Blink Home Security Camera Review

Unboxing and Setup

Blink Packaging

With equipment that’s ready to use practically right out of the box, it was evident that Blink wasn’t going to be a difficult installation. I opened the three Blink boxes that round out the system to find a very simple configuration: each box held one camera, one sync module (this is required in every Blink camera except the Blink Mini), two screws for mounting, one plastic mount, and a handy battery replacement tool to open and close the back of the camera.

Quick note here: Both the Blink Indoor and Outdoor require a Sync Module. The cameras connect to that module as a hub rather than connecting directly to Wi-Fi. The cameras still connect to Wi-Fi, but you go through the hub. The Sync Module isn’t battery-powered, so I had to set it up near an outlet while also keeping in mind its distance from each of the two cameras. It has a range of up to 100 feet, but in my experience, it needs to be a little bit closer than that to the outdoor camera to account for possible signal interventions caused by walls.

Blink Indoor Equipment

Not really a DIYer? Don’t worry — like many “DIY” cameras on the market today, if you can turn a screwdriver, you can nail the install. The setup for Blink cameras in particular is especially easy. It consists of scanning a QR code with your phone, giving the cameras a name, and following the in-app instructions to sync everything up.

Okay, maybe that’s oversimplifying it, but the setup process doesn’t really require much expertise. All instructions were provided by the app – I think even my teenager could probably do it. I don’t know for certain, since he wanted to charge me $15. Overall, it took me less than 10 minutes to get each camera up and running. That’s 30 minutes of my lazy Tuesday afternoon well spent, don’t you think?

The only cameras I can recall that had an easier setup were from Wyze Cams. If you’re into simple wireless tech, you’ll appreciate Blink and Wyze. Not only do they resemble each other somewhat in appearance, the cameras also cost less than much of the competition. You can find much more on Wyze in my hands-on Wyze Cam review.

It’s pretty hard to make a mistake setting up a Blink camera. It’s a relatively simple piece of equipment, and the app is designed to make connecting all the pieces intuitive. Making adjustments to your camera, once you’ve set it up? That can take a bit more time. You want to slow down during this part and take your time. For one thing, this is a chance to really get to know your camera. More importantly, you want to make sure you’re capturing exactly what you want to capture and nothing that you don’t.

Blink App – Video History

Turns out getting things set up isn’t just about attaching cameras to your walls, entering your Wi-Fi passwords, and letting your phone pair with the cameras. All of that is pretty straightforward, but these cameras have some really useful tech that requires a more delicate touch.

The good news is that all this tech gives you lots of control over what you are and aren’t recording. You need to make decisions about motion sensitivity, for instance, which is a key tool in making sure you don’t get false or unwanted alerts. You also need to adjust the infrared LEDs to make sure the camera’s night vision is clear and glare-free. Those are adjustments you generally won’t know you need to make until you’ve set up the whole system and have made your way through the app. But once you do, you’ll see a much better-performing camera system and more insightful alerts.

Blink Mini – No Stand

As for installing Blink, the cameras all echoed pretty much the same installation and setup process. The only exception is the Blink Mini, which is essentially a miniature of the Blink Indoor but with wired installation instead of a battery. You’ll learn more about each camera’s nuances and quirks in just a moment, but for now, let’s just say this: It’s not every day you can say you installed a whole system of security cameras in under 30 minutes.

Next, we’ll dive into the Blink system a bit more, camera by camera.

But first, here’s a brief look at Blink’s stats, including how we review them:

Blink Camera Features

With that, we’ll begin our hands-on experience with the smallest in the bunch: Blink Mini.

Blink Mini Camera: The Full Experience

Blink Mini on Table

It might not look like much, but Blink Mini is a powerful tool in any home security toolbox. It did a great job taking care of the basics, and all in all, you can’t really expect more than the basics out of a camera that’s only $30.

My tests of Blink Mini centered around home entryways. Like all Blink cams, Blink Mini runs on fluid video, meaning it regularly fluctuates from higher (1080p) to lower video resolutions to allow it to run more smoothly and without gaps in your timeline. So the first thing to note: You won’t find much to gripe about in terms of video quality. This camera won’t let you down there.

Motion Sensitivity

As you’ll learn in my in-depth Blink Mini camera review, the sensitivity slider in the Blink app will be your friend. Here, you can choose a lower setting to reduce the barrage of alerts you might be getting in the initial experience. This is a good time to decide if you’d rather avoid getting alerts when, say, a car shines its headlights through your front door window. Those are generally a nuisance, you’ll notice, and tend to detract from the real reason you added cameras in the first place: to keep your home safe.

