🚁 Amazon has revealed a new Ring Drone Camera
🏷️ Due to ship January 27, 2027 for $249
🔐 Designed to bring aerial surveillance to homes for an affordable price
🎥 Records 2K video with a 148° field of view in a 1:1 square aspect ratio
🔋 Battery lasts for 5-8 minutes of flight
⚡ Recharges for eight minutes for every minute of flight time
🤖 Amazon also introduced a commercial $999 Ring Rover Cam
🛒 Both products are available for preorder today
Amazon has revealed a new Ring Drone Camera that it promises to actually ship on January 27, 2027, and for a fairly affordable $250 price.
While this drone may look reminiscent of the DJI Neo, this small quadcopter is designed for security only. You can command it to fly around your home and check areas a stationary camera can’t reach. The Ring Drone Camera features a flashlight to scare off potential intruders.
You can’t fly the drone manually; it follows strict surveillance routes. It also records 2K video with a 148° field of view in a 1:1 square aspect ratio. Flight time lasts up to five to eight minutes, and it charges for up to eight minutes per minute of flight time. While a full recharge after a maxed-out flight can take 64 minutes, Amazon says this drone is really meant to fly for a few minutes and return to its charging base.
Amazon Ring Rover Cam
Amazon introduced the new flying home security robot alongside a new ground-patrolling security robot, the Ring Rover Cam, as part of a new arm of Ring Robotics. Priced at a much higher $999, the Ring Rover Cam is meant for more commercial settings as a roving security robot. It comes equipped with LED indicators that make it visible from the ground and also projects a light onto the ceiling. An extendable periscope camera allows the Ring Rover Cam to see over counters and shelves. Lastly, it sounds a siren to signal when it spots intruders.
Technology historians like yours truly may remember the first home security drone Amazon tried to introduce with the Ring Always Home Cam in 2022. This product ultimately saw a very limited release because multiple revisions added more sensors, compute, battery, and stronger rotors, ultimately making the drone harder to fly, as Amazon’s Chief Inventor and Founder of Ring, Jamie Siminoff, admitted.
What makes the Ring Drone Camera fundamentally different is that it offloads all intelligence to the cloud. This new cloud computing is essentially a custom AI called AI Pilot that takes the weight and power utilization off the drone, allowing it to be very light and nimble.
“All it’s doing is just basically sending back video to the cloud, and the cloud is telling it where to go,” Jamie Siminoff explained. “The only intelligence on the Ring drone cam is just enough to land. So when you set it up, you set it up for a safe area to fly around your house. If it loses connectivity, it’s a feature. It just sits there, waits for connectivity. If it doesn’t get it, it just lands.”
Users can see a live view through the Ring Drone Camera. Alternatively, the Ring Drone Camera will plug in with Amazon’s new Alexa Home Map, which provides an explorable 3D view of your home on Amazon devices, including the Fire TV, Echo Show, Alexa Tablets, and through the Alexa app.
Amazon’s new $249 Ring Drone Camera and $999 Ring Rover Cam are both available for preorder today. The Ring Drone Camera will ship starting January 27, 2027, while the Ring Rover Cam will be available sooner, starting December 16.
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam