With the Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam, you can see what’s going on in every corner of your room, thanks to a smooth mechanical pan and tilt mechanism that you control from your phone. This indoor home security camera delivers sharp daytime and nighttime video, but its 1080p resolution is relatively low by current standards, and recorded video requires a paid subscription. At $79.99, it's a solid value for a pan and tilt camera, but for a few dollars less, the Eufy E220 Indoor Cam ($51.99) offers 1440p (2K) video, free local video storage, and support for Alexa, Apple HomeKit, and Google. As such, it remains our Editors’ Choice winner for indoor security cameras.

Design: Minimalist and Unobtrusive

The Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam looks nearly identical to the $59.99 Ring Indoor Cam, but sits atop a motorized base that offers 360 degrees of horizontal panning and 169 degrees of tilt maneuverability. It’s a wired camera that measures 5.7 by 2.3 by 2.3 inches (HWD) and comes in Black, Blush (pink), Charcoal (gray), Starlight (off-white), or White. Included in the box is a 10-foot USB-A to USB-C power cable, a USB-C power adapter, and a wall/ceiling mounting bracket and hardware.

(Credit: John R. Delaney)

As with the Indoor Cam, the Pan-Tilt Cam has a manual privacy cover that slides over the lens to effectively shut down the camera. The front of the device holds the lens, a microphone, and an LED status indicator that glows solid blue while the camera is recording. The indicator light otherwise slowly blinks blue during setup, pulses blue when two-way talk is activated, and flashes red and blue when the camera has lost its Wi-Fi connection. There’s a speaker at the bottom, a reset button on top, and a USB-C power port on the back of the device.

The camera captures video at 1080p (1,920 by 1,080) resolution, has a 143-degree field of view, and uses infrared LEDs for black-and-white night vision. If there’s adequate ambient light, it will capture color video at night. As with the Indoor Cam, the Pan-Tilt Cam offers the Pre-Roll feature, which allows you to see what happened in the six seconds preceding a motion trigger.

Connectivity comes through a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi radio that connects the camera to your home network. The Pan-Tilt Cam works with Alexa voice commands and streams video to Amazon Echo Show displays. It also supports integrations with third-party smart home devices using IFTTT applets, but it lacks integrations with Google and HomeKit. 

The Pan-Tilt Cam offers motion detection and will record video when triggered, but you’ll have to subscribe to a Ring Home plan to view the footage. The $4.99 per month/$49.99 per year Basic plan provides 180 days of recorded video history for a single camera as well as intelligent alerts (person, package, vehicle), video preview alerts, and a 10% discount on select Ring products. With the $9.99/$99.99 Standard plan you get everything from the Basic plan with support for all of your Ring cameras as well as extended live view (up to 30 minutes of continuous streaming), live picture-in-picture (which allows you to keep watching live video in a smaller panel when you swipe away from the app), multicam viewing (up to four cameras), a daily event summary, and device modes (Arm, Disarm). This plan also offers cellular backup for Ring Alarm owners. The $19.99/$199.99 Premium plan gets you everything from the Standard plan and adds 24/7 recording, AI smart video search, and a handful of additional Ring Alarm features.

The camera uses the same Ring mobile app (available for Android and iOS) as every other Ring device and gets its own panel on the dashboard screen with the camera's name and a still image of the last captured event. When you tap the panel, it takes you to a screen with a video that contains a play arrow. Tap the arrow to view a live stream. Below this is a scrollable timeline of recorded video events.

(Credit: Ring/PCMag)

While the video screen is active, several function buttons are available, including End Live for closing the video stream, a microphone for two-way talk, and a speaker mute button.

At the bottom of this screen are buttons marked Controls, Rotate, Replies, Siren, and More. The Controls button opens a screen with Quick Controls to turn all of your Ring devices on and off, activate sirens, and turn lights on and off. When you tap the Rotate button, it opens a four-way pan and tilt control pad, but there are no presets or automated motion tracking features like the ones you get with the Eufy E220 Indoor Cam. Tap the Replies button to play one of twenty prerecorded messages, most of which are meant for use with a Ring doorbell or outdoor camera. The Siren button activates the siren, and the More button lets you enable picture-in-picture.

Tap the gear icon in the upper right corner, and you’ll open a settings screen with buttons for enabling and disabling motion detection and motion alerts, activating the siren, and launching a live view. Below these buttons are tiles that let you view a list of recorded events, purchase accessories such as smart plugs and chimes, configure the camera’s Home, Away, and Disarmed modes, have the camera interact with other Ring devices, snooze alerts, check device connectivity (Wi-Fi signal strength, online status), and enable Smart Responses. The motion settings tile opens a screen where you can create motion zones, configure sensitivity, and create motion schedules, and the device settings tile is where you go to configure video and notification settings, Snapshot Capture (so the camera takes photos throughout the day at your preferred frequency), and edit the name and location of the camera.

Installation and Performance: Simple Setup, Smooth Maneuvers

As with all Ring cameras, the Pan-Tilt Cam is incredibly easy to install. Start by downloading the mobile app and creating an account, then tap Set Up a Device at the bottom of the dashboard screen. Tap Security Cams from the list of devices and scan the QR code on the back of the camera when prompted. Once the camera is detected, add it to your Ring home, give it a name, and verify that the privacy cover is open. Select where the camera will be pointed (into the house, through the window), plug it in, and choose your Wi-Fi SSID when prompted. Enter your Wi-Fi password and wait a few seconds for the camera to be added to your Ring app and to your Alexa account. You can configure motion and pan-tilt settings now or do it later.

(Credit: Ring)

The Ring Pan-Tilt Cam offers solid performance. In testing, it delivered sharp, colorful 1080p video during the day and equally sharp night vision, although night colors were a bit faded. Nonetheless, black-and-white night vision appeared crisp with excellent contrast.

Motion alerts arrived quickly and were correctly identified when a person came into view. I had no trouble viewing video on an Amazon Echo Show display using Alexa commands, and my routine to have an AiDot Linkind Matter Smart Light Bulb turn on when the camera detected motion worked as intended. Pan and tilt operations were smooth and easy to control, and two-way talk came through loud and clear.