Blink Mini and Stand

One of the downsides of Blink cameras is that, while you can adjust their sensitivity, you can’t fine tune it much. On the one hand, you can set them to pick up almost everything, but then you wind up with alerts about your pets running in front of the camera. On the other hand, you can set them to ignore everything, in which case you’re not fully protected. There’s just not much in between. Still, for cameras that cost as little as $30, you do get a motion sensor, and that’s what is most important. A few clips of your pet barking when the mailman comes by aren’t a huge inconvenience in the larger scheme of things.

It is the reason, though, why the Blink Mini lags behind its closest competitor, the Wyze Cam v3. Although priced similarly to the Blink Mini, I’ve found the Wyze Cam v3 much better at ignoring less important motion events thanks to its built-in person detection.

Here’s a quick features comparison if you want to see how the two cameras matchup:

Self-Monitoring With Mini

Blink doesn’t offer a professionally monitored security solution – at least not anymore2 – so the task of monitoring your Blink cameras will fall on you. That’s also known as self-monitoring, which means you’ll have to review every alert and event recording from your Blink cameras.

Fortunately, I found self-monitoring the Blink Mini a breeze thanks to the app. There, I was able to jump between checking live view and looking back at footage history. This came in handy that time when my smoke sensors detected smoke coming from my kitchen. I was able to see, thanks to the Blink Mini, that I left my oven on while baking lasagna, and I was able to rush home to turn it off before it turned into a disaster. Well, dinner was ruined, but at least my house didn’t burn down.

Wired Installation

The only gripe I had about Blink Mini, for the most part, is that it’s wired. But that’s also why it’s a cheaper camera than its siblings. To avoid a hassle, just plan on displaying it close to a wall outlet. You know, instead of standing on a ladder yelling, “Anyone got an extension cord?” for 10 minutes until someone answers. (We’ve all been there, right?)

Blink Mini with Stand

Here’s the bottom line on Blink Mini: While it might be small and limited in features, it still packs the power and convenience of Blink’s other two devices thanks to a strong and intuitive app. That makes it a pretty worthwhile addition to the system.

That said, if you’re looking for slick features like activity zones, person detection, and facial recognition, Google Nest Cam review is another great place to look. Sure, the cheapest Nest Cam costs $99, more than twice as much as the Blink Mini, but you’ll get AI-powered features such as those mentioned above. Just something to consider in case the Blink Mini leaves you wanting for more.

Blink Indoor Camera

At less than 3 inches tall, Blink Indoor is as modest as it is discreet. But with the convenience of wire-free setup, you’re also getting more flexibility than you’d get from Ring Indoor, another Amazon-branded camera. Read my full Ring Indoor camera review for more.

Video Settings and Motion Detection

This security camera also made a great hallway monitor when I tested the Blink Indoor camera. The HD video quality and motion detection were top-notch; night vision, however, isn’t as strong in Blink cameras as those in an Arlo camera system with full color night vision. Arlo cameras are some of the best in the biz, but I’ve found that this feature isn’t quite as important in indoor cameras as outdoor ones.

Field of View

Blink Indoor’s viewing angle is somewhat narrower than other cameras- just 110 degrees. These days, it’s more common to see cameras that stretch out up to 160 degrees, as noted in my full unpacking of the Arlo Pro 3 cameras.

Blink Indoor Camera

I should point out, though, that a wider field of view isn’t always better. The truth is there are pros and cons to different size fields. Blink’s narrow-angle lenses in their cameras are best suited for monitoring specific targets, such as doorways and entrances, because objects appear larger detailed within the image. In cameras with wide-angle lenses,3 objects appear smaller, and you might see some occasional distortions along the edges of the frame during recording.

Even taking all of this information into account, I found the Blink Indoor field of view a bit lacking. If you want full coverage of a decent-sized room, you’ll need more than one camera. You’ll see what I mean if you scroll down a little further and watch the sample clip from my Blink Indoor. Despite my best effort at placing the camera strategically, it only managed to capture about three quarters of my living room, leaving pretty huge blind spots.

That said, if a wide-angle lens camera sounds appealing to you, take a peek at my Amcrest camera review, where you’ll learn about a pair of solid devices with wider viewing angles, and better night vision, too.

