Ring’s New Smart Lock Can Crank Itself Back to Life, and Its Cameras Are Getting Smarter Too

Ring has spent years building cameras around the front door, and now it wants a bigger role in what happens when you reach for the handle. The $249 Ring Smart Lock, due in the U.S. in early 2027, replaces a traditional key with fingerprint access, a backlit touchscreen keypad, the Ring app, and Alexa. Its most interesting trick is far less flashy: a built-in hand-powered crank that can revive the lock when its battery dies. That sounds almost comically low-tech for a smart-home product, but it addresses a very real weakness in connected locks nicely.

A Smart Lock That Doesn’t Become a Brick When the Battery Dies

Smart locks are convenient right up until they aren’t. A forgotten battery warning can turn an otherwise useful piece of connected hardware into something standing between you and your own living room.

Ring’s answer is an energy crank built into the Smart Lock’s interior thumbturn. If the battery runs down completely, turning the crank a few times generates enough power to bring the lock back to life. You don’t need to remember a hidden key cylinder, nor do you need to keep an emergency battery tucked somewhere outside the house.

It’s an appealingly mechanical solution to a very digital problem. More importantly, it could make a key-free lock easier to trust. Fingerprint readers and apps are useful, but a lock’s fundamental job remains stubbornly simple: you need to get through the door every time.

The Ring Smart Lock offers four ways to do that. You can use its fingerprint reader, enter a PIN on the illuminated touchscreen keypad, unlock it through the Ring app, or use Alexa.

From the app, you can also check whether the door is locked, secure it remotely, and create scheduled or temporary access. That could mean giving a dog walker access from 2 to 3 p.m. every Tuesday, letting a houseguest in for a weekend, or setting up a contractor’s code without handing over a permanent code.

Ring Is Keeping the Lock Inside Its Existing Ecosystem

Unsurprisingly, the Ring Smart Lock is designed to make the most sense if your home already has other Ring and Amazon hardware.

It can connect with Ring doorbells, security cameras, and Ring Alarm, while Amazon Echo devices and Alexa provide voice control. Lock activity can also appear alongside camera and doorbell events in the Ring app, giving you one place to see who arrived and whether the door was subsequently locked or unlocked.

Remote functions use Amazon Sidewalk, the low-bandwidth shared network created by nearby compatible Amazon devices, rather than depending exclusively on your home’s Wi-Fi. Ring notes that Sidewalk coverage varies by location and can change or be interrupted, so that connectivity shouldn’t be treated as universal.

Installation shouldn’t require a major door renovation, either. The lock is designed for a standard single-cylinder deadbolt and doesn’t require additional wiring. It will be offered in multiple finishes when it arrives in the U.S. during the first quarter of 2027.

One regulatory asterisk is worth noting. Ring’s announcement states that the Smart Lock hadn’t yet received the required Federal Communications Commission authorization at the time of publication, meaning it can’t legally be sold or leased until it secures that approval.

Ring’s 4K Camera Lineup Is Getting Much Bigger

The lock may be the most unusual part of Ring’s October 7 announcements, but the company is also expanding its Retinal Vision 4K security camera family with four new models covering indoor and outdoor installations.

The $149.99 Outdoor Cam 4K Plus is the most flexible of the bunch. It has a 140-degree wide-angle field of view and is available in battery, plug-in, hardwired, solar, and Power over Ethernet configurations. PoE sends both power and network data through an Ethernet cable, making it particularly useful for more permanent installations where you don’t want to depend on Wi-Fi or battery charging.

Wired versions of the Outdoor Cam 4K Plus support continuous 24/7 recording, along with person and vehicle detection. Ring is also emphasizing true-color low-light video across its new 4K lineup, aiming to retain more useful color information after dark instead of immediately switching to the familiar monochrome security-camera look.

The $219.99 Floodlight Cam 4K Plus combines 4K video with bright exterior lighting and supports 24/7 recording and smart detection when hardwired.

The $199.99 Spotlight Cam 4K Plus takes a slightly less imposing approach with a built-in 550-lumen spotlight, a 140-degree viewing angle, and battery, plug-in, or solar power choices.

If you’re trying to watch a driveway, side yard, detached garage, or backyard without redesigning the electrical system around a security camera, having that many power options could matter as much as the jump in resolution.

The Indoor Cameras Cover Two Different Jobs

For indoor use, Ring is introducing the $99.99 Indoor Cam 4K, its first home-focused indoor model in the expanded 4K family. It has a 115-degree field of view, dual-band Wi-Fi 6, and a physical privacy shutter. Closing that shutter gives you an obvious visual indication that the camera isn’t watching, rather than asking you to trust an icon buried somewhere in an app.

Then there’s the $69.99 Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam 2K, aimed less at maximum resolution and more at coverage.

It can rotate 360 degrees horizontally and tilt 175 degrees vertically, using computer vision-based motion detection to track movement. That could be useful if you’re checking on a pet wandering from one side of a room to another, watching an entryway that a fixed camera can’t cover well, or trying to figure out how the dog managed to reach something everyone was sure was safely out of reach.

The Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam records in 2K rather than 4K and includes a physical privacy shutter that disables both its camera and microphone when closed.

Pricing and Availability

The $149.99 Outdoor Cam 4K Plus, $199.99 Spotlight Cam 4K Plus, and $219.99 Floodlight Cam 4K Plus are available for preorder beginning October 7. The $99.99 Indoor Cam 4K and $69.99 Ring Pan-Tilt Indoor Cam 2K are available for purchase beginning October 7.

The $249 Ring Smart Lock is scheduled to reach the U.S. in the first quarter of 2027, pending the required regulatory authorization.

Taken together, the announcements show Ring pushing beyond simply putting more cameras around the house. The camera upgrades are fairly predictable improvements in resolution, coverage, and installation flexibility, but the Smart Lock’s hand-powered emergency charging system is the more interesting idea. Smart-home gear tends to assume electricity and connectivity will always cooperate. Anyone who’s ever stood outside a dead electronic lock knows that assumption can become irritatingly optimistic very quickly.

You can visit Ring’s site to learn more about the Smart Lock and new camera lineup, or head to Amazon to preorder or purchase the available models.