Blink Mini
A charming security camera with strong image quality and all of the features most people need
SCORE
PRICE £29 (£35 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/311blink
The Blink Mini is a new addition to Amazon-owned Blink’s security camera range. It’s cheap, cheerful and basic; a camera for those who want something simple to monitor a single room. Don’t expect much in the box, though, with just the camera, a 2m micro-USB cable and a power adapter to be found.
While the Blink Mini feels lightweight, it looks neat decked out in white and black plastic and crams in all of the necessary core features, including 1080p footage recorded at a frame rate of 30fps. There’s motion detection, day and night video recording, and even two-way audio, meaning you can talk through your smartphone to the person on the other side of the camera.
As with most smart home security cameras, you can either view the camera feed live through the Blink smartphone app or put it in motiondetection mode. When the Blink Mini detects movement, it records a short video clip and then uploads it to a central server where you can review it at your leisure. This service is free until 31 March 2021, but after that you must pay a subscription for the clip storage service.
The Basic subscription is £25 per year (or £2.50 per month) per camera and there’s also a Plus subscription that supports unlimited cameras and costs £80 per year or £8 per month. Those bills will start to mount up, so note that the pricier battery-powered Blink XT 2 cameras (£100 each) come with lifetime subscription-free clip storage. The only way to store video clips on the Blink Mini is to pay an extra £50 for the Blink Sync Module 2 with its microSD slot.
If you want local storage, consider Chinese-made rivals such as the Yi Smart Security Camera ( pcpro. link/311yi), which is cheaper than the Blink Mini at £28 and has a microSD card slot built-in. The flip side of this is that the Yi’s subscription plan for cloud storage is much more expensive than Blink’s, costing from £10 per month for a single camera.
What the Mini lacks in storage options it makes up for with software control. You can tweak the sensitivity of the motion detection,
“What makes it stand out is that 30fps frame rate, which delivers smoother, less jerky video than most cameras at this price”
adjust the length of the clip that’s recorded between five and 30 seconds, and even adjust the intensity of the infrared illumination LED for night video recordings.
You may also want to change the volume of the camera’s internal speaker (this goes surprisingly loud for one so small) and the camera’s “motion zones”. These allow you to mask out areas that you don’t want to detect movement in, so you don’t get too many motion alerts from curtains flapping in the breeze, for example.
Image quality in daylight and good indoor light is surprisingly strong for the price, but what makes it stand out is that 30fps frame rate, which delivers smoother, less jerky video recording than most low-budget security cameras. The night vision video recording is impressive, too. Its single infrared LED provided a stronger, more even illumination than the Yi and it records a clearer image as a result. Audio quality again meets expectations, with both the microphone and speaker working to deliver clear two-way audio.
Perhaps surprisingly for an Amazon product, you don’t get much in the way of built-in intelligence. In particular, there’s no face, human or pet detection, and no extra features. The Yi Smart Security Camera, by contrast, detects both humans and crying babies, meaning you can use it as a baby monitor at a pinch.
One area in which the Blink Mini works well, however, is its integration with Amazon Echo Show speakers. Link the Blink Skill with your Amazon account using the Alexa app on your phone and you can use your voice to display the camera’s live feed on the screen of your Echo device.
Is there enough here to tempt buyers? I think so. The Blink Mini is an effective, neat and cheap home security camera that works well and provides free video clip storage until 31 March 2021 - and the price of the Basic subscription after that is reasonable at only £2.50 per month. It lacks some handy features, nota bly a microSD card slot so you can free yourself of subscription costs, but with strong video quality and the option of expanding to include local video storage later, it’s an excellent option if you have less than £50 to spend.
SPECIFICATIONS
1080p camera at up to 30fps indoor use 110° field of view 802.11n Wi-Fi two-way audio 36 x 49 x 50mm (WDH) 48g 2yr limited warranty