Managing Recordings With Blink Indoor

Moving over to the camera’s video history, you’ll like how Blink automatically produces a highlight reel of each day’s activity; this is really helpful in a pinch. You can sit down at the end of the day and, rather than poring through hours of footage you missed when you were out of the house, you can pull up one of these highlight reels to get a frame-by-frame overview of the day.

This clip above is an example of Blink’s highlight reel. I see this is another effort on Blink’s part to make their cameras as convenient as possible – and an impressive addition, considering the low price.

And in another nod to Blink’s energy efficiency, the Blink Indoor has a low-power mode to conserve battery life. The only difference in using this mode, in my tests, was about 3-5 seconds of delay from the time motion began to the time the camera began recording. By and large, that’s a negligible delay.

At $79, Blink Indoor is priced competitively, especially when you consider all that’s included in a kit: One Blink Indoor camera, one Blink Sync Module 2, durable mounting hardware, and four long-lasting AA batteries.

Blink Indoor Equipment

It’s a generous package, and with everything Blink has to offer, the camera still handles exceptionally well.

Blink Outdoor Camera

Blink Outdoor – Installed

Turning to Blink’s dedicated outdoor camera, it’s evident immediately that this one was built to be discreet. It only comes in all-black, as opposed to the black-and-white indoor cam. As far as aesthetics, it’s got a sleek finish and takes the same minimalistic cues as Indoor. In fact, you’re talking about the same camera, essentially, as Indoor, only with a tougher (IP65) weather rating.

I’d like to note that since my last testing of the Blink Outdoor, Blink has come out with a newer version called the Blink Outdoor 4. The one I tested was the third generation, which replaced the Blink XT2 (2nd generation) and the Blink XT (first generation).

As far as I can tell, most of the differences between the fourth and third generation are cosmetic. The newer version features a matte black finish with a slightly more rounded face. It does promise to offer a wider viewing angle than the third generation and person detection, and we’d say those upgrades, though minor, are absolutely worth the $20 extra cost. Keep an eye out for our upcoming review to see why, but we have the Cliffs Notes version a few sections down:

Night Vision With Blink

At the risk of rehashing old grievances, night vision was pretty weak in my hands-on Blink Outdoor camera experience. In an outdoor camera, this is a bit of a letdown.

It’s not that the Blink Outdoor can’t see at all at night. The camera’s night vision provides enough illumination to still see what’s going on, like the cat passing right through our front lawn in the video below. But whose cat was it? We’re not entirely sure. Blink’s night vision footage didn’t provide enough clarity to capture the finer details.

You’ll find better night vision in one of the Ezviz cameras I reviewed recently, but generally, a camera with exceptional night vision needs some integrated lighting feature to do its best work. (Visit my Reolink Argus 3 Pro review for a really stellar night vision experience.)

On that note, Blink does have other options if you prefer brighter and better night vision. One of these is the Blink Floodlight Cam Wired. As the name implies, it comes equipped with powerful floodlights. Otherwise, it offers most of the same features as the Blink Outdoor. You should know, though, that it needs to be wired to an outdoor junction box in order to work.

If you prefer a floodlight with a wireless configuration, you might check out the Blink Outdoor floodlight mount. It allows you to use the Blink Outdoor as the camera, but the mount itself provides two bright battery-powered floodlights.

Smart Home Limitations

Folks with smart home devices might be somewhat disappointed by the options Blink offers to integrate their cameras with non-Amazon devices. Since it’s an Amazon brand, Blink doesn’t integrate quite as seamlessly with Google Home devices, so you won’t be able to say, “OK Google, show me my patio” and similar voice commands to control the cameras.

Blink Mini on Alexa

Amazon Alexa users, on the other hand, should be pretty delighted. If you’re taking an impromptu trip out of state in the near future, you can use the Alexa app to check the temperature in your home (via a Nest thermostat) and, at the same time, peek into the Blink Indoor camera to make sure the dog sitter has shown up. Actions like this are a quick, efficient way to get peace of mind when you can’t be home.

Of course, you’ve got plenty of other choices if you’re looking for cameras that do integrate with multiple platforms in addition to Alexa, like Google Home, IFTTT, and Samsung SmartThings. In my latest review of Reolink’s cameras, integrations were a bit easier thanks to a smart home tab in their mobile app. This way, almost every camera Reolink makes (and there are many) can be fed into a smart home ecosystem with little fuss, with plenty of cross-platform functionality to boot.

