Ring Spotlight HD Security Camera: 2-Way Talk, Alexa

I had high hopes for this camera. We have Wyze cams which we are extremely happy with that we use indoors as doggie cams, but we needed one to monitor the outside of our home. As Wyze does not yet make a cam for outdoor use, we choose to go with the Ring Spotlight Cam, purchasing the separate solar panel so that we don't have to bother with constantly charging the battery. BIG MISTAKE! Unlike the Wyze which takes less than 2-minutes to set up, the instructions for the Ring Spotlight camera set-up are complicated, confusing and inadequate, especially when trying to combine the cam with the solar panel set-up. One of the steps needed to set up the camera is to slide off a back panel and reverse it for some reason - a step NOT covered in the instructions. I wound up having to call their customer service department. A half hour later, I got someone overseas who was working off of a script - which is maddening. When I was finally able to get her to understand my difficulties, she kept having to put me on hold for each step to consult with someone else. Another half hour later, she finally gave up and transferred me to someone in the States. This customer service rep was very professional and tried to assist me, however after we succeeded in setting up the camera, he was unable to get the motion alerts feature to work properly meaning that while the live cam worked fine, the camera was not sending me any alerts when it detected motion. After yet another half hour, he said that they would send me a replacement camera. He said they would include a label for me to send the problematic camera back. My bad that I forgot to ask a timeframe or tracking info or whether or not they were going to send me packaging for the return cam nor where I was going to have to bring it. I sent an email to Ring customer support asking all of those questions and kept getting annoying, irrelevant boilerplate responses back, all ending by telling me "we treat our customers like neighbors and genuinely care...". Sounds real nice, but given that I am now 7 email exchanges in with customer service trying to get answers to my questions, I wouldn't want to be a Ring neighbor and I don't think they care very much. I definitely do NOT recommend this particular camera and if someone at Ring is bothering to read this - you really need to improve both your set-up instructions AND your customer support. STOP with the annoying boiler plate responses and tell your customer support people to actually take two minutes to read and respond to the email that is sent! UPDATE AUGUST 13TH: Okay - I have to update my initial one-star review detailing my horrendous experience trying to get this camera working and my subsequent frustration with customer service both on the phone and in endless email exchanges which were not addressing my outstanding issues and questions. Today I had a call with Alexis from Ring whose title I believe is "Amazon Executive Community Support Representative." Alexis made up for most of what I had gone through with Ring customer service to date. She was everything you could hope for in a customer service rep. 1) She is located in the USA, speaks fluent English and was definitely not working off of some boiler plate script. Please don't call me xenophobic - dealing with overseas call centers can be - and was for me - absolutely maddening and unproductive. Dealing with someone in the USA who was capable of thinking outside of a prescribed box was, by comparison, a pleasure. 2) Alexis had researched and was aware of my previous experiences with customer service and was extremely apologetic and sympathetic - much appreciated. 3) She listened carefully to what had gone wrong with the first Ring cam I was sent and patiently walked me through setting up the replacement cam - step-by-step, carefully explaining everything we were doing and how everything works as well as patiently answering all of my many questions. Had I dealt with Alexis or someone as professional and helpful as she is from the beginning, I would have fewer gray hairs and lower blood pressure. I have upgraded my rating from one star to two in recognition of my positive experience with Alexis, but I cannot give this product 5 stars due to the problems I had with the first cam, my subsequent experiences with customer service, and the problems I continue to have with the replacement cam. UPDATE ON SEPT 5, 2019: So the problems with this camera don't seem to end. First, the reception was poor and the camera was not picking up motion or sending alerts. Alexis in Customer Service I told me to re-locate the cam, which I did. The problem persisted. Still dealing with Customer service rep Alexis (I can no longer count how many phone calls and emails back-and-forth), she ultimately wound up sending me a Chime Pro booster to boost the signal from my router to the cam, which was very nice of her - but why should that even have been necessary to make this cam function properly? I had to relocate the Chime Pro four times before finding an outlet that actually helped boost the poor signal the cam was getting. Again - bear in mind we have two Wyze cams, much further from the router and on a different floor that have NO problem with the signal. With the Chime Pro, the cam was picking up a better signal from the router, but still missing a good amount of the action in front of it and missing sending alerts for that action. Not much more customer service could do or recommend to resolve that issue. Today, I looked for a way to record live action on the cam and found there is none. You'd think that a security camera would have a simple button on the live action screen that you could push to immediately record the action taking place - not the Ring Cam. I contacted Alexis once again asking her how I could accomplish this. In her first response, Alexis wrote back "Once the live video finishes (or you click the red phone icon to end it yourself) you can share the event through event history in the Ring App. There are icons in the bottom right corner that allow you to download (to your mobile device), email, share directly to neighbors, text message, etc. the video file to whomever you'd like (or yourself)." I responded that this is not what I asked, needed or wanted. I was looking for a way to record live action as it was occurring, not a way to share one of the brief "motion alerts" that the cam periodically sends and saves. Alexis then wrote back: "Yes, Apple allows screen recording: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207935." Wonderful. So the answer to the question is that the Ring Cam has NO way to easily record live action. BIG design flaw! So consider this scenario: your car is being broken into in the driveway and - if you're lucky - the cam will pick up the action and send you a motion alert. You turn on the live cam and see the perpetrator breaking into your car. You want to record the video to capture what is happening so that you can provide it to law enforcement. No way to do that with the Ring cam. You have to follow some convoluted instructions to go through your cel phone's settings. I actually tried to do this and even that didn't work at recording the live action on the cam screen. BOTTOM LINE: First I was sent a defective camera which, after hours on the phone, was ultimately replaced (I had to schlep the defective cam to UPS to return it). Set-up on the new cam was not "plug and play" as it is for Wyze cams. Set-up was difficult and complicated. Reception was poor and I had to uninstall and reinstall the camera in a different location to try to improve the signal. Signal still poor, Alexis - in Ring Customer Service who - as I have said a number of times - was very nice and really tried to resolve all these issues - sent me a Chime Pro signal booster. After much moving around, finally found a place where the Chime Pro did succeed in boosting the signal from the router to the cam. The cam continues to miss much of the motion going on in front of it and I only get some of the motion alerts but it is definitely better than before, for what that's worth. Wanting to record live action, I discovered the cam has no feature to do this - that I have to follow some convoluted process through my iPhone. As hard as Alexis has tried to assist me - there are way too many issues with this Ring cam and it has occupied way too much of my time attempting to resolve them. I would not only NOT recommend this Ring cam - I would say avoid it at all costs and seek alternatives. My Wyze cams are much easier in every way and do a much better job and if they had one suitable for outdoor use, I would buy it in a heartbeat.