Ring Mailbox Sensor + Bridge – Black (Starter Kit)

UPDATE 2/2/2024: Immediately after leaving my review for this product, Matthew from Ring (Amazon Executive Community Support) promptly reached out via email to setup a time to talk. We had an excellent conversation today. We talked through certain issues experienced and he indicated there was a 1 yr warranty on the product. I wasn't aware of that. He also provided a suggestion to help improve the battery drain (antenna). This also helps signal strength. However, my main issue is that it completely stopped working. As mentioned below, this works great, when it is working. Given the warranty, Matthew arranged to have a new device sent to me. I truly appreciate this unexpected and wonderful customer service. I'm improving my rating as a result. Thank you, Ring, for the great customer support. That was truly unexpected, and we don't see this type of service very often anymore.PREVIOUS UPDATE 1/31/2024:I purchased this unit with the bridge 7 months ago. We have a long driveway, so it is great to know when mail or packages are delivered to the mailbox to eliminate unnecessary trips. For the first 5+ months, this product worked amazingly well. It does go through batteries more quickly. I also noticed that it had trouble detecting motion in extreme heat (90+ degree weather). It was inconsistent in high heat. Lately, it just stopped working. I replaced the batteries twice just in case, but it is no longer detecting. This would be a great product if it consistently worked.

This unit was easy to install and activate. Note, that you will need a bridge for this. I only wish I knew that I could buy one with 2 smart bulbs for the same price as the bridge alone. I've had the unit for a month now and it is showing a 3/4 battery level, so it should last 3-4 months on a set. When it starts to warm up I may use lithium batteries to see if I get more time with them.

