Ring Pathlight Smart Lighting Review

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Back in August, Amazon’s Ring launched sales of its Smart Lighting products in Canada, which included the Ring Pathlight, which we will take a quick look at today.

The Ring Pathlight is meant to be installed outside your home, offering 80 lumens of brightness along your path or other walkways. It has built-in motion detection (140 degrees of view) and has a “dusk-to-dawn” feature, allowing the light to stay dimly lit through the night.

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PSA: Batteries not included

One Pathlight requires four D batteries (yes, four), which Amazon says offers up to 1 year of battery life under “normal use”, or 8-10 activations per day of 20-seconds duration each.

Installing the Ring Pathlight is straightforward. All you have to do is pop in the four D batteries, then set up each Pathlight using the Ring mobile app (requires creating a Ring account). You need to scan a QR code for each Pathlight. I recommend naming each unit with a number or location so you can remember which light is which.

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The Ring Pathlight includes a stake that you can press into your lawn, then you twist the unit onto that stake. I would suggest using a level to ensure both lights are perpendicular once installed. Each light is 43cm tall and the light bulge diameter is 10cm. You can see the motion sensor and there’s also ‘Ring’ branding along the bottom.

The Ring app lets you turn the lights on or off, plus disable or enable motion alerts. You will most likely want to disable motion alerts if your lights are in a high-traffic area, as it can be too much. The app also shows you the battery life of each light, plus you can adjust brightness levels from 1-10. There’s also a setting to disable the light sensor during the day and also adjust the sensor’s activation threshold.

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With the Ring Bridge ($69.99 CAD)—also sent to us by Amazon to test—it allows you to control your Ring Pathlight and other Ring devices when you’re not at home. The Ring bridge comes with an AC adapter but we wish it was built in to the unit and acted as an all-in-one plug. But the cable length and wall mount for the unit can be used to provide a better placement and signal.

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You can set up your Ring Pathlights into groups, so when one light turns on, they all turn on, which makes for a cool effect if you have lots of lights along your pathway.

In our observations at night, the Ring Pathlight offers plenty of light, brightening up our dark front path, making it much safer to walk at night.

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To connect Ring to Alexa, just launch the Alexa app and install the Ring Alexa Skill. You’ll need to authorize Alexa to access your Ring devices. Once set up, you can then ask Alexa to turn on or off your lights from your Echo speakers or other Alexa-powered devices.

The Ring Pathlight, as part of the Ring family, can be connected to other Ring devices. So you can have lights turn on in groups when motion is detected.

At the cost of $39.99 CAD each, a set of Ring Pathlights can be expensive, as it doesn’t include four D cell batteries (works out to $5.78 CAD for four AmazonBasics batteries). You will also require the $70 Ring Bridge to control the lights with Alexa.



However, the Pathlight feels well built and looks nice, offering copious amounts of light at night. So far, they’ve survived lots of rain and the elements and are still working fine (IP66 rating; 20°C to 50°C operating temperatures). Neighbours have also complimented their design. Time will tell how long the batteries actually last, though. We’ll update this post when the batteries run out of juice.

If you’re committed to Alexa and you’re already using a Ring doorbell, Ring’s line up of lights might be for you to light up the outside of your home, if you’re okay with replacing batteries.

Click here to check out the Ring Pathlight on Amazon.ca.

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