Ring Solar Charger for Video Doorbell (2nd Generation - 2020 Release)

UPDATE:I actually removed the charger and re-added it and now it seems to be working great! Not sure why it wasn't the first time but now it keeps my doorbell charged 100%.Bought this because I didn’t realize that the battery on the new ring doorbell wasn’t removable and so I couldn’t use my extra batteries. The sun shines directly on the doorbell and thus the solar charger at least half of the day but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. The battery still steadily dies and never seems to really charge. Sometimes it shows that my doorbell is “hard wired (not sure why) and sometimes it shows not charging at all (see pic). Definitely not worth the money and in my opinion, Ring should never have stopped having a removable / replaceable battery for these.

I read the negative reviews before buying and decided that there were enough counterpoints to decide that the people having problems were having issues with what they have done, not with the charger.Like all solar panels, this is a trickle charger. It will generally only trickle power in slowly. However, having direct sun access is crucial because... well, its a solar panel. The sun tops the houses across the street from me early in the morning and climbs up above the edge of my roof above the door about four hours later. With that limited amount of direct sun, my Battery Doorbell Pro's battery will add about 20% charge per day thanks to this panel.Some Ring doorbells use 'optimized charging' where the cell is supposed to only charge up to a max of 80%. This 80% limit can be difficult to trigger for reasons beyond the scope of this review, but I found that on the BD Pro, if the cell is already fully charged prior to the solar charger's installation, the solar panel will do absolutely nothing until the battery gets down to about 70%. Only then will the solar charger start charging. When it does, it charges up to only 80% (stopping at 81%, actually). From there, with the sun I get, the solar charger will maintain between 70 and 80% battery charge indefinitely. I have the DBPro set to take snapshots every three minutes and do everything else that eats extra battery power. The direct sun access I get lets me do that. If your direct sun is less, you will have to adjust your settings to eat less power, or get used to the solar panel just extending battery life rather than making it never-ending.The exception to the above is the initial charge of the battery. When I installed my solar charger, I only had about a 38% charge on the battery. The solar charger added 20% per day until I was up to 100%... and then it seemingly did nothing for days until the battery slowly dipped down to 70%. Then it magically started up again into the cycle I describe above. Here again if you have limited sun access, you might not see this kind of clear result and it may look like the charger isn't doing anything.

Updated to add:The solar charger is working again. Someone reached out to me from Ring to see if I needed help once my review posted. It seems the charger dies quickly in extreme temperatures like during the Polar Vortex.——————————————————————The solar panel on my 2nd gen ring doorbell has not been charging my ring. I installed the solar charger in December 2024, and the doorbell is now (January 2025) at 18% charge after being plugged in to the solar panel since December. The doorbell was fully charged when I plugged it into the solar panel.This product just doesn’t work.

Update: I initially wrote a 1 star review because I started having issues just after the return window closed. Soon after, the Ring company contacted me to help resolve my issue. They were professional, thorough and worked the issue until it was fixed. It's been a week and my issue (getting false messages about people ringing the doorbell) has completely stopped. I'm happy with the device and the excellent customer service from Brett of Ring.As for the solar charger itself. It works great. I have it in an area that is shaded a few hours a day and it still charges my device effectively preventing me from having to manually charge the battery. The install was easy, and it has a rubber gasket to prevent rain from getting between the solar charger and the ring doorbell cam. Great buy and well worth the money.

------ORIGINAL REVIEW titled "Does not charge even with a fair amount of Sunlight"This charger does not charge my camera. It gets about 5-6 hours of direct sunlight every day. The uploaded photo was taken at 6pm and you can see that the shade is just approaching at that time, In that app, I see solar connected status but I never see the charging icon and the camera is losing about 1% of battery per day.The only positive is that the installation was fairly straightforward though the instructions are not that good.At this point, I cannot recommend this charger.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------REVISED REVIEW titled "Seems to charge enough to keep battery levels steady or add 1% per a week."With some great customer service from Ring, we went through some troubleshooting steps . Afterwards, Ring determined the next best thing to do was to replace the charger. The replacement charger did cause the charging icon to show. The charging icon does not show the majority of the time but at least now it does show some of the time and I have seen the battery % actually increase 1% from time to time. I don't think that it will actually charge the battery to 100% on its own, but I can say at least it is doing a great job of keeping the charge % steady with an occasional increase of 1%.If it will continue to keep the charge steady , then it meets my needs.Thanks Ring for the amazing Customer Support!