We know Ring as a smart home brand, but it is now expanding to other places. It introduces a Car Cam for the first time. It is certainly not the first to do so. In the Netherlands you also see more and more often: dashcams. Modern cars such as Teslas can also film all kinds of things that happen around them. The police even regularly call Tesla owners when a crime has occurred near the car, in the hope that there will be CCTV footage. In such situations, the new Ring Car Cam can also help.
Ring Car Cam
Car Cam is a camera for the car that films with two wide-angle cameras. On the one hand he films what happens outside the car, and on the other hand also what happens inside the car. All this is recorded in 1080 HD. There are also sensors on the camera, so that when the car is parked, recordings are still made when the sensors are ‘awakened’. It is therefore a camera that can help with traffic accidents and theft in the car.
Ring seems to be taking a completely different path with its Car Cam (sorry for the pun) than we are used to: it cannot be integrated with other Ring products, even if you use the same app for it. It is therefore not the case that this dash cam offers added value if you already have other products from the ecosystem of the smart home brand. What is perhaps even crazier is that there is no integration with Alexa. So you can’t talk to your camera in the car. At least, you can, but then nothing will happen.
Hello Alexa?
Ring belongs to Amazon.com and the brand’s doorbells do have that integration with Alexa, which is useful if you want to create routines, for example. It could also have a much greater added value in the car, for example if you want to know what your agenda looks like or want to ask whether there is still a traffic jam on the road. Or if you simply want to turn on the heating via voice control. Alexa might even be able to read your messages, but alas: she’s not at home with this Ring.
That makes it a very expensive device: it costs $ 249.99 (it is currently only available in the United States). It does film in two directions, so it can film both you while you are driving and the road in front of you. However, people who also have the Ring app can watch with the dashcam. As a driver, you will be informed of this: you will hear a sound. But the question is: why would you want someone to watch you while you drive? There are few situations that can be imagined where this offers added value. It probably just makes you nervous.
Safety in the car
It does have two-way communication, so if someone wants to talk to you, you could have a conversation that way. Still, that seems a bit cumbersome: you can also just call each other hands-free, right? However, there is a scenario in which this camera can help enormously, namely the alarm option it contains. This way you can quickly inform a loved one if you have problems in the car. Anyway, does that really require such an expensive camera that you can’t use very easily? Ring could definitely have done more here to make driving even safer.
On the other hand, this could provide a lot more content for the “America’s Funniest Home Videos” TV show that Amazon is currently pitching for blunders staged by Ring.
