If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Although we have misgivings about Ring and its partnership with law enforcement, I have generally found its products to be easy to use and serve the purpose for which they are intended, which is to help keep you and your family safer.
Cars are preposterously expensive pieces of property we leave sitting around, unattended, outside. I would love to have stored video footage of a hit-and-run that took my car out of commission for a month last year, or to have gotten an alert when someone broke into my car at night while it was parked in my driveway.
The first day I had it installed, the Ring app told me the camera had drained my car battery. I flew downstairs in my pajamas and unplugged it at once. But first, the installation. The Car Cam itself feels relatively sturdy—it has dual cameras, one front-facing and one rear-facing, mounted on a curving wedge you stick in the space between the dashboard and the windshield. One of the main reasons Ring cameras are so ubiquitous is that installation can be remarkably easy.
The first hint that all was not well here was when the company asked me for the make, model, and year of my car. You can check the list of incompatible cars here. The incompatibilities might not always be obvious. For example, I have a Kia Sorento, but the Kia Niro and Cadenza from the same date range are incompatible because the a security light causes false motion events. Second, it is—and I am sorry, coppers—illegal for me to use the Car Cam at all.
In the box, Ring includes the tools to push it into the barely imperceptible crack between your windshield and your dashboard. I perused online reviews before doing so—apparently some folks have cracked their windshields in the process. The process was puzzling. Why is the USB port on the wrong side? You can see the little kink under your windshield, and it makes it easier for the wire to pop out and come loose. Here is where the real fun began. This defeats one of the reasons I wanted it, which is to monitor for break-ins when the car is parked in my driveway overnight.
