Amazon Blink Mini
Private eye
Security camera is a blinking good idea
SECURITY CAMERA ❘ £35 from Amazon www.snipca.com/35169
A decent budget camera with shortterm free storage
Amazon’s doorbell video brand, Ring, has caused controversy, having been accused of sharing data in ways that some people claim amounts to mass surveillance. Blink is a separate range that competes with more conventional Wi-fi home-security systems (see our round-up in Issue 527, page 24). The new Mini is half the price of the original Blink camera and connects to your Wi-fi all by itself, without needing a Blink Sync module (£50 from www.snipca.com/35170).
Considering it records in 1080p Full HD at 30 frames per second (fps), that makes it very good value. The similarly compact Neos Smartcam (£30 from www.snipca. com/32065, see Issue 558, page 28) is 1080p but only 15fps, while the pricier BT Smart Home Cam (£50 from www.snipca. com/32063) records 15fps at a coarser 720p. Both of those cameras, however, let you save videos to a microsd card and online. Neos will keep 12 seconds of footage after each motion trigger, while BT just stores a still image but also lets you record to your phone.
Amazon keeps your video clips online, but while this service is free with the £70 Blink camera and the £90 Blink XT2 outdoor model, all you get with the Mini is a trial that expires in March 2021. After that, you’ll have to pay £2.50 a month or £25 a year for a single-camera Basic subscription or £8/£80 for the unlimited Plus option. Without that, the only way to store video is to add a Blink Sync Module 2 (£35 from www.snipca.com/35171), which supports USB drives – when Amazon gets round to launching it.
It’s a shame this compromises the Blink Mini, which comes with an easy-to-use app for Apple and Android devices that gets you set up quickly and offers plenty of customisation, including motion zones and illumination for night-time infra-red recording.
As with other systems, you can view a live feed at any time, and the camera automatically records when motion is detected. We found video clear and smooth, and a speaker and microphone are built in, so you can hear what’s happening and talk, via the app, to your cat, burglar, or cat burglar. Blink integrates with other Amazon products, so you can tell Alexa to display the camera feed on your Echo Show.