Blink Mini 2

Verdict

Great value, the Blink Mini 2 is permanently wired and can be used indoors or, with the optional outdoor power supply, outside. Video quality is good enough, although the 110° viewing angle is a little restrictive and the camera struggles pointing towards a brightly-lit window. However, the good-value subscription package and low-cost starting price makes this camera a simple way to monitor your home.

Introduction

Known for its long-lasting battery powered cameras, the Blink Mini 2 is a low-cost indoor/outdoor camera that needs to be permanently wired. It’s simple to set up, easy to use and has the option for offline video if you don’t want to pay for the reasonably-priced cloud service.

It’s a little basic compared to the competition, but if you just want a simple and cheap way to monitor your home, it’s a great little camera.

Design and Installation

• Bookshelf or wall mounted
• Optional outdoor power supply
• Very small

A small cube, the Blink Mini 2 doesn’t take up a lot of room, so it’s relatively easy to place. Out-of-the-box, the camera is ready for indoor use only, and comes with a simple desktop stand that has a ball joint on it, allowing for a good degree of movement up or down.

While the stand comes clipped to the bottom of the camera, covering up the reset button, it can also be clipped into the rear of the camera. Take the cover off the base, and the Blink Mini 2 can be screwed to a wall instead.

There’s a USB-C port at the rear, which is deeply recessed, so I had to use the cable that Blink provided.

As the camera is water resistant, it can be used outside, but it does need the external power adaptor (£8.99). This comes with a weatherproof adaptor that plugs securely into the USB-C port, creating a seal.

As the cable sticks out a little, there’s a limit on how far down you can point the camera. Before mounting the Blink Mini 2 outside, I recommend holding it place and checking the app to make sure you’re covering the area that you need.

A battery-powered camera offers greater flexibility, but using a powered camera means that you don’t have to worry about charging batteries. If you want greater flexibility without the hassle of battery management, a camera with a solar panel, such as the Eufy SoloCam S340 might make more sense. You can also buy solar panels for popular cameras, including the Arlo Pro 5 or the Ring StickUp Cam Pro.

Once installed and powered on, the Blink Mini 2 has to be connected to the Blink app. It’s simple to follow the wizard through and I soon had my camera connected to Wi-Fi.

Features

• Human detection with a subscription plan
• Basic activity and privacy zones
• Cloud or offline recording

In its initial configuration, the camera will just monitor its entire image for motion, and send an alert for any motion detected. Inside, that basic configuration may be alright, as there’s less chance of a false positive.

Outside, the default settings tend to lead to a string of alerts for even relative movement, such as leaves blowing.

The default settings are quite basic. Activity zones are available, but rather than being able to draw boxes around the areas you want to monitor, the app gives a preview image covered by a grid. Here you have to select the grid squares you don’t want to monitor, which feels backward. Still, cutting out some areas will help reduce the number of alerts you get.

There’s a similar privacy zone screen, which let me choose which areas to black out. That’s useful if the camera partly overlooks a neighbour’s home, as you can block out the area in any recorded video.

There’s an option to adjust motion sensitivity, which is worth playing with to get the right balance between the number of alerts you get versus potentially missing something important. It’s worth adjusting the Retrigger time (in seconds) to adjust how many alerts you get

If you have a Blink cloud subscription, which currently costs a reasonable £2.50 per month (£24.99 a year) for a single device or £8 a month (£80 a year) for unlimited devices, then there’s the new human detection feature. This uses cloud processing to only warn you when a person is spotted, similar to how the feature works with Ring cameras.

It’s certainly provides an improvement in the number of alerts that I got, although I got a few false positives when the camera was in the garden. In these cases it was hard to see what exactly had triggered the camera.

A cloud subscription also means that you get 30 days of video history, all stored online. That’s not the only option, as a Blink Sync Module 2 allows you to plug in a USB drive and store video offline without a subscription, although you won’t get the human detection feature.

Recorded video is accessible through the app’s Clips section, which gives a thumbnail view of all clips, sorted by time. If multiple clips were recorded within a few minutes of each other, they’re bundled into a single video clip. I quite like that, as it makes it easier to view a series of events in one go, without having to play lots of individual clips.

Clips can be downloaded to your phone’s photo album, so you can save them permanently.

It’s unlikely, particularly if the camera is inside, that you’ll want it recording permanently. Fortunately, the system supports Arm and Disarm modes, so you can turn off all of your cameras in one go.

Amazon Alexa support is available, and I could live stream the video from the camera to an Echo Show. There’s no Google Home or Apple Home support.

Performance

• Struggles when pointing towards a bright window
• Slightly basic video
• Good night vision

The Blink Mini 2 has a 1080p sensor, and a 110° field of view, which is a little narrow and requires the camera to be carefully aimed at the area you want to cover.

As with most cameras, the Blink Mini 2 struggles a little when pointing towards a strong light source. I set the camera up in my office to start with, and had it pointing towards the French doors.

This proved no good, as the camera struggled with the light coming in, and made the image so dark that I couldn’t’ see what was going on. To be fair, it’s an issue that I have with a lot of cameras.

I moved the camera so that it was perpendicular to the doors, and that improved the exposure so that I could see what was going on. During the day footage can be a little soft, with fine detail smudged out, but the video is clear enough to show what’s going on.

I did find that the viewing angles are a little tight, so it’s hard to capture someone head-to-toe in a small room. It’s important that this camera is placed with care and the feed checked to make sure you can see as much as possible.

At night, the camera has a spotlight, which is useful for lighting up the outside, but I found that it shot the best video with its IR lights, shooting video in black and white. Inside, the IR LEDs have good range, and night footage is very good.

Outside, with more natural light, the Blink Mini 2 does better during the day. My office is south facing, but the camera coped well pointing into the sun. Again, slightly limited viewing angles mean that I couldn’t see as much of my garden as when using the Ring StickUp Cam XXX, but I could get most of it in, along with the doors at the back.

At night, outside, the camera struggled a little to pick up fine detail, as you can see from the shot below of me picking up one of my cats.

Audio quality is basic, but alright. And, the two-way talk feature is useful enough if you want to talk to someone that you can see on the feed.

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