than during the day.
Dynamic Range - The number of swatches on an OECF 36 test chart that can be clearly or partially defined by software selection on a captured screenshot.
Ring Battery Doorbell Plus Dynamic Range
Google Nest Dynamic Range
Audio Performance
Both the audio pickup quality and sound reproduction through the onboard speaker was flawless on both doorbells. No distortion or hiss was present in the app, and there was no breakup or skipping in the audio stream as I find on some models.
The only variance between the two was the range and volume of the audio hardware. While Ring was loud and clear right out to 10m (32ft) for the outside caller, The Google Nest output became a difficult to hear from 8m (26ft). Microphone pickup was similar with Google struggling to pickup normal speech from a little closer in.
| Audio Performance | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ring Battery Doorbell Plus | 9.6 | 10.0 | ||
| Google Nest (Battery) | 8.8 | 10.0 |
Two-way Talk - A combined score which rates two-way talk quality based on the presence of distortion, encoding artifacts, dropouts and audible range.
Recorded - A combined score which rates recorded audio quality based on the presence of distortion, encoding artifacts, dropouts and audible range.
Indoor Range - The maximum distance from the doorbell an outside visitor could be understood when using the app (max tested range 10m).
Outdoor Range - The maximum distance from the doorbell an outside visitor could clearly hear the app user speaking (max tested range 10m).
Notification Performance
When it comes to alerting you to activity in a timely manner, Ring is king of the hill. I’m consistently amazed with how fast they can get a rich notification out given it’s an entirely cloud-based system. Ring handily crushes all other models I’ve tested on this metric, and Google is no exception. This is important if you want to be able to respond to activity. A late notification means precious seconds where the caller - or intruder - may have moved on or done more than they would have if you had been able to intervene sooner.
Rich notifications are typically slower due to the extra processing required, unfortunately, even just using plain text notifications Google fairs poorly. At an average of 6.4 seconds this is one of the slowest notification speeds I’ve encountered. Google makes up a bit of ground by capturing usable thumbnails a bit more reliably, this is especially true at night where Ring tended to snapshot the video a bit late to show the cause of the alert.
| Notification Performance | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ring Battery Doorbell Plus | 10.0 | 7.3 | ||
| Google Nest (Battery) | 7.8 | 8.7 |
Speed - A weighted score grading the delivery delay of notifications combining times for thumbnails, text, and doorbell rings.
Thumbnails - The percentage of tests in which a usable thumbnail was included in the notification.
Text-only Speed - The average delivery time of notifications using text-only.
Thumbnail Speed - The average delivery time of notifications including a rich media component, usually a still image of the triggering object.
Motion Detection Performance
While both doorbells proved to have very reliable motion detection, missing a recording or notification only 2% of the time, Ring takes this category overall thanks to faster camera wake time and consistently longer detection range for objects approaching the camera.
When crossing the cameras field of view, the Google Nest took an average of 31% of the frame before recording started, where Ring managed to get going after losing only 4%. This means the Ring Battery Doorbell Plus is more likely to capture fast moving activity or motion around the periphery that Google. Ring has a big advantage on this test due to its very wide-angle lens. The compressed image on the edge of the frame allows for more leeway to detect motion and commence recording before a significant portion of the image is used up.
As far as detection range, while the Google Nest was tested picking up motion out to 6.1m (20ft), it averaged only 3.2m (10ft) over the 15 actual approach tests. Results were actually on the lower end of that range most of the time, with one morning test and one night test giving significantly higher outliers. Excluding those drops the typical detection range to only 2.4m. Ring manage far more consistent detection across all times of day, with the backlit afternoon tests yielding some paricularly good results. Even excluding these the average range was still 4.4m (14ft), only slightly below the overall average of 5.5m (18ft).
| Motion Detection | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ring Battery Doorbell Plus | 9.8 | 9.7 | 8.0 | |
| Google Nest (Battery) | 9.8 | 7.1 | 4.6 |
Missed Events - Based on the percentage of test events that were not detected or recorded by the doorbell.
Camera Wake - A measure of how quickly the camera can begin recording when motion is detected.
Event Capture - A weighted score based on the average distance an approaching person is recorded (how much of an event is captured).
