Blink Home Monitor 4+

Hello,

My son-in-law assisted in the installation of the families new blink security system. Set up installation of the floodlight cameras and entranceway cameras was very straightforward.. our worst problem was our Wi-Fi reception from the home and that is a problem that we will be dealing with other than that it was very easy. Instructions were well written and very insightful technology is amazingly effective efficient and easy to install.. I’m blown away by the division and night, vision and audio capabilities of the cameras and the system that we installed not to mention, we saved money that it would cost us to have a technician come and install our system. We purchased five cameras plus the floodlight camera, and we also purchased the bells for the front and side door and the monitor and ringer for the inside of the house and I can only say that I this point I am blown away by the quality of the system. The three cameras that we have install so far are so effective the remaining cameras are going to be overkill, but for me, that’s not a problem. The last thing we need to install which we didn’t have time because it got too dark was the monitor and bell. we also had to purchase an extra bracket to allow the doorbells to monitor to be installed flatly as we have intricate woodwork around the door frame. We expect those additional parts shortly and will complete the insulation at that point overall very very satisfied.

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.

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.