Blink Home Monitor — Smart Home Security App

The local USB-only recording doesn't sync like it should. I will miss an entire day or two, then magically start syncing again. Also the outdoor cam motion detection is not very sensitive. It misses a lot of activity. The doorbell unit motion detection is much better. Also the live view continue button is a joke and hassle. I wouldn't purchase the system again.

The app is mostly easy to use. I had an issue linking their doorbell to the module. I tried several times and kept missing a step. It wasn't clear even after watching many utube vids. I hope blink works on making it easier to connect them in the future. I was also reluctant to call their customer service because I assumed it would be a horrible experience like most companies today. It was a great experience dealing with their customer service and that was a nice surprise.

I love blink, it gives me more supervision and check in opportunities with my kids while I work. The only bummer is the clip length. It will cut off in the middle of a recording instead of recording all activity. It's very frustrating. Also we are unable to check live view of our doorbell. The button has to be pushed or motion activated and in action to have live feed. If these things were fixed it would be 5 stars all the way.

Don't bother with Blink! The hardware is GREAT!! -picture quality -camera features -reliability -could not ask for better BUT... The USB software is the problem and I think it's bait and switch to get the monthly plan that we have to pay for. Too many limitations that I truly believe are contrived. Can't swipe to delete...come on man and no saving video. Great hardware...Bad software.

Product was decent when I first purchased just a few issues. There was a lag for recordinbut it has just gotten so much worse. It doesn't go live most of the time. You get blacked out videos. It doesn't turn on to start capturing with motion. There's a very loud click when it turns on to record and doesn't turn on right away giving an intruder time to hide face from camera recording. When trying to save changes to settings on camera it takes several tries to save. I hope they resolve the issues.

Update 6/2/22: an automatic SW update a couple days ago seemed to have vastly improved some of the situations I described below. So I feel obliged to update my review as well. Most notably, the USB access without the cloud subscription is working flawlessly for a couple days now. Before, it will record for only a second, or shows no picture at all, or fail to let me access the recording, everyday. Now, it’s reliable and reasonably quick to let me review all the recordings. And the SW just seems much less buggy going from one use to another. So, together with the great hardware, I now consider this a good product worth recommending. — End update. It takes quite a long time between the motion trigger (which is only seconds after actual motion ) and the ability to see with the camera, either through real-time view or waiting for the recording to be ready for view. It feels like half a min to a minute, so most likely I’ll miss whatever triggered the camera unless it’s somebody ringing the doorbell. After the initial cloud access expired, I’m supposed to be able to use my local drive and view the clips the same way. But it was even slower, and so far with only 30% success rate, some attempts causing the system to fault out in different ways. In today’s world, this is unacceptably buggy, for a software of this complexity. And it makes the whole product sub-par, even though I think the cameras and their installation are great.

Blink cameras come with a free trial of their cloud backup service. For some systems the cloud service is not required and videos can be saved with the HUB’s memory port by using a USB drive. So, I thought I would see how things change after the free trial expires and find out what’s different. Today I went out in front of our cameras to see how they perform and here’s what I found. First of all I noticed that the cameras respond differently. How? The camera on the front of our house stopped detecting movement in the driveway and near the house and, instead, detects every car that drives by - even though those zones are deactivated. The notifications for movement detection are often very delayed or non-existent. The list of videos no longer has an orange dot next to the new videos that haven’t been watched yet so you can’t tell which ones are new and yet-to-be watched. The talk button still works but the sound doesn’t come out of the speaker for a minute or two - so the majorly delayed two-way communication makes that feature virtually unusable. Checking the live-view results in a spinning curser as the system struggles to produce the video. Overall the system is very slow to respond and sometimes doesn’t react at all. So, yes, the cloud service isn’t required but my analysis shows that, without the service, performance is greatly reduced and sometimes the cameras just don’t respond at all. ☹️

The first few days when I had this it worked very well using the ringer and letting my Alexa announce that there is someone here now the app is very awful and it need some working on. Whenever there is motion detected on the gate and I click to see you can never know if you’re really gone see what’s happening or you’ll just be on an infinite loading screen and miss on whatever was happening outside of your door. The only time you get to actually see thought the camera is when someone is ringing the doorbell or when there is motion detected why can’t we see whats happening outside whenever we feel like it? If it’s because of the battery dying too quickly we’ll thats my problem that’s why you give warnings ahead of time. The worse part is that videos end too quickly when they don’t have to, I got a video of a delivery man ringing my door bell and then 2 seconds later the video cut off now I can’t see where he left my package due to the video cutting off when it didn’t need to, I know I left the record time to the Max amount of time it lets me and I turned “end video early” OFF so I don’t see any reason why my recordings end early whenever it feels like it. The motion sensor is very odd when it comes to recording, somehow it is able to detect a small cat walking on the floor Feet away from my door but sometimes it can’t even detect a person walking towards my door until they’ve already reached it.

I’ve used many brands of cameras in my line of work so I know what’s utter garbage, and what isn’t. These are alright for simple home use. The quality of the video both during the day, and at night are sufficient. You can clearly see the persons face, and that is all that really matters. They have always detected motion well. They were decently priced. I don’t love that they require an email, and a phone number. Pick one. It just feels extra intrusive. No support team needs both on file. I also do not love that the notifications are hit or miss. I have everything set up with my preferences in both my phone settings, and the app settings yet most of the time I do not get any. So that means I have to open the app to see if anything is captured. Which makes the live video mic basically useless. If you want to relay a message verbally via the camera to family when they enter the home you will likely not be notified of its detecting motion. If you want to shout at an intruder that you’re watching them, also useless. That is a fix that is completely on the app end seeing as my notifications work for every other app I use. So overall a decent camera, easy to set up, but crappy on the notification end. If that could be fixed I would say this would be a pretty great system.

First, I see a ton of not so great reviews. I knew exactly what I was getting when we purchased multiple cameras for our home indoor/outdoor and the doorbell. The price point for this system and what it has to offer is amazing for what you get. It’s not a top notch system by any means, but it doesn’t the job and the video quality is great in my opinion. If you want something seamless without any learning curve and high dollar user friendly, then you should look into more expensive systems that give you that. We utilize the indoor blink mini for a toddler room, a indoor blink camera for a nursery camera, 3 outdoor cameras, and the blink doorbell. We also have the plus yearly subscription. The system automatically arms every night and turns off in the morning with a schedule I set. And I can easily arm the system while we are away from our home. The talk feature through he app is great, way better than I expected honestly. Yes you have to replace batteries in battery operated cameras, batteries are not in short supply at my home therefore this does not bother us. The image quality on the app and the overall live stream is perfect for what we need. I also have great things to say about the motion detection notifications that come to my phone and my husbands phone.