The Ring Doorbell 4 experiences intermittent disconnections ranging from minutes to hours, causing missed rings, failed video streams, and motion alerts — even when placed within 10 feet of a router.

“My Ring Doorbell 4 is quite literally 10 feet below my router and it gets terrible connection which leads to missed rings, video and alerts.”

vs Marketing: Marketing claims 'reliable motion detection and the ability to communicate with visitors remotely', but users report the doorbell goes offline for up to 4 hours and fails to connect when someone presses the button.

The color Pre-Roll feature delivers grainy, low-resolution footage for the first 4 seconds, making it difficult to identify people or events despite being Ring's flagship differentiator for this model.

“I just installed one last week, and the pre-roll function is not very impressive. It's very grainy and not clear for those 4 seconds, and then the picture becomes clear. Ring needs to fix that.”

vs Marketing: Marketing calls Pre-Roll 'the first feature of its kind for battery-powered doorbells' and claims it lets you 'know what happened' before motion — but Ring itself discloses pre-roll is sub-1080p, and users describe it as '360p color video', rendering the 'never miss a detail' claim misleading.

Battery performance is highly inconsistent across 8 user reports — some owners get 6–7 weeks while others see 22% drain in one week — making the 'improved battery life' marketing claim unreliable.

“My Ring Video Doorbell 4 battery was at 100% and in 1 week it is at 78%. So I will purchase a spare battery to eliminate the downtime.”

vs Marketing: Marketing claims 'improved battery life will help your device stay up and running for longer', but users report drain rates ranging from days to months, with at least one user noting the website claims 6–12 months while real-world performance falls well short.

Multiple users report the Ring Doorbell 4 fails to reliably trigger chimes and suffers from hardware defects, with at least one confirmed manufacturing defect notice issued by Ring.

“Had a Ring 4 and could not get it to ring our chime. Bought the Ring chime and found it would not always ring the chime. Deemed this setup unreliable. Put my old door button back in place and moved on.”

vs Marketing: Marketing claims 'reliable motion detection and the ability to communicate with visitors remotely', but a core function — alerting occupants someone is at the door — fails for some users even after purchasing additional Ring hardware.

Ring has moved previously free features — including push notifications, recorded clips, and home/away modes — behind a subscription paywall, angering owners who purchased the device based on those capabilities.

“They've stopped providing push notifications, recorded clips, and features like 'home' and 'away' modes. These were all available at no extra cost when I purchased the device, which is why I chose it.”

vs Marketing: No marketing claim explicitly addresses this, but the product is sold as a complete security solution — locking core functionality behind an ongoing subscription after purchase represents a significant undisclosed cost of ownership.