Readers’ comments
Your views and feedback from email and the web
Ring vs Nest
I was disappointed by your rave review of the Ring Video Doorbell 2 ( see issue 288, p64), having experienced nothing but problems with it myself, despite spending a small fortune on recommended “solutions” to connectivity issues.
A simple check on Amazon shows I’m not alone. As I started typing this email I took delivery of a parcel, not because the Ring doorbell worked (it didn’t) but because by a stroke of good fortune I heard some tapping on the window and asked Alexa to show me the front door. Alerts from Ring? There were none, and this despite spending a small fortune on chimes, extenders and a shiny new router to try and get the thing to work reliably.
The first shock was finding it took seven hours to charge the battery (the manual warns it takes five to ten hours) and that it is already down to 50% after just two weeks of little usage. Removing and charging the battery once the unit is secured is a nightmare, so this is a real usability issue. The company sells various solar solutions to attach to the back, which were another £50, but they pretty much invalidate the corner/angle mounting brackets needed to get a good field of view because the solar unit is much wider and taller than the mounting brackets are designed for.
The doorbell sound is so weak that it should be supplied with at least one
basic chime extender to be in any way useful. As my router is upstairs, I purchased two Chime Wi-Fi extenders to be able to hear the front doorbell upstairs and downstairs – another unbudgeted £100. I couldn’t find a supplier offering the £30 bundle of doorbell with chime if ordered together that your review mentioned.
The two chime extenders topped up the Ring app’s “health” reading from poor to strong… for most of the time – but occasionally the app indicates that it’s weak again. I have no idea why. Sometimes the unit detects motion and alerts me. Sometimes it doesn’t, which is the gist of most of the complaints on Amazon. The unit is just completely unreliable, and an unreliable security system is as bad as no security system at all.
In short, I’ve spent close to £1,000 trying to get a basic camera doorbell working, and it doesn’t. Plenty of others report the same or similar issues, yet PC Pro recommends the devices. I have to ask, “why?”
Ian Smith
PC Pro replies: It sounds like you’ve had a very disappointing and somewhat frustrating episode. While offering our sympathies, all we can say is that what you’ve been through wasn’t reflective of our experience. Unfortunately, an infinite number of variables from specific hardware combinations and product siting to neighbouring network interference and pure atmospherics can affect hardware performance in one location, while not being present in another. We do, however, always welcome feedback on readers’ real-world experiences with any product featured in the pages of PC Pro. Thanks for bringing this unfortunate series of events to our attention.
Here for the long run
I’m a long-time PC Pro subscriber and, over the years, have witnessed lots of changes – to the editor, the content and even the fonts. As I’ve recently retired from IT, my wife suggested it may be time to stop my subscription. Then the October issue arrived and confirmed why I love your magazine.
It was just full of interesting articles and relevant discussion points, prodding and pushing me to examine new areas and products, while demonstrating how and why I should be using more features of my existing products.
PC Pro combines interesting content with excellent journalism, which is a much harder trick to pull off than it looks. Keep up the good work.
S F Holt
A messaging mess
Remember the early days of texting when you could only send messages to
friends on the same network? If your whole family wasn’t signed up to a single provider, you could text some but would have to call others. And there was no way to set up a group so that everyone could pitch in at once. How did we ever arrange anything?
Now I look at my phone and despair. I’ve got some friends on Google Hangouts, family members spread across WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, a handful of people on Apple iMessage and others on Android who are using goodnessknows-what.
Why can’t all these providers get together and decide on a single open protocol that they can all sign up to, so we can talk to anyone – and everyone – using whichever client we prefer? I know the answer, of course: nobody wants to give up their market share. Yet, when none of them carries any advertising anyway, what does it really serve them? Does anyone else feel like we’ve taken a massive backwards step? William Bukowski I know I’m not alone in wanting to say goodbye to social media. As each month goes by I think it’s doing me more harm than good, as I see constant feeds of friends’ idyllic holidays. Sure I’m glad for them, but it’s hard not to feel jealous, too.
The trouble is, it’s also by far the easiest way to keep in touch with my
Why can’t all these providers get together and decide on a single open protocol that they can all sign up to?
friends and distant family and I’m worried that actually taking the plunge and leaving will mean the end of news and invitations. So much of our physical, “real”, day-to-day lives is marshalled through social media that I’m finding it more and more difficult to take the steps necessary to extricate myself. Could any PC Pro readers who have successfully made the jump give me some advice? Anonymous
CORRECTION
In last month’s review of the Nest Hello ( see issue 288, p64), we stated that Nest’s cheapest subscription package was £30 per year. This was based on the in-app pricing we saw. However, this only applies if you already subscribe to other Nest services. If you don’t, the cheapest price is £40 per year. Our apologies for this mistake.