Detection Range - The average distance motion was detected and recorded by the doorbell during morning, afternoon, and night lighting conditions.
Smart Detection Performance
When it comes to knowing what is outside, Google wins this easily thanks to their Nest Aware service. While Ring only offers package and person detection, Google covers the whole gamut of object types including vehicles, pets, and familiar face recognition. Ring does person detection very well, with tests coming in correctly 100% of the time. Their package detection needs some work, however. Both high and low contrast package tests gave and equally spotty 60% success rate.
The Google Nest crushes it here, with 100% object detection success across all object types, and a much more viable 95% accuracy on identifying packages.
| Smart Detection | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ring Battery Doorbell Plus | 6.0 | 7.0 | ||
| Google Nest (Battery) | 8.8 | 10.0 |
Packages - the percentage of packages correctly detected in various placements and lighting conditions.
Object Type - The number of smart detection features combined with the accuracy of object detection within the types supported by the doorbell.
Package Success - The raw accuracy of package detection.
Object Success - The raw accuracy of other smart detection types
Battery Performance
The scores here are somewhat misleading given the need to test in a consistent and timely manner. To achieve that I take the battery state after 30 days (the length of the actual test cycle) as a baseline comparison. This is normally indicative of a doorbell’s battery usage under high load on maximum settings. This was true for the Google Nest, but the Ring Battery Doorbell Plus earned it’s ‘plus’ after the 30 day period with usage levelling out and running for a record 102 days until it died.
Once the full rundown test is complete, this value is added to the reviews for better context, but doesn’t factor into the scoring. It should also be noted that Ring doorbells are much easier to charge thanks to their secure front-loading removable battery. You can have a spare on charge and quickly swap it over with no downtime. The Google Nest, on the other hand, requires removing from the mount and charging inside for several hours.
| Battery Performance | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ring Battery Doorbell Plus | 6.3 | ||
| Google Nest (Battery) | 5.1 |
Ring Battery Doorbell Plus
Google Nest (Battery)
App Experience
What you can expect to get out of the doorbell’s app is an important consideration since that’s going to be the entirety of your interaction with the device. There is a significant disparity here which comes down to Ring having built a best-in-class dedicated app for home security, specifically around cameras, and Google simply shoe-horning the doorbell functions into the fairly bland Google Home app.
I may sound harsh on Google here but having used the app for several important device tasks, including cameras and my Wi-Fi, it’s very apparent that Google Home has not been a priority for Google over its lifetime. It has been given some love in the last year or so, but it still feels quite generic and at times unintuitive with some fairly egregious feature deficits.
By comparison, Ring provides an excellent app with very smooth, fast video playback, a wealth of privacy and account control features, and far more privacy controls over the camera than Google does, resulting in a well-earned win reflected in the scoring.
| App Experience | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ring Battery Doorbell Plus | 8.5 | 10.0 | 9.3 | |
| Google Nest (Battery) | 8.0 | 8.1 | 6.4 |
Live Response - A weighted score based on how long the in-app live view takes to start on average.
Average Time - The raw average time to being a live stream in the first-party app.
Security - An aggregate score based on clearly defined scoring criteria around app authentication, security and privacy features.
Usability - An aggregate score based on clearly defined criteria around navigation, bugs, and recorded video access.
Ring Battery Doorbell Plus vs Google Nest (Battery)
| Doorbell | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ring Battery Doorbell Plus | 8.1 | Accurate broad area surveillance with lightning fast notifications. | |
| Google Nest (Battery) | 7.3 | Detailed object detection notifications and reliable package detection. |
Should you buy the Ring Battery Doorbell Plus?
I would recommend Ring if you’re looking for:
Immediate, actionable notification of motion activity outside.
Secure account, sharing, and privacy controls over your doorbell.
Fast, smooth timeline access to recorded clips.
Should you buy the Google Nest Battery Doorbell?
I would recommend Google if you’re looking for:
Detailed object detection and notifications, including optional face recognition.
Accurate, reliable package detection for keeping tabs on deliveries.
Integration with other Google home devices.
See my video doorbell guides to learn more about other models, features, and options.
