Blink Outdoor (3rd Gen) - wireless, weather-resistant HD security camera, two-year battery life, motion detection, set up in minutes – 3 camera system

We purchased our first Blink Home Security Camera July of 2018. We were going out of the country and wanted to make sure our 18 year old son closed the garage door and locked the house. It did the job and we felt better knowing while on the other side of the world we could monitor our home. The following Summer we were so happy with our indoor system, we decided to purchase 2 outdoor cameras with the 2 way audio, and were so happy with the video and audio quality, we bought another add on outdoor camera, the next month. A year later we found the mini indoor cameras. We have one for a child's bedroom and one for the playroom. The video and audio quality is great. A year after that we bought another 3 outdoor Cameras, again video and audio quality is great. Just before Christmas 2021 Blink came out with the doorbell camera, and we purchased it. One, because it was blink and 1/2 the price of a ring doorbell camera. Two, because the doorbell that came with our new build home was so quiet, we couldn't ever hear the bell ring. In total we now have... 3 Indoor battery powered 2 Indoor mini corded power 6 Outdoor battery powered 1 doorbell wired to exciting doorbell. Cameras purchased... July 17th, 2018 Blink Indoor Home Security Camera System with Motion Detection, HD Video, 2-Year Battery Life and Cloud Storage Included - 3 Camera Kit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018HC6PVA/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_E4N35AJJXM4QAYYN1S03?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 July 15th, 2019 Blink XT2 Outdoor/Indoor Smart Security Camera with cloud storage included, 2-way audio, 2-year battery life – 2 camera kit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MN67BCR/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_2VZV3YZ7F3X4F5WSF9SF?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 August 20th, 2019 Blink XT2 Outdoor/Indoor Smart Security Camera with cloud storage included, 2-way audio, 2-year battery life – Add-on camera for existing Blink customers https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07M8DTHGL/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_7XGZ93G8PTGGNHTNBGEK?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 November 22nd, 2020 Blink Mini – Compact indoor plug-in smart security camera, 1080 HD video, night vision, motion detection, two-way audio, Works with Alexa – 2 cameras https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07X27VK3D/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_dl_0CVS1GZCPQPJE577M0JV?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 August 3, 2021 Blink Outdoor - wireless, weather-resistant HD security camera, two-year battery life, motion detection, set up in minutes – 3 camera kit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086DKSHQ4/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_dl_9F09K8M142MATNJY1C7P?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 November 29th, 2021 Introducing Blink Video Doorbell | Two-way audio, HD video, motion and chime app alerts and Alexa enabled — wired or wire-free (Black) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08SG2MS3V/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_dl_JTH38J37N7ST707FMW4P?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 Blink offers two subscription plans. 1 Blink device $3 per month or $30 annually Unlimited Blink devices $10 per month or $100 annually You do not have to have a Blink Subscription if you do not choose to, but you won't be able to store videos. With the subscription you are even able to share your videos by text, or email. To neighbors, Friends, Family, and even the police department. Cons/irritations When an outdoor camera faces the sun at any point of the day, the motion detection will go off, until you adjust the motion activity spots in the camera settings. This can take a few days to work out the kinks. Indoor mini cameras the motion activity spots don't always work. Sometimes it will go off when there is motion in the grayed out zones, and sometimes not go off in the non-greyed out zones. This maybe human error on our part. We are looking for a longer cord for the mini's to mount on the wall or ceiling. The are options to rotate the camera view, so that you are able to mount the camera wherever you need. Overall we are happy with our Blink system and hope the company continues to grow and come out with new products. Compared to my parents very very expensive Arlo system, Blink is more reliable, and is more cost-effective. So much so, my parents have ditched the Arlo camera system and have purchased a new Blink system. We highly recommend Blink to anyone who would like to have a home video camera system that works, and won't break the bank. We love that you can start out small and work your way in to as much as you want/need.