First, the installation. That wasn't too hard, though you must have a drill or some other way to punch a hole in your mailbox. Fortunately, I happen to have a cordless drill that easily went through my plastic mailbox door. I would imagine this would be more difficult for those with a metal mailbox if you don't have a drill bit for metal or if you don't have a cordless drill and no long extension cord. Once you have that hole drilled, the rest is super easy. Antenna (also doubles as a "ring protected" sign" goes outside, cable goes through the hole, adhesive for the sensor inside, and a couple of adhesive cable clips inside. That's it.The unit uses 3 standard AAA batteries, which is great for reasons I will get into in a few minutes. Anyway, nothing crazy like the odd size batteries found in most of the other Ring sensors.Inside the house, you'll be installing a Ring Bridge which is also a no-brainer. It's just a small box that you'll want to place near the part of your house that's closest to the mailbox, and it just plugs into a standard power outlet. Now it's just easy software setup, same as any other sensor.Operationally, this works great when it's working, which fortunately is most of the time. You can set up notifications on your Alexa device so that it audibly gives an alert when the mailbox opens. Mine says "You've got mail!" so I know when the mail is here. Also, you can get notifications on your phone or tablet when the mailbox opens. I have this as well so that at work I'll know that I've had something show up and that I need to pick up my mail on the way in. Lastly, you can view the status of the sensor in the Ring app to see if it's currently detecting motion. It isn't a switch that shows opened or closed, its a motion detector that picks up motion when the door opens and usually again when it closes, and if the door was left open, it'll be picking up motion every time anything happens around it. I sort of wish it was more of a switch with opened/closed status but it is what it is. Most of the time this is OK. You can also see the history where it's logged what times and days it detected activity. Here's another nicety. It works for linked activities in the Ring app, so I have my doorbell camera start recording every time the mailbox has activity so that I can get a video of anybody who's just opened the mailbox. If I see anybody other than the white mail truck, I'll know somebody has been snooping in mailboxes or stealing mail. Combined with the "informed delivery" notices I get online from the post office, if I'm expecting any mail and then it's not in the mailbox, I'll be able to see the car that took the missing mail... maybe not 100% helpful since I don't have a camera to photograph a license plate, but it's something still. All of this makes for a nice system to either know you've gotten something or more if you are after what I'm set up to do. For all of this, it works reliably.The glitches....1) For a few days I was getting a bunch of false alerts. It kept telling me motion was detected when there was nothing happening and it was closed the whole time. Camera recorded no cars and no people. This stopped again, and I've seen others complaining online about the same thing so I wonder if there was a software update that broke something that could have then been fixed soon after. No big deal here, because like I said, it hasn't ever done this again once it stopped.2) The battery life is terrible. Here's where those standard AAA batteries comes in handy because you're going to be replacing them regularly. Seems like mine are lasting just a couple of months or so. Just replaced them today, so to get a fair idea of how long, I just logged the date and I'll compare next time or two in order to gauge the actual life and see if it doesn't just FEEL like it's such a short time and maybe it's really lasting longer than I seem to think. UPDATE: I've tracked the life for a while and although the company estimates 1 year with 8-10 activations per day, mine gets just 2 activations per day (mail delivery, then me getting main) and it lasts almost exactly 3 months. Maybe something like lithium batteries might last longer but standard Amazon AAA alkaline batteries just don't last very long.3) There is no "low battery" notification at all. One day you'll just notice that you've gotten mail and hadn't been notified and you won't even be sure how many days this has happened and you also hadn't gotten a notification but didn't think about it. You'll check the app and see that the thing isn't communicating and once you change the batteries all will be good again.4) It's a bit of a pain to change the batteries, but not monumental. Others complain that they must remove the adhesive to do this but I don't know why that's true for others. Mine does have a couple of clips -- one on each side -- and I can pop those out with a small screwdriver and the sensor comes right off while the adhesive-held back stays put. I change the batteries, then pop it back in, no big deal. It's just a bit of a pain to remember to bring that small screwdriver and then to pry the clips just right. Also, lining up the antenna cord when snapping it back on can be tricky but also not monumental.5) The software is really not ideal. In having this connect to the Ring system through a Ring Bridge, which was meant for light bulbs and similar smart lighting devices, the system treats this as if it's a smart lighting device and so it shows up mainly under the smart lighting section. For a long time this was the only place you could go -- you had to drill down through smart lighting to get to it, not very intuitive, and there were some weird quirks in trying to configure and monitor it since it was there and not where you'd expect it. They've sort of alleviated this by adding a new section for "Mailbox sensors" where it appears, but there is still an entry for it also under the smart lighting devices. I only just noticed this new entry which now does seem to operate like a normal sensor would (not as it previously was viewed) so maybe the quirkiness is gone -- too early for me to tell, but promising.Overall, it does work reliably and does exactly what I want, so I have no regret about buying it. As I said, the one change I'd have considered if I were designing this myself would be perhaps to have it be some kind of opened/closed switch rather than a motion detector, but there are also drawbacks to that (installation of that might be much harder, and where do you put that switch anyway, and all the mailbox types ...)But in the end I do recommend this if you have any reason for wanting to know if your mailbox has been opened, whether for security monitoring or just to know that it's time to go pick up your mail.The price is not too bad, though a bit on the high side if you must also buy the bridge because you didn't already have one for some other device. And yes, you MUST get that if you don't have one already. It will not work at all without a bridge. The one you might be using for your other Ring-branded smart lighting devices WILL work with this, though, so if you do have that, this goes from being "not terrible" to a good deal.

We did have to move it around to find the right spot for it to detect. We did not put it on the front door, tried the back, up high, the sides and finally the back down low. The back/low was the perfect spot. We do have a very thick, sturdy mailbox, so, drilling the hole was the hardest part of installation. We did learn that really big, loud truck will kick the sensor. There have been a few times it showed motion, yet, there was nothing there, assuming since we live on a fault line, those times may have been small tremors we didn't feel. We did link it to 2 of the outside cameras also, and, the link works great. We live on a main road, the box is about 30 feet from the house and the house is block and brick, so, very thick, and the bridge works fine under the front window.