Blink - Mini 2 Indoor/Outdoor 1080p Plug-In Security Camera (2-Pack) - White

This product is really good. The only thing I feel is that sometimes the camera I put in my living room is not capturing movement like I would like it to. I have this camera to help protect my home and family that is why it is important I don’t know if it is the way I posited it or the something else. However, the camera picture and video are really good. The app is easy to use which makes it simple to do what I need to do to monitor the videos that are saved. I like that the cloud storage is a good price.

I first got blink cameras to install in a relatives house, when they were coming to stay with us for awhile. They lived along, so we didn't tell anyone about them, not thinking we needed to, but we didn't hide them either. Some people got pretty upset about that, so that is one thing to consider if first setting them up. We know make sure anyone knows they are there, and that they are free to unplug them if they want to, as long as they plug it back in. They actually worked great. Gave us great peace of mind leaving their house unattended for several months. Cameras come with a free trial subscription that records activity, but after that expires, you either need to subscribe for a monthly fee, or rely on just a life feed. The live feed works fine for our purposes. We pointed one at the front door and one at an are covering the two other entrances to the house. We were still on the free trial, when imagine our surprise, we got a text saying activity had been detected. We checked the recording, and sure enough, someone they knew was in there house. It was someone with a key, but they had not been asked to check on the house. No one knew they were going to the house. When asked about it they said they had come to bring the mail in, but the mail had been put on hold, and they were not asked to bring in the mail, so there was no mail to bring in. They said since they had come to bring in the mail, they just checked on the house while they were there. Let's just say, this explanation was accepted, but had the cameras not been installed, no one would have ever known that person was in the house. Now people know the cameras are there. No more surprise visitors Once this person returned home, the cameras were used to check on their well being, still are. If they are not answering the phone, you can turn on the cameras to make sure they are ok. You can even talk to them through the cameras. One day, they were not in the house. We tried calling them. Couldn't find them. Called local people in the area. They couldn't find them either. Turned out, they had been in a car accident and were at the hospital. We had learned there was a problem long before we would have, because these cameras were installed. Needless to say, I then bought some and installed them in my own house, so I can keep an eye on it when I am away. You even know when your power goes out, because you will get a message that your cameras have gone offline. This latest blink Mini 2 camera is a nice improvement on the previous generation, because It now has USB C It can be installed outdoors The camera itself came with an indoor power supply, and this unit also came with a power supply for outdoors as well. It even comes with mounting hardware. I have currently installed it indoors, but I do actually plan to install it outdoors. I may even just buy another one for outdoors and keep this one indoors because it is covering an area I didn't have covered before. I really just try to cover the doors. One end of my house doesn't have any windows on the first floor, and when I let the dog out, it always wants to go to that end of the house where I can't see it. I can see it from the rear windows, and I can see it from the front windows, but during the transition period, I can't see if it is coming back to the rear, or going to the front, so my plan is to mount it so I have a view of that area from inside the house. It is a really perfect solution. Installation for this was fairly painless, but I did actually have to open the manual. First you scan a QR code with your phone, no problem Then, you are instructed to press the reset button on the camera to continue I could not find a reset button to save my life. As it turns out, the reset button is very cleverly hidden under the camera mount. You have to remove the camera mount to press it. Once I figured it out the rest of the installation was easy, and as an added bonus, the new camera reactivated my trial subscription. As for performance overall, just the cameras in general are worth it for the piece of mind. It has a lot of features, like you can disable motion sensitivity on lower areas of the display. We do this so our dog doesn't activate the camera. This apparently has a new feature though, which I have yet to try, where AI will determine if what it is detecting is a person or not. Hopefully this helps with some of the false positive notifications we used to get with the previous generation from spiders building webs in front of the cameras, or the light through the curtains causing changing shadows on the wall throughout the day. Can't say that I have tried that feature yet, but having used the older cameras before that feature, I can certainly understand the usefulness that feature will offer. I also have mine all tied into my Alexa. So as I am walking out of the house, I can just say Alexa activate blink, and if the cameras detect anything, I will get a text and when I enter the house just say Alexa deactivate blink and it will turn them off. If you forget to turn them on before you leave, you can just open the Blink app and arm them that way too. It really just gives peace of mind and as for the subscription, you can just activate it if you are going to be away on a trip or something. That way when you have a chance to check the camera, any activity will be recorded. They are actually a much better investment than I ever anticipated they would be. You should have them for your own peace of mind for your own home. You should have them in the homes of anyone that you know that live alone that you might be responsible for keeping track of, especially if they are elderly. You should just have them.

-- SUMMARY:-- This is a good entry-level motion camera with good video detail even in the dark. The two-way audio communication and ability to turn on/off a built-in light are welcome features. The main drawback I find is that it does not record videos for as long as there’s motion. Instead, it only records snippets of videos with at least a 10-second “pause/retrigger” time in between. -- THE GOOD: -- - Fantastic video quality when there’s light, and pretty good quality in the dark (black and white videos) - Ability to configure whether the built-in light turns on upon motion detection and how long to stay on (up to 10 minutes). This allows recording color at night instead of black and white videos. - Early notification. I like that this camera sends an alert almost as soon as it detects motion. If you press on the notification while the video clip is still being recorded (or within 5 seconds after it completes recording), it will take you to a “Live View Session” which allows you to see what is happening in real-time and to interact with whoever triggered the motion detection via the two-way voice. IMPORTANT: Make sure to click on the “Save” button BEFORE ending the Live session or otherwise no clip will be saved from the moment the live session was started. - “Flip Video” setting: This is super handy when mounting the camera upside down (for example, next to or below the ceiling-mounted garage door opener). Enabling this option allows for the video to be recorded flipped so it doesn’t look upside down. My older battery-powered Blink cameras do not have this setting. - Photo Capture: This is an on/off setting that, when enabled, the camera takes a photo once per hour when “armed”. I find this very useful because when opening the Blink app, the thumbnail you see is at most 1-hr old. This allows you to quickly see if there’s something suspicious (in case the photo shows something unexpected). In my older battery-powered Blink cameras, this setting doesn’t exist. That means that when opening the Blink app, the thumbnail that you see is an “old” one, which could make you believe everything is in order when it might not be the case. -- DRAWBACKS: -- - No continuous recording. Only a max of 30-second video clips (minimum of 5 seconds) and a minimum retrigger time of 10 seconds (max of 60 seconds). This is my main complaint. There’s no way to set the camera to continue recording while there’s motion. That means that in the event of someone stealing something, for example, it will only capture a snippet of video, then nothing for at least 10 seconds before recording again. This is not ideal if the intended use is for security and potentially sharing videos with the authorities. In my case, I had an older battery-powered model of a Blink camera in my garage. When I opened the garage door, someone came in immediately and stole a bike. The older model took a few seconds to detect the motion. That meant missing the moment the person got into the garage and the recording started when the individual was no longer facing the camera. Then some events happened that I wish were recorded, but recording stopped for 10 seconds before recording another clip, missing crucial moments. I believe the motion detection is faster in this mini blink 2 camera. However, I was hoping I could configure it to continuously record while there’s motion without having to wait 10 seconds in between video clips. Alternatively, I wish it could record more than a max of 30 seconds at a time. Unfortunately, this is not the case. - Live session default is to Not save the video session. I would have preferred that live sessions are automatically recorded by default. Instead, you have to remember to click on the “Save” button BEFORE the live session ends. This is particularly annoying when receiving an Early Motion Notification and tapping on the notification, which will end the video recording and start a live session. If you forget to click on “Save”, you risk losing important video footage.