When we first purchased cams back in 2017, we compared to Arlo and Ring before we chose Blink. Now we are up to 10 cams, covering every angle of the house. Here are my findings after using them for almost 4 years (and still buying more): PROS: > #1 video quality is excellent. Day time is a bit better than night, but night vision is as good as it gets with cams. POSITION of your cam matters a ton. I started out putting them way high up and quickly realized - if you actually want identifying features - they need to be lower. Otherwise... yeah you see someone walking past, but you cant ID anything, so what is the use. > So inexpensive - so easy to integrate. Anytime we have ANYTHING we need to cover, we just order another cam and it literally takes 5 minutes to get it out of the box, batteries in, and added to existing system.. seriously - 5 minutes. > The app is great. Very intuitive. Our first cams had very few "advanced features" every time i order new cams, they have improved their features. Now you are able to zoom all the way in to very small areas, to capture certain areas and exclude others.. For example - old cams you had to block off large sections of the capture area to avoid the cams picking up movement from trees, but now you can pinpoint one little part of a branch on a tree to exclude if its triggering the cam. > Motion detection is very sensitive - but they have it tweaked just about right. It never misses anything, but if you setup your exclusion zones well - you can get it almost perfect. I dont have a lot of false alarms and I'm running 10 cams. We have one setup to look at the sidewak, and after much tweaking, we can actually exclude the street... but pick up both sidewalks on both sides of the street. You can setup the app to alert you or not alert you.. you can turn sound on or off on alerts. On windy days I do end up just going into the app and turning off all cams that are setup around lots of trees until the storm is over.. but thats like a few times a year. > Super easy playback and control of cams. It's instant - you can control them in any way, very easily. If I am working on a project in the yard, I dont want my cams on for hours, running out of batteries - so I just go into the app and turn them all off. It takes seconds. Likewise - if i hear a noise at night, super easy to open the app and live view any cam so i can look all around the house and see everything happening outside, from every angle. > Extremely easy to move around. We have had them for years - so we move them around occasionally. I even had mice in our crawlspace under the house at one point and just grabbed one of the cams off the side of the house and stuck it down there so I could catch them at night. Theres no commitment with these - no hard wiring so you can mount them anywhere and taking them on and off the mount takes 2 seconds. > No subscription needed to store clips. thats BIG for us. We would not like blink as much if they changed that. We run a lot of cams and it just stays 100% full storage - we can still access a few weeks worth of video, it just deletes oldest. You can download/save any videos. > Lots of mounting options. You have to buy them separately if you want anything special, but I have 3 different types of mounts - one for trees, one around porches that need to be secured so they cant be taken, and then the standard mounts for cams not at risk of being taken. There are camo skins as well - I have on in a tree that you pretty much cant see unless you know its there. > Customer support is super decent. In the winter of 2018, one of my cams took on a green hue to the image when the temp went down to about 10 degrees outside. I emailed customer service explaining the issue and sent a screenshot and within 24 hours they asked me for the SN of the cam, and did a firmware update that fixed it. I was quite happy with that. CONS: > So while the batteries are awesome because the cams are so easy to move around and deal with... i blow through batteries. Fortunately, i just get 20 packs of AA's, but with 10 cams - even though Blink ~says~ batteries can last a year? it totally depends on usage. So we get LOTS of traffic on our front cams because we live in a busy area and have people walking past all day. I change out the batteries on every one of those front cams once a month. Granted - thats many hundreds of video captures and ideally, we should connect those cams to electricity somehow - that is an option with blink, but I dont mind changing batteries. On the cams in the back yard and side paths - I really can go once or twice a year changing those, except for the ones that catch a lot of foot traffic. So the battery usage is totally dependent on traffic. Personally - the cams are a big deal to me, so i dont mind it at all. Benefits totally outweigh the downsides. > The biggest difference between Blink and some other companies is that i see other people with hardwired cams that can catch EVERYTHING in a continuous fashion, for hours. like the surveillance videos you see online where the cam just happened to catch something happening down the street...Blink doesnt work that way. it only captures immediate video clips, triggered by motion activation. It does store all videos.. you can see something weird in your yard and look back through videos to find out what happened - but it isnt 24 hours of continuous video feed. > You can get gaps in your videos. So it can capture 1 minute of video at a time, but then it takes a small break before it starts capturing again, so if something is happening and its videotaping an event - it will record an entire minute of excellent footage - but then it takes a 5 second break before it starts recording again. that doesnt sound like a long time, and for security it's not normally an issue.. the average bad guy is in and out quickly.. but it is annoying that it takes 5 seconds to re-trigger. So.... 2 minutes of continuous video... but in the middle of that 2 minutes.. a 5 second break. OVERALL - Super high video quality... cams you can move around super easily... a very easy app... I love blink and the upsides far outweigh any downsides. I always recommend it to people when they ask. You can cover your entire house at a super affordable price, you dont need to be rich at all.. Our 3 year old cams are still as good as our brand new ones. The peace of mind the cams bring me is priceless. I know every single thing happening everywhere, all the time outside. The affordability made it possible so that nothing can ever surprise us.

