My patch of South London is less grey than you might imagine. Looking out of my window as I write this, I can see red brickwork, a number of different colored cars and even some greenery and trees to remind me what living outside the city feels like.
But that’s not how my Ring Video Doorbell Pro sees the world any more. Opening up the app, the world looks decidedly more pink — like it’s recently watched Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie, and believes this kind of recoloring is exactly what the borough of Merton needs.
It’s most noticeable in the greens. Both the bushes next to my door and the shrubbery across the car park have taken on the kind of fuchsia hue that would baffle botanists.
But people aren’t immune here either. Here’s a still of me returning from the shops seemingly flaunting a coat that’s bolder than anything I would actually wear (the garment, for the avoidance of doubt, is actually a conservative brown.)
A bad case of pinkeye
Of course, my Ring Doorbell isn’t deliberately opting for a new phase of its artistic life. It’s a bug — and one that others have experienced. There are Reddit threads about it, with the general consensus being that it’s all thanks to the infrared filter.
This is an important part of Ring’s products that help enhance night vision — kind of important given burglars’ understandable preference for night shifts — but it creates a slightly sickly filter when applied to well-lit conditions.
In doorbells afflicted by the pink sickness, it seems that the filter gets stuck. Possible remedies include a full reset, beating the hell out of it to manually release the filter (not something I’d recommend), or getting a replacement from Amazon support.
The first of these hasn’t worked, and I’m loath to try the second, as it might blab to Alexa and see me being tried for crimes against technology when the AI revolution comes. The third isn’t really an option, as this was a free review unit that’s been attached to my porch since 2018 (I gave it four stars, if you’re curious).
The pink filter doesn’t make it unusable, exactly, but it’s probably due an upgrade anyway, with the seven year-old 1080p camera looking a touch grainy in 2025. The question is what to replace it with when I get around to removing the old boy from the wall for the last time.
I wouldn’t go back to a dumb doorbell now, as it’s been both useful and entertaining. I’ve seen somebody steal a mystery parcel from the front porch (a $2.50 pink backpack for my partner’s niece, which I imagine was disappointing to them) and watched a whole clown car of police officers emerge from a van to pay an unsuspecting visit to a neighbor.
I appreciate I’m not selling my neighborhood here (it’s not all petty crime, I swear!), but the point is that a dumb doorbell is out of the question.
Time to ditch the Ring?
Now, the sensible option would be to buy another Ring Doorbell. The Wired Video Doorbell 2 would be a straight swap, a solid upgrade. True, it’s still four years old, but that’s a mathematical improvement on seven at least, and that means it’s well below its original MSRP.
And yet, I can’t escape the feeling that there might be better options available, if I’m able to resist the allure of staying with the familiar. Consulting Digital Trends’ own list of the best video doorbells, it’s clear that Ring isn’t the only game in town in 2025, and in fact its subscription model means it’s not the top dog. If I can ditch my monthly payment for keeping footage, then all the better.
On paper, I like the look of the number-one pick: the Google Nest Doorbell. For my money, it’s the best looking of the bunch, hiding the tech behind a veneer that looks like a traditional doorbell at a glance.
I like the way it doesn’t need a subscription to watch captured footage, which is a big improvement on Ring. It would also play nicely with the Nest Hub sat in my kitchen, giving it a pleasant change of pace from its usual duties: rerunning comfortingly familiar episodes of Seinfeld, Frasier, and Modern Family while I make dinner.
That said, I’m not that into the Google ecosystem, and $180 remains a lot for a doorbell, even if I can ditch the ongoing subscription costs.
Power management is a problem that befalls the Blink Video Doorbell — albeit, not overly frequently with Blink promising up to two years of use via AA batteries. It’s also a lot cheaper than Google’s, at just $60, and doesn’t need a subscription — although the word “need” is doing some heavy lifting there, as it requires a Sync module and USB stick to abandon the cloud.
That’s only $10 more when bought at the same time, but it still made me let out an unintentional groan when I read it, as someone with almost as many bridges and sync modules as actual smart home devices.
Another low-cost pick is Wyze — in fact it’s Digital Trends’ top budget choice. With 2K footage, a built-in microSD card and a super-cheap $60 price, this would be perfect, except it’s not sold in the UK.
Yes, I could try using an import, as the Wyze ecosystem seems to work over here (albeit with a different date format), but I’d be saying goodbye to product support, which is a big ask for someone who currently sees the world in pink.
Then there are other options from the likes of Eufy, Arlo, Philips, EZVIZ and lots of suspiciously unfamiliar brands. Perhaps unfairly, I’m going to rule these out immediately, because if there’s one thing I hate more than bridges, hubs and sync modules taking up plug sockets, it’s single-use apps clogging up my homescreen.
All of which brings me back around to Ring. There’s something to be said about the familiar, even if the familiar is costing me $100 a year in subscriptions (I have another indoor camera keeping an eye on the living room and cats). I’m already in the ecosystem already, with a couple of chimes and Echos dotted around the house.
I think, ultimately, I shall leave it up to fate. Well, the e-commerce Gods, anyway. I’ve lived with a candy-cane pink world for six months already. What’s another few weeks, when Black Friday will no doubt present more video doorbell deals than I can shake a stick at?
