Ring let a CBS News correspondent fly a prototype of its Ring Drone Cam by hand, and the drone crashed twice. The segment aired on CBS Mornings on November 10, the day the Amazon-owned company announced the $249.99 indoor security drone. After the demo, Ring told CBS it will not offer manual flight controls when the 165-gram drone ships on January 27, 2027, a date that still depends on FCC authorization.
In the segment, Jo Ling Kent asks Ring founder Jamie Siminoff if she can control the drone, and he loads manual controls on a phone for her. She crashes it once, tries again with a CBS camera pointed at the phone screen, and the drone speeds up and crashes a second time.
Siminoff told her on camera that the second crash was not her fault, because the drone had lost its connectivity. The same day, Bloomberg reported that a Drone Cam without a connection can still take off and land safely.
Ring’s Founder Says The Drone Lost Its Connection And Did Not Land
Kent asked Siminoff after the second crash whether he worried about damage inside a home. He answered that the drone is not supposed to crash into things. “If it loses connectivity, it’s supposed to stop and land,” he said, and he added that it did not on this flight.
In the CBS segment, Kent then asked if Ring can fix these problems before launch. Siminoff said he feels very confident the company can get the drone to a place where consumers won’t see them.
CBS’s narration says the drone’s collision avoidance “apparently malfunctioned” in the first crash, and that Ring declined to share the video the drone itself recorded. Siminoff had told Kent the drone uses artificial intelligence to avoid crashing.
The unit was a prototype. Kent said on air that it was Ring’s third, and that stair navigation and syncing with other Ring devices were not working for the demo. Siminoff has said Ring got the price under $250 by keeping onboard sensing light and moving the drone’s brains to the cloud. Bloomberg reported that an unconnected unit can still take off and land safely, and The Verge’s launch report said the drone can do little beyond landing without Wi-Fi. The CBS prototype, by Siminoff’s own account, did not land.
Ring Will Ship The Drone Cam With Preset Routes Only
Buyers will get no flight controls at launch. Kent said on air that Ring told CBS after the demo it is “not going to offer manual flight controls anymore,” which leaves owners sending the drone to rooms they specify, and that Ring may offer manual controls after further testing.
The Verge got the same answer from Ring on Thursday. Ring told the outlet the Drone Cam works only on pre-programmed flight paths, and it declined to show the app during The Verge’s own demonstration. Ring spokesperson Sam McGee said in a statement that “autonomous flight to patrol points using the AI Pilot is the best customer benefit and experience.”
The Verge asked whether the decision was made following the CBS demo, and reports that Ring did not respond. At Ring’s launch preview, Bloomberg reported, journalists watched preproduction units fly preset routes and were not allowed to control them.
DroneXL’s Take
I don’t mind that Ring took the sticks away. Nobody is buying a 165-gram indoor camera to fly it around the living room, and DroneXL has followed this product since Amazon first showed it as the Always Home Cam in 2020 without ever expecting a pilot mode.
The failsafe worries me more. On a DJI drone the flight controller is on the aircraft, and DJI Fly lets the pilot choose return to home, descend or hover for the moment the signal drops. Ring went the other way and put the thinking in the cloud to hit its price. I think that makes the drone’s behavior during a Wi-Fi dropout the most important safety feature it has, and home Wi-Fi drops all the time.
A caged 165-gram prototype bumping a wall is not going to hurt anyone, and Siminoff says the problems will be fixed. But removing manual mode does nothing about the connection. Before January 27, Ring should show a production Drone Cam losing Wi-Fi in mid-flight and landing on its own.
Sources: CBS News, The Verge, Bloomberg
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
