Can you side mount a Ring video doorbell?

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A video doorbell is a smart investment for almost any home or business. At one time, these products were a little more boutique, but brands like Ring have brought these networked cameras into the spotlight. Today, video doorbells are sold in spades. Still, when it comes to the tried and true, it’s hard to beat the features and performance you’ll get from a Ring camera. But what if you wanted to go against the grain, at least in terms of camera orientation? All Ring video doorbells are meant to be mounted vertically, but what if you want to mount yours sideways?

Well, technically you can. The problem is that there is no way to rotate the camera view in the Ring app. This means that all live views and recorded footage will be captured from a 90-degree angle. If you need to mount your doorbell (or another Ring camera) upside down for some reason, there is an option in the Ring app to rotate the image 180 degrees to effectively flip it vertical: With the app open on the home screen, tap the menu icon, then head to Devices > Device Settings > Video Settings > Video Rotation.

Although Ring’s software helps you with a reverse lens, it can’t reorient the video 90 degrees; There’s even an official answer to the question on this Ring community page, and the answer is no. The only other Ring doorbell modification you can invest in here is a Wedge or Corner kit, accessories sold separately that allow you to tilt the lens forward or backward a bit (Wedge) or tilt your doorbell to the left or right (Corner).

Video doorbells are great, but capturing an ultra-wide field of view (FOV) isn’t something they’re all designed to do. Even the Ring Battery Doorbell 4K Pro, the company’s flagship doorbell, is capped at 140 degrees for its horizontal axis. If that’s why you’ve been thinking about turning your bell on its side, you should consider some alternatives instead. One option is to go with a Ring camera alternative.

The Arlo Video Doorbell (2nd generation) offers a 180-degree field of view and costs a little less than any Ring doorbell. There’s also the Eufy Video Doorbell S330, a doorbell that offers a 160-degree field of view and includes a floor-facing camera for monitoring your Amazon deliveries. The S330 even supports a microSD card up to 32GB if you don’t feel like signing up for Eufy’s cloud service. In both cases, however, the trade-off with the Arlo and Eufy doorbells is video quality; each product is limited to 2K resolution.

If zooming in on distant faces and license plates is important to you, we suggest our second alternative: a point-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera. Products like the Tapo C560WS support automated motion tracking, but you’ll also be able to use the Tapo app to manually rotate and zoom. This is another camera system that also supports local storage; you’ll just need to make sure you have an external AC outlet to plug it into.