Blink Mini , indoor smart security camera
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It’s tough not to love a good, super affordable home security camera. The Blink Mini is one of those, like the popular Wyze Cam and entry-level Ring Indoor Cam. It’s a $35 tiny plug-in camera that’s capable enough to meet most people’s needs when it comes to keeping an eye on their home.
The Blink Mini records video in 1080p resolution, allows for a two-way audio chat from the smartphone app to the camera, and it can alert your phone when it detects activity in one of your configured activity zones. The Mini has a 110-degree field of view that’s wide enough to see most of your room, and it can see in the dark, too. If you own other Blink cameras, like the recent XT2, you’ll be able to access the Mini’s clips and all of your other footage within the same app.
None of these features are particularly impressive on their own — at this point, they’re expected out of a smart home security cam, even one that’s as affordable as this. The Blink Mini meets the bar but doesn’t exceed my expectations in any way. Much of my enthusiasm for the Blink Mini is chilled because there are other costs associated with getting the most out of it, which hasn’t been the case with previous Blink cameras.
It comes with free cloud storage through the end of this year, and if you already have a Blink account through an older Blink camera, you’ll continue to get free cloud storage as a perk. However, if you’re new to Blink’s ecosystem, cloud storage will start costing you $3 per camera each month starting on January 1st, 2021. Declining the cloud storage will still allow the Mini to alert you when its motion zones are triggered, and the camera will let you see a live view from a remote location.
That’s about it in terms of functionality, though. For a device that’s made to do just a few things, losing some of those features to a paywall hurts a lot. If you don’t want cloud storage, Blink’s upcoming Sync Module 2 will let you plug in removable storage to move your Blink Mini clips to a flash drive.
It will also let you connect up to 10 Blink cameras on your network. It will cost $35 — as much as the camera — when it arrives in the coming months, and the good news: it’s a one-time purchase that lets you get around paying for cloud storage. Now, the less good news: it tops out at supporting 64GB of storage, so you’ll probably need to have a second flash drive on hand if you like to save a vast amount of footage.
All told, that pushes a single-camera Blink Mini setup to nearly $80. I prefer Wyze Cam’s simpler, more affordable microSD card solution.