The camera is tiny and inexpensive, and can now go outside
A Review of the Blink Mini 2 App and App for Detecting Motion in the Living Room and in the Low-Luminosity Experiment
My two biggest issues are that Blink’s app is not intuitive and it has limited smart home integrations. The app is outdated compared to Ring, which has an excellent app. I would love to be able to use a camera in Ring. The Blink Mini 2 is also locked in the Amazon system with no support for any of the internet connected products.
It captures crisp video, reliably detects motion, and can slot in just about anywhere you want to put it. After a couple of weeks testing indoors and out, I’m impressed by the quality of the footage. Low-light performance is much better than the original, and the expanded field of view (up from 110 to 143 degrees) enables it to take in a whole room. Perhaps most important, the person detection (still in beta) works well to ensure that every shadow, passing cat, or waving tree branch no longer triggers an alert.
The Blink Mini 2: A Mini but mighty: Blink’s tiny inexpensive camera can now go outdoors, and what better than what I had at home
Despite adding a few features, the Mini 2 still has the same simplicity that comes from the slick setup process. Scan a QR code, connect to Wi-Fi, and you are done. I encountered a glitch setting up on my Pixel, but I’m putting that down to prerelease software. I had the camera on my phone in a matter of minutes and it worked on my phone after that.
Security cameras are a personal preference; understandably, many people don’t like the idea of potentially being watched in their homes. The gadgets that are available offer useful features, such as checking in on pets, monitoring your house, and catching someone prowling in your backyard after dark.
There’s a wider field of view over the original Mini (143 degrees versus 110), enhanced image quality, better low-light performance, and a sleeker design. The only thing required for local storage is a $50 Blink sync module 2 and ausb stick, also known as the camera, which is optional.
A teeny, tiny camera, the Mini 2 can fit pretty much anywhere. It was tested out in my backyard, my house, my office and kitchen, all of which displayed clear, crisp video during the day. Infrared night vision was fair, but the spotlight-enabled color night vision was very grainy.
Source: Mini but mighty: Blink’s tiny, inexpensive camera can now go outdoors
Motion and People Detection with the Blink Camera: A Comparative Study of the Mini and Blink Clouds for Live Views in a Smart Home
The Mini’s motion and people notifications are super speedy, but there are no rich notifications, which is a shame. The early notification feature of blink makes it possible to drop in on a live view if the action is still happening. Personally, I prefer rich notifications with a snapshot of the action.
Blink has a great mounting system, and the ball and socket base on the Mini 2 makes it simple to adjust the camera’s angle and position even after you’ve screwed its base to a wall or ceiling. I could also just pop it on a flat surface without the base, which meant I could fit it everywhere I wanted to. It is the smallest camera I have tested.
The camera’s motion sensitivity is good — almost too good. I received an alert when the lights on one of my strips changed colors in my office, even without person detection. Adjusting the sensitivity helped a bit, but you need person detection if you don’t want to be inundated with notifications. It is possible to snooze motion alert.
Multiplefactor security, Face ID, and other secure access features are available in the blink app. Blink product manager Jonathan Cohn explains that all cloud footage is encrypted at every endpoint: “in the cloud, in transit and at rest, and when it’s sent back to your phone,” he says. There is no way anyone can get in at any point. End-to-end encryption means that even the cloud is not able to see the footage.
Additionally, Cohn explains that because Blink makes its own chips, it owns the end-to-end development of the camera and builds privacy and security into the chip without reliance on third-party manufacturers.
If, like a lot of people, you don’t want to cough up $3 a month, you can still get motion alerts to let you know if something’s going on at home. There is no person detection without paying.
If you use a subscription, you won’t get person detection without it, and you won’t be able to watch a live view without it; but if you use async module 2 you can record video locally to avoid those cloud storage fees.
I can see my livestream on the smart displays in my home, but I had to have the camera with me. On the other hand, there is no support for other smart home platforms.
The Mini’s closest competitors are models from Wyze and TP-Link, which both have indoor / outdoor cameras with smart alerts and local storage with an onboard microSD card for under $40: Wyze with its $36 Wyze Cam v3 and TP-Link with the Tapo’s $40 C120 indoor / outdoor wired camera.
But if you use Alexa and / or other Blink cameras or are just looking for a simple security camera for a specific purpose and don’t need super high resolution, it’s a good, versatile, and affordable option.
Every smart device requires you to agree to a number of terms and conditions before you are allowed to use it. It is impossible to read and analyze all of these agreements. Since these are agreements most people don’t read, we will count how many times you agree to use devices when we review them.
The company’s terms of service encompasses the following agreements, and as an Amazon subsidiary, Blink requires you to agree to Amazon’s conditions of use:
