Ring adds a glass-break sensor to its Ring Alarm home security system

Following a very busy fall, Ring is kicking off the new year relatively quietly, announcing just one product at CES: the Ring Alarm Glass Break Sensor. Don’t feel bad if you thought the company already offered such a peripheral. We certainly did.

Ring makes our favorite security-focused smart home systems—Ring Alarm (2^nd Gen) and the router-integrating Ring Alarm Pro—and the Amazon division just keeps making them more capable with add-ons like this. Once mounted to a wall near glass doors or windows, the Glass Break Sensor will detect the sound of glass breaking or cracking up to 25 feet away. If the sound is detected, the sensor will send a message to the Ring Alarm hub, which will in turn send a notification to your Ring app.

Ring

You can also program the hub to put the security system into alarm mode when this happens—be it in Home or Away mode—and if you’ve signed up for professional monitoring, you’ll get a call from the monitoring center. At your request, or if they can’t reach you, they request a police dispatch on your behalf.

Since the sensor covers a broad area, it can be cheaper to deploy a few of these than to install a contact sensor on every window—especially if you have a lot of windows. The difference, of course, is that the glass break sensor will raise an alarm only if an intruder breaks the glass. If they force the window open without breaking or cracking the glass, it won’t do anything.

Ring says its $40 Ring Alarm Glass Break sensor is available for pre-order starting today and will ship to customers on February 16.d