I have 4 outdoor cameras and they work great for the most part. Motion detection works great, the picture quality is good, the night vision isn't great, but it's pretty good. I like that it alerts my phone and my Alexa device whenever motion is detected and that I can change the sensitivity level. I didn't give these 5 stars because (1) sometimes the WiFi signal is lost and they're more or less useless for those few minutes (it doesn't happen very often either), (2) there's wait time in between switching through camera live view, (3) I wish I could see all of my cameras at once instead of having to toggle between them in my app, (5) I wish the live view came up on my Alexa device instead of just saying motion was detected, forcing me to give the command to show the camera. Overall, I think the outdoor blink cameras are worth the money. They do what they say they do, and they're easy to install anywhere, the batteries last a long time, even with constant motion detection and high quality video. They even have two way audio, so they're also a great alternative for a video doorbell. I also have blink mini's that I use from inside, facing outside, as part of my perimeter. They're less expensive and more reliable, in my opinion, but they can be difficult to use for outdoor monitoring because of window glare (they do, however, work great in a garage). If you're trying to decide on the outdoor or indoor cameras for outdoor monitoring, just go with the outdoor cameras and save yourself the hassle. The outdoor cameras are a good choice for anyone who wants a camera/motion detector installed easily and quickly, and doesn't want to deal with more complex, wired systems.

This review is for people who want no monthly fees, no wires, have the patience to read a long review and want no worries about what it'll be like when the free cloud trial ends (I'm here to help with the no worries). The Amazon Blink battery operated cameras provide no monthly fees and no wires and they do it well. Motion detection, night vision and video quality are all you could want. I've used other DIY brands since 2018 and nothing compares unless you want to spend hours running wires to and from your homes electrical and LAN connections and spend triple the cost of these wifi battery operated units. The build and picture quality of the cameras were so good that after the first three purchased in February 2021 I bought two more in April 2021. Added Wasserstein Solar panels for external power to four of the most used cameras in April. I'll review the external power units after a while of use but after almost two months I can't complain. When looking at reviews on my initial purchase I didn't see any that covered what it was like to use the local USB no monthly fee option. Probably because Blink offers a free trial of their cloud recording storage for a few months and when it ends no one bothers to review it further. I'm here to tell you if you're like me and don't need monthly fees and have about 10 seconds more patience when looking at the stored videos you'll be satisfied saving the $3 to $10 bucks a month. If you need to record live videos and have rapid video access then $3 bucks a month is well worth it, but if you live in the burbs where life can be a bit boring at times then save your money. If you live in a high crime area or have money to burn then spend the $10 bucks a month on premium service. If you do the free USB recording option your recordings take a little longer to load and you can't delete them until the recording is done playing, that's it. Sure you can't save and record real time videos and it takes a little longer to review and delete videos when using the USB, but I can do without that. Hopefully this helps with your decision. In addition to the Wasserstein Solar external power I also purchased a Formass outlet mount for the Blink module, so far both have been great. I'll review those after using them for an extended period of time.

I initially started with a Blink doorbell and was pleased with it, so I moved on to the 3 pack of outdoor cameras. They've been installed now about a week and I am just as pleased with them as I was with the doorbell. I have noticed that there is longer lag between motion detection and notification with the cameras vs the doorbell, but it is not bad and they are capturing the activity that triggers the recording well. The images are clear. I have posted a couple of night pictures. The one of the doorstep in not in night mode, probably because the porch light puts out enough light to not trigger the night vision. The other two are full on night vision. The one of the patio is remarkable as it is very dark out there. I have tried various "wireless" cameras over the years and most worked ok, but the remote access always seemed to be hit and miss and the apps were clunky to use. I find the Blink app to be pretty simple to use and so far have had no issues with losing signal etc.. If I were going to give a "wish list" to Blink for features, I guess I would like to be able to use more than one sync module on my system and have them bound to the same account. It would be nice to be able to pull up a multi camera live view. Maybe that's something they can work on for future updates. It would also be nice to have a computer interface windows/mac to view the cameras. Full disclosure, I have subscribed to the Blink subscription plus service as I have 4 cameras (counting the doorbell) and plan on adding at least an additional 3 outdoor cameras. At $100/yr it's a bargain for up to 10 cameras. The remote access has been excellent. I understand that without a subscription plan the cameras are very limited in function. Having tried many things over the years, I can honestly say that I am happiest with the Blink system and will be adding to my system in the near future.

