Any owners of this device care to give a review?
So,
It’s convenient. Very much. I wouldn’t rely on it for any heavy duty security, as it’s not something that’s constantly on and you’re able to just pop in on the video feed quickly. Because of the battery function and them wanting to extend it, you’re getting short clips whenever there’s motion detected, or you can start a clip. However because of the battery it is dead simple to set up. I drilled one to our tree in the front yard and faced it towards the door. No wires was so gratifying.
Mind you it’s relatively close to our WiFi source/router so I can’t speak on any longer distance operation.
I’ll probably get this deal for what is worth
Terrible system in my opinion. The delays between looking at the cameras over wifi and the lack of things they capture are a joke. One of the slowest security systems I’ve ever had the displeasure of using, and that includes zmodo old school systems.
These will do things such recording 1-3 interval videos showing nothing and yet completely missing where you walked by to take out the trash and walked back. Overall terrible system to me.
Not an owner but I’ve done quite a bit of research on this one. Security(dot)org did a pretty good review on this thing. The main points is that the unit takes a few “shortcuts” to achieve a longer battery time. The zoom is actually pretty good, but the field of view is a place where somey users complain, wanting more. The unit relies on cloud storage which is thankfully you’ll receive 2hrs of free space. Videos are capped at 1-minute and quality could be better. The unit also lacks 2-way audio.
The video length is the reason I didn’t jump to buy this. If you’re just monitoring who’s entering and leaving and package drop-offs, it’s totally fine. But if there’s someone roaming around your home, because you’re only recording in 1-min intervals, there can be gaps in time. But no subscription fees is what drives many to this.
Many compare this to the Arlo Pro 2.
I’ll concur with everything @speshalk7 says here, and only add that I find the motion detection to be a little slow to respond, a little too often, or non-responsive at times. For what I’m using it for, this is…somewhat acceptable. But if I were relying on this to be a solid source of evidence, I’d skip it unless it’s ok to miss ~10% (anecdotal, not measured) of the action. But it sure is nice to be able to hang it anywhere within decent earshot of your wifi signal and be up and running in 10 minutes.
Are we to assume this comes with the mount in the last picture??
I’ve been a Blink user for many years now. No cost, other than the cameras. The advertised battery life is absolutely a lie. However, I do get about 4-5 months and my cameras are triggered on average 10 times a day. Keep this in mind when mounting your cameras, because you will need to replace the batteries 2-3 times a year. I love that they use AA batteries. The last thing I need is yet another thing I have to charge. For the money, I don’t think there is a better system out there.
My XT Blink cameras have high usage. Going on the second year, one camera lithium lasted 10 months and my front door still on it orginal battery going on 13 months.
Impressive!
Admittedly I have my clip length set for longer than recommended. There are things I could do to improve battery performance, but with the ease and cost of replacement, I’m still satisfied with my 4-5 month battery life.
I have Gen 2’s. I use them to supplement my FIXED wired sec cams’s. Only one of the cams are mounted. I keep the other two just sitting on a shelf or object that lets me direct it to what I want to monitor. Nice when you don’t have a bunch and want to move it around to another location. They make solar panels to use if you want to put it outside and not have to worry about changing batteries. I do keep one out in the garage and Florida room. It gets LOTS of action so be ready to change the batteries every 8+ months. More if you have it set to record till movement has stopped. A few things to note.
- Battery life is NOT 2 years unless you turn everything off and do not access it.
- Takes a while to figure out the perfect setting balance between power use and security
- Alerts come from each camera as a separate “alert”. Meaning, if you lined them up, walked passed them, you will get 3 alerts which is expected.
- Changing batteries is easy, as long as you can reach the camera (I have one that requires a ladder)
- They are rain proof
- Two way sound is more then acceptable.
- If your internet is down, you can’t connect, even if your home network is still up (IMO, that’s a BIG hit on security)
- Hub looses connectivity from my router every once and a while and I have to reboot it. It’s happened twice this year and happens when I update my FIRMWARE on my ASUS GT-5300. But I don’t blame the hub. You will get an alert (if you have your email setup) to get an alert it’s lost communications. That will cause a failure to record anything.
- A big flaw which IMO, kills the BLINK camera as a PRIMARY security cam system, you can only look at one cam at a time. You must back out of the 1st cam, select the OTHER camera, let it load, then view, then back out of that one, select the other, wait for it to load, view that one.
- They pick up PET movement which is nice.
- Can’t share it as a “weather” camera. At least I’ve not figured that out, yet.
- You can have only 10 cameras on a hub. You need a 2nd hub to view the next set. Since you can only see one cam at a time, I’d be carful how many you install. I have an extra hub. I’m thinking about adding it and putting one camera (front door) on that, and the other two on another hub. Allowing me to view TWO cam’s at time. That seems to be the only single camera at a time work around.