Smart home challenges aside, Blink Outdoor redeems itself in other areas, exhibiting the same strengths that made me a fan of the brand in the first place: Fluid video resolution at up to 1080p; seamless two-way talk; customizable motion detection; and that easy installation Blink is famous for.

A Note on Blink and Pet Monitoring

Before pivoting into pricing and storage options on Blink, I think it’s worth pointing out that these cameras are not ideal as pet monitors. While they’re pretty sensitive to most types of motion out of the box, in my tests, none of the Blink cameras were triggered by the family dog, as wiggly and rambunctious as he is. It could be that more fine-tuning in the app is needed to remedy this, but it could also be that this $80 camera just isn’t strong in this way, and that’s totally okay.

Blink Sync Module

Fortunately, there’s a camera or two out there that handles this much better. As noted when I tested and reviewed YI’s Home 3 camera, the camera seemed to enjoy sending entertaining recordings of said pup in all sorts of precarious positions – no app tinkering needed. Keep in mind, too, this camera costs $20, so there isn’t much tinkering to be done, anyway.

Who knows, maybe the dog ate jumping beans that day. But it’s just something you might pick up from time to time when comparing home security companies. Motion sensors sometimes work in mysterious ways.

Blink Day Vision

Now that you have a pretty good understanding of the Blink outdoor 3, let me give you a brief preview of their newest iteration, the Blink Outdoor 4.

Blink Outdoor 4

The Blink Outdoor 4

Overall, the Blink Outdoor 4 is pretty similar to its predecessor. It offers the same 1080p resolution and about the same field of vision. It does differ; however, in three pretty substantial ways:

• Better video quality
• Better motion detection
• Addition of person detection

The differences aren’t night and day, but they are enough that you’re going to notice a enhancement from the 3 to the 4. I certainly did.

One note on that last piece, though. To take advantage of the Blink Outdoor 4’s motion detection capabilities, you’re going to need to sign up for a subscription. It only costs $3 per month though, and we have more details below.

Snapshot of Blink’s Pricing

When comparing pricing in security cameras, I always like to start with a disclaimer: You do get what you pay for, so choose wisely. Blink is far from the cheapest camera brand you’ll find out there, as the industry is brimming with low-cost cameras these days. Some folks might bristle at paying $100 for a Blink camera, but keep in mind that this is a solid battery-powered camera, the likes of which usually isn’t available for under $100.

Of course, you could always go with the Blink Mini if you’d rather save on equipment costs – for $35, Mini is an all-around good camera.

Below is a snapshot of pricing for Blink cameras, keeping in mind that the cameras also come in 2-, 3-, and 5-pack systems, if you choose. Feel free to check out my Blink Camera pricing page for more info, and while you’re at it, head over to the latest rundown of Blink Prime Day deals and discounts.

Blink’s Latest Pricing Overview:

Video Storage Options

Blink Sync Module

Since Blink has discontinued their free cloud storage option, you’re now left with two options to store video history with Blink: A basic plan, for $3 per month, and a premium option for $10 per month.

These costs are pretty well aligned with Blink’s close competitors. Swann’s $5-per-month plan, for example, offers basic storage but not too many of the extras Blink includes in their subscriptions. With everything you’ll get in an affordable Blink system, I don’t think paying $3 per month to store videos (or $30 for the whole year) is stretching it.

Here’s a breakdown of Blink’s storage costs, keeping in mind that you also have the option to attach a hard drive to your Blink sync module to store video on your own:

Blink Cloud Storage Plans

Our Final Verdict on Blink Cameras

Blink Mini (left) and Blink Indoor (right) Cameras

With Blink, you’re promised a hassle-free experience, and you’ll get one. Indeed, these cameras are nothing if not consistent. For folks who don’t feel comfortable around security equipment or just don’t have the time to learn and interact with technology, Blink is a consistent leader. It certainly belongs in our roundup of the best cheap security cameras.

To summarize, here’s what I think Blink’s strengths and weaknesses are.

Strengths:

• Hassle-free setup
• Long-lasting battery life
• Fluid video quality that adjusts automatically to provide smooth live view
• Affordable cloud options
• Affordable equipment
• Intuitive app

Weaknesses:

• Basic features (no smart detection for most models)
• Only decent video quality
• Poor night vision
• The need for a Sync Module (except the Blink Mini)

Now it’s your turn to decide. Do the pros outweigh the cons? Will Blink work in your home setup?

FAQs about Blink Cameras