Ok I needed a method to watch the house and the dog when I'm at work ect. I looked around found blink and although a lil pricey I purchased the 3 camera system. It does come with the sync module so everything you need minus the flash drive is in the box. The flash drive allows you to save video locally at the house. You rove the rubber plug in the back of each camera use the lil plastic tool to remove the silver screw to open and install the two AA batteries that are included also. Real nice energizers, not crappy china batteries. Now it's a lil tricky to install the included camera mounts but I figured out that if you angle the lip on the mount in the hole in the camera and then apply pressure it snaps right in. Install the mount to the camera beforehand as there is plenty of room to get to the two screws the wall mount. The app was simple to load and just point your camera at each q code label inside each camera and it instantly saves that camera to your system. Amazing system and simple. The tiny speakers have loud clear sound and two way communication with these is like having a walkie. You can save to the cloud for a limited time then , here it comes, you have to pay a fee er camera to save after trial period. I'm not going to do that. So I ebayed a 256 gif flash drive for $10 to save what I want to but you have to remove the drive from the sync module and stick in in your pc to view it. The cloud is nice as you can save and veiw right from your fone. Well that's my 2 cents and I hope this helps you not fuss with it. THE DOWNSIDE - I cannot find a way to buy just one camera to add another without buying the whole kit without sync module at a reduced price. So to add just one additional camera I may have to she'll out another $75 on top of my original $265 investment of the 3 camera system.

*update* after waiting 2 hours when the customer service rep in the Philippines told me they would call me back in an hour and didn’t, I called back again. The new rep made me repeat every single test we already did hours ago and came back with the genius response of “your network is on an unknown frequency. Call your internet provider and find out what the frequency is” *insert eyeroll here* Once again it has been proven that when they don’t know the answer to a question they give canned b.s. responses. After a total of 3 hours on the phone with “technical support” the blink system STILL does not work. Wow what a nightmare this product is. I bought this last year and it worked OK for a year. Once a month it it would stop working and I would have to call customer service to reboot them. This is when they had US based customer service. Now all calls go to the Philippines which is another story. So after a year of spotty service it finally completely stopped working. So I bought an entirely new set up. New sync device and new cameras. Set them all up today and low and behold the new ones don’t work now either. I called customer service in the Philippines and after almost two hours on the phone, it still doesn’t work. They give you canned responses like, restart the router, move the sync module closer to the modem, bring all cameras in next to the modem. When you do this they work. When you bring them outside where they belong, they don’t work. They don’t pick up motion and they don’t work when you try to get a live view or snapshot. The app is garbage. Look at the recent reviews in the App Store. Every single one is one star. When you try to change settings you will get an error of “settings not updated” but when you look it actually does update. You will also get “failed to arm (or disarm)” errors but when you check it actually did arm or disarm. Worse yet is when you try to get a live view or snapshot. The app just spins forever and doesn’t load a thing. If you go outside and wave in front of the motion detector that also does not generate a video. What is the point of cameras that don’t work? Now let’s talk customer service. What a joke. These jokers actually tried to tell me I have poor connection from my modem and told me to download an app to check the health of my WiFi. I did and it came back excellent lol. Then they tell me to delete the app and reinstall it. So I did and it doesn’t accept the email/password combination that I have always used and never changed. They then said “click the forgot password link” and when I did it gives you an error of “failed to generate new password link” WOW THEN customer service said “ok try typing in your email and password instead of auto filling” I did and THAT doesn’t work. Literally nothing works. It’s amazing that every single thing doesn’t work. Who made this product and app? Kindergarteners??? It’s abundantly clear that there has been no quality control testing on both the product and the app. OR— someone at blink has a vendetta against the company and broke every single thing. Lol. This is a joke and an extreme waste of time. So many hours of my life have been spent trying to get this product to work. It just doesn’t. Buy a different security system. Oh and one more thing. The claim of the energizer ultimate lithium batteries lasting 2 years is beyond false. They didn’t last even a month per camera. I spent insane amounts of money replacing these batteries every month for each camera. To make matters worse there is apparently a shortage of them so a package of 4 batteries is about $20 on Amazon and target. Insane. Class action lawsuit anyone?

Pros: - Super easy setup - High quality video - Integrates with Alexa - Good app - inexpensive Cons: - lag with live video (although just as good as any other camera I've tried) - can't watch alarm clips on Echo Show Overall, this is the best camera system I've owned. We'll see if the battery life comes anywhere close to 2 years. I'm really excited by creating Alexa routines around them. (e. g., Turn on outside lights when motion is detected). One thing I would really like to see is to be able to view alarm clips on my Echo Show. Right now, I get an alarm notification on all of my devices. But if I want to see the clip, I have to use the app on my phone. I can watch live video on my Echo Show, so I assume this feature is possible. UPDATE: I won't change my rating. But I discovered a problem with the app. Basically, you can't record motion without getting notifications. I have one camera pointing at the street. I do want to record all action on my street. I don't want to be notified everytime a car drives by (I have it connected to Alexa, so it will be loudly announced). I'm not subscribing to the cloud service, so recording to the microSD card is fine. I know that it's possible with Ring cameras to do what I want.

Me encantó la duración de la batería, fácil instalación, y que voy a armando un sistema con otros productos Blink