rewrite this title Ring’s Familiar Faces feature is a game-changer but would be better if it weren’t tied to its Pro tier

While I prefer the term “thrifty,” some might call me cheap. I manage expenses pretty closely, which means I don’t typically sign up for subscription services on various smart home devices. But that’s the only way one could experience Ring’s still-in-beta Familiar Faces feature, and it is kind of a game-changer.

To be clear, I still did not sign up for the necessary Pro Tier $20-a-month service to gain access to the new facial-recognition-powered feature. Ring’s parent Amazon offered to give me temporary access so I could get a feel for Familiar Faces, and I’m glad they did.

How it works

As the name implies, Familar Faces can automatically identify known and unknown faces as they appear in front of your Ring camera. Since it relies in part on video resolution to generate those IDs, you’ll need at least an HD-grade video doorbell. My Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 supports “HD+” (1536p). Ring actually recommends one of its pricier 4K models for the best Familar Face performance.

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Nothing changes on the hardware side, but once you enable the feature in your ring app, it’ll start capturing faces.

On the Ring Video Doorbell interface, the timeline shows when an unknown face appears in front of your doorbell. Click on it, and you get a handful of face thumbnails, and then you can label it.

I must admit that once I started using Familair Faces, it felt a little weird seeing all the faces it captured. There was my mailman. Then I saw the guy who repaired my door, and I saw my neighbor when he dropped by to deliver a package that was mistakenly delivered to his home. Then there were my family members. It felt like I was spying on people.

Even so, I diligently went about labeling whomever I could, even the mailman, whom I called “Mailman.” Also, unless someone comes to the front door, Familar Faces won’t identify them. Ring still takes note of activities, but its ability to perform facial recognition is limited to faces a few feet away from the front door.

In some instances, I noticed that when family members appeared, Familar Faces correctly identified them. Still, it could not properly reidentify the mailman.

I was surprised that even though Ring now knows my family’s faces, and my Ring Video Doorbell is connected to my Alexa+-powered Echo Show, I couldn’t use Alexa+ to show, for instance, all the times my wife appeared at the front door. Instead, Alexa+ just wanted to show me all the videos from the last two weeks.

Faces in the cloud

The ID doesn’t happen on the Ring device or even your smartphone. Instead, face data is encrypted and sent to Ring’s cloud, where it’s stored for further face matching.

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You can go in and delete identified faces at any time, and then they’re deleted from the cloud, too.

For the faces I’ve captured and identified (up to 50), I can see everyone’s comings and goings, including my own. It’s nice to know when my wife arrived home safely (and not confuse it with the postal service showing up). But I hesitate to show this to any of my family members who might find it invasive.

In that case, they’ll probably be pleased that my Pro trial will end soon, as will my access to Familiar Faces beta. I’ll lose the ability to instantly identify and video people as they approach my front door. I’ll also lose access to that archive of up to 180 days of video. That, I may miss the most (all those dogs and squirrels).

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