As for nr 9, that’s a big issue with using these as your ONLY system. It can take time to bounce around to each camera. Unlike my Samsung camera system (wired), I can view all cams (8) at the same time then select the one I want to view in a bigger window.
Don’t get me wrong, these are pretty nice cameras for what they do. The views are pretty nice but they do have a little bit of “fish eye” out of the center field of view. They are convenient because due to their size, they are portable/movable if you don’t mount them which allows potability all over your house and they pick up pet movements too. Hope that helps.
Looks like it:
My wife wants a camera in the chicken coop where she can watch & listen to her hens. Our router is probably 80 feet away. Anyone know if this would this work?
It’s not perfect, sometimes the picture turns bright purple, there is a few second delay and the battery life is a few months at most. The interface is a little clunky.
BUT! For the price and convenience I don’t think it can be beat, especially since there is no monthly fee involved for the cloud storage.
We use it as a game camera with a solar panel system + a hotspot. Here’s an example of the picture quality on medium. Coyote at waterer
If you can put the sync module somewhere in the middle I think that distance would be fine unless there are a lot of walls or anything especially dense in between (hill, numerous brick walls/trees, etc.). I have some of my cameras over 50’ from the sync module, but I have the module on the second floor and it’s basically a clear LOS except for the exterior wall. All my cameras are reporting full signal reception except for one I have about 30’ away but diagonally through the house and many walls that reports the lowest signal strength.
For my review of the Blink XT/XT2, the system is OK but I don’t know I would really trust it if I needed a serious home monitoring system. It has some nice features and lower costs (free storage) that attracted many users, but they seem to have stopped upgrading the system much so it has not kept up with the other available monitoring systems in terms of apps and features. I started buying XTs to add to my system since I don’t need to 2-way audio (but the XT2 supposedly has better battery like also).
I have systems at two locations. We’ve been pretty irritated by the lack of many common sense features and lack of ongoing development of the software/apps (promised features that are vaporware or never come out).
For example:
- Their official policy for multiple user monitoring one system is sharing the account/password. But this gives all users the ability to monitor all linked systems (and change settings) on that account. Maybe you don’t want your business coworkers being able to see your home, etc.
- The recommendation for monitoring two separate systems at once is to set them up with different accounts and use two devices. I had to pay money for an app cloner that allows you to run two instance of an app at the same time so I can run both systems, but it doesn’t work well on the cloned system to get motion alerts.
- Don’t have any computer or web-based monitoring or access, only via apps.
- Lots of inconvenient and inconsistent oddities in the app. For example, no vacation mode or simple way to override the schedule, which trumps user set controls. So if you are leaving home and want to turn the cameras on 24/7, you have to go several clicks into the settings to completely disable the camera scheduling and then back out to turn the cameras on, otherwise after the next scheduled recording period the cameras will turn off and go back to their normal schedules.
- Really good at catching bugs and birds flying/walking in front of the camera, but even when I trigger it doing something I would normally want to see I mostly get a blur of me disappearing into the house or something (often don’t see enough of the trigger event to be useful or the action happens between triggers, because it has a max clip length and mandatory reset time where it won’t trigger). Only if someone is moving back and forth or moving slowly would it get a good shot of them. I guess placement is very important, better to have it so it “sees” them coming so it triggers earlier vs crossing in front of the camera.
For me, I think they might be all right just as a deterrent since I put them up in pretty obvious locations, also gives you the ability to see things just to check on them (do I have a package at the door? did any trees fall in that storm? etc.)
Also, I like to use the 2-way audio to whistle or make noises to piss off the neighbors yappy dog.
One of my Gen 2’s is about that. My router is in my office on one side of the house, the garage is on the other side of the house. It has to go through 4 walls. I’ve not seen anything that says the Gen 1’s have a less range of the Gen 2’s.
2nd camera would never connect sent it back however Woot was great about providing credit as it was outside the return window
Amazon is very clear that if you want the longer battery life you must use the more expensive Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries. These give me more than a year worth of use from my cameras - imo it’s worth getting the right batteries and spending a little more on them rather than hassling with changing them more frequently.
I have 4, two in back and two covering the front door. I bought an after market case to put them in, but the ones they came with are OK.
If you buy these you also need a hub. That is the device they connect to, and then it connects to your home wifi. I comes with this deal. It is an amazing price I think.
I love these cameras, and the hub. Easy to set up, easy to use, and work well at night.
You may need a wifi extender to give you the reach. I don’t think 80 ft is reasonable.
I have been using the system for year and half and love it. I have 5 camera and am adding 2 today. Last august my blink got a photo of bobcat under my deck that CBS ran on the news. I get amazing video and nothing gets past with being taped.I forgot to add that the camera that caught the bobcat is over 80 feet from the blink base and my router. The photo is always clear but sometimes there is a few second delay before the image comes up on my phone. The unit that is farthest from my router is about 100 yards.
