Leaving your car on a busy city street is stressful. If you care about it, it’s hard not to worry when you leave it unprotected. The new Ring Car Cam helps alleviate some of that anxiety.
I’ve been street parking cars on New York City streets since I got my license over 10 years ago. In that time, I’ve experienced countless door dings, bumper scuffs, tow hook imprints, curious scrapes, and general damage beyond your wildest imagination. Hell, I’ve had license plates (yes, multiple) stolen, and even had my car moved by the city without notice, for no apparent reason. It’s awful, but that’s the cost you and your car pay if you want to street park in the city.
Since I got my hands on a Ring Car Cam a few months ago, I’ve found some additional comfort when leaving my $42,000 wheeled asset—a recently purchased, manual 2018 BMW M2—on the street. The dashcam, which officially went on sale a few months ago, costs $250 and has outward- and inward-facing wide-angle cameras that record constantly in 1080p. It’s a sleek device—not an eyesore like many other dash cams on the market—that squeezes between your dashboard and the base of your windshield, and can be easily installed. The cool part is that if you subscribe to Ring’s LTE service Protect Go, you can livestream into your dashcam for remote viewing, whenever and wherever you want.
The installation is straight forward. Squeeze the Car Cam at the base of your windshield and tuck the wiring.
Aaron Brown
For $6 a month or $60 annually, you can enable LTE on the Car Cam, which allows you to remotely tune into and speak through the camera’s speaker, check the car’s location, receive motion alerts, and, most importantly, watch what’s happening in and around your car when you’re away from it. This feature couldn’t be more worth it. If nothing else, it provides peace of mind. For those of you who have the luxury of a home driveway, you can just connect the Car Cam directly to your home wifi network, and not sign up for the LTE service, if that’s all you seek. Without Protect Go’s 180 days’ worth of cloud video storage, the Ring saves up to seven hours of video locally.
Ring Car Cam
Ring Car Cam
$250 at Amazon
Credit: Amazon
In addition to being able to tune in live to your car’s personal TV show, you’re also able to access already-recorded events, like motion detections and police stops, via the cloud.
Speaking of traffic stops, my other favorite feature on the Car Cam—one I thankfully haven’t had to use yet—is its Traffic Stop function. If you say “Alexa, Record,” the Car Cam will save 20 minutes of video while stopped.
Sometimes you can get a clear plate read, sometimes you can’t. This is an example of a bad frame.
Ring/Aaron Brown
As for video quality, there’s room for improvement. Lettering—like on signs and license plates—can be hard to read from the cam, especially in night recordings. That’s a big issue, since dash cams are often used to identify people or vehicles involved in property damage-related incidents. This thing doesn’t need to record in IMAX, but a bit more clarity would be great.
With headlights on, you get a decently clear picture at night.
Ring/Aaron Brown
Otherwise, I haven’t experienced other serious downsides to the Car Cam. At first, I struggled with keeping the camera running while street parked for a few days—the app would inform me it was shutting down to conserve car battery—but I quickly learned I could adjust the limit on how much of the battery it will drain. After tweaking that, I haven’t had an issue with it, and it seemingly hasn’t come at all close to draining my M2’s battery, even while parked over several days. One other instance of note, with temperatures rising into the 80s, I’ve gotten, just once, a notification that the device was too hot to function. This hasn’t seemed to be a recurring issue, though.
Bottom line is, I’m very pleased with this camera in my car. The in-app remote-viewable stream is unbeatable. Let’s just hope I don’t actually need to use it for evidence purposes any time soon.
Aaron BrownDigital Director
A native of the famously car-loving city of New York, Road & Track’s digital director is constantly surrounded by beat-up old project cars. Brown’s daily driver is a problematic manual-swapped 1991 BMW 325i sedan, but for special occasions he pulls out his E34 M5 of the same vintage. Before R&T, Brown worked at Jalopnik, The Drive, and Business Insider, starting in the industry in 2015.
Keyword: The Ring Car Cam Dash Cam Is a Lifesaver for the Anxious Car Owner