Blink Outdoor (3rd Gen) - wireless, weather-resistant HD security camera, two-year battery life, motion detection, set up in minutes – 1 camera system

Camera is worth its weight in gold. While not your super HD multifunction camera, it works very well for what it does. Video quality is excellent, motion sensor is very sensitive and picks up anything from a bug flying in front of the lens to a kid riding his bike on the street 30 meters away. We have already been able to identify and publicly shame a few irresponsible dog owners who let their dogs chronically poop in out yard, as well as one guy who felt the need to take a sign out of our yard and hurl it at our house every time he walked by. Set up is a breeze and the attachments make it easy to capture various angles depending on if you are mounting flat, horizontally (on a wall), or upside down (like from a ceiling). Have not had any issues with wifi or the camera cutting out and the camera has withstood the 115 degree summer heat index here in Texas. Highly recommend and would/will buy again.

Invested in the Blink Outdoor camera system over the holiday and here are my thoughts after 45 days of usage. PROS: 1. Super easy to set up and install. It pretty much installs itself. 2. User friendly cell phone application. My only complaint is the inability to share access to the app with other household members. I'm not the only one who needs to access footage or receive alerts. You should have an admin user + other standard household users. 3. Image quality is decent as long as there is sufficient lighting. 4. Two way radio. Speaker is not great but microphone picks up even faint sounds. I could clearly hear someone talking on his phone while sitting in a car in front of my house. 5. From the app,. you can turn on/off the blue/red LEDs on the cameras to make them more or less noticeable depending on your needs. 6. App will show you battery life. Each camera can have it's onw settings including sensitivity, clip length, privacy zones, etc. CONS 1. Night vision is not impressive at all, especially when the subject is 10+ fit away. I work around the issue by keeping my outdoor lighting on. Image #1 is at night with outdoor lighting. 2. Motion sensor feature is finicky. It detects motion BEFORE the subject enters the field of view. Motion sensor works best when subject travels across field of vision (left to right, right to left), especially if subject originates from outside of the camera's field of view. To get the best results, camera should be positioned in such a way that potential subjects travel L or R or R to L (not walking toward/away from camera) 3. Activity zones do not work as they should. I don't want my camera triggered by movement in my neighbors' yard but even when graying out that area, camera still picks up movement there. Overall, I am satisfied with this system. I now have 4 cameras installed on my townhouse and I feel like the system met all my needs.

Blink cameras are still years later a good buy for those looking for security cameras on a budget. I've owned four of the original Blink G1 cameras and even after some six years they're still going strong. Helping a friend with their security needs spurred me to look at Blink's current crop of devices and I purchased two new G3 cameras. The G3 cameras I purchased have the ability of two way communication which G1 did not, so I swapped them out placing the G3 cameras at my front and back doors andoved the G1 cameras that had been there to elsewhere. Things to think about and remember... Blink still touts two year battery life. You'll need to take into consideration where you place the camera and the settings as the busier the yard (I have a zero lot yard) and the higher you toggle your settings the less battery life you can expect. To avoid having to swap out batteries, consider investing in a solar panel. Whether it's a third party manufacture or now Blink sells a solar mount it's something to think about. I purchased panels for my G1 cameras (and as a given I purchased them for my new G3 cameras) and haven't worried about power in some six years. The panels even are robust enough that is the sun isn't out for days they can still provide days worth of power before needing to recharge and by that time hopefully the weather will have improved. As much as I want to like my new G3 cameras for their ability to communicate both ways, I get some feedback. I've yet to have a visitor to either the front or back door and have an actual conversation through the cameras, but I'd have appreciated them being noise cancelling. If you have the volume toggled on then they will alert based upon the noise. I've got the volume toggled off and the camera set to thirty seconds or less for motion. I figure I'll get the motion alert and toggle on the volume to then speak with whomever and avoid alerts because the camera heard an errant noise. Daytime recording is great, the G3 cameras had no problems and the quality was comparable to my G1 cameras. The night recordings suffer as Blink cameras have never done really well at night, but you should know who's supposed to be around your residence and not. Obviously if you see someone on a motion recorded clip around your house in the overnight you've likely got a problem regardless of the lack of detail. This however could easily be fixed by just pairing up your camera with an inexpensive motion activated spot lamp. You can find wired, battery and solar powered spot lamps for cheap at your home improvement store or Amazon. Both pointing in the same direction they'll likely see the same thing and go off the spot lamp illuminating and allowing for good enough night time recording in color with detail. Wish Blink would introduce an outdoor rated pan and tilt camera. A family friend had some they wanted my help with and they didn't work out so got them something else. But I kind of like the idea of a pan and tilt camera on the cheap which I think Blink could do. But Blink cameras are so cheap, and usually even on sale in bundles, you can easily buy a few and scatter them around to cover everything. The app, the app, the app... Was thinking about switching from Blink to Reolink but instead stayed with Blink. Was interested in Reolink and even bought a few for testing but the app was a mess compared to the Blink app. I'm an older grandfathered Blink customer so I get free cloud storage and access, new customers will have to buy a subscription. You'll want the subscription for the alerts and immediate video playback as in my testing I've found the local storage option cumbersome and worthless. Your alerts get recorded sure, but to Blink servers and then a once daily dump during the overnight hours to your USB drive if you go local. So that alert you get at work at 8am on Monday, you have to wait for the dump overnight Monday and into Tuesday and then on Tuesday you have to unplug it and use a computer to see what happened at that alert Monday at 8am. Defeats the purpose of running your system local, but this is Amazon and they make their money based on subscriptions. That said I give props to the Blink app for it's rich notifications and ease of use. I get an alert and in the notification with limited exception is a tiny pic. I can tell if it's worth watching and if not just swipe or delete even from the notification. I can pull down on the notification for a bigger picture. If it's worth watching immediately I can tap the notification and it opens and pulls the video then and there for playback. By comparison, the Reolink cameras I was testing don't have rich notifications so you just get these, "...person detected..." notifications which can mean anything from a criminal to a person waking their dog (again, zero lot lawn) to the mailman coming by. I had to open each notification but it doesn't go to the video. It does to a sleeping camera (to conserve power the camera (Reolink) is asleep), the app has to wake the camera and connect, the you're taken to the live view and whatever it is could very well be gone by then. So you then click videos and swipe through the feed that camera has recorded that day / or whenever the last time you wiped the internal SD card of videos. So what the Blink app does in one tap took me nearly seven taps just to see oh yes, it was just the mailman. The Blink app is also organized with each camera having a nice equivalent of a table of contents to section the settings why the Reolink I was testing had it all on one page and demanded scrolling. But once you dial in your settings you don't often change things so I guess that's not something to really worry about. But just the ease of use and directness with the Blink app compared to the blind notifications and swiping of the Reolink app made me decide to send the Reolink cameras back, buy some more Blink cameras and to stay with Blink. The biggest thing I could hope for in the future from Blink is that the cameras will become smart enough to not be bothered by the clouds and sun as some days my cameras go nuts only to find they're being triggered by the difference in light on my lawn as the sun goes in and out of the clouds. And I'd like to see some person detection as despite using zones to filter out the street I still get vehicles going buy (I get several good pictures of the garbage truck every Tuesday...). Maybe the ability to record a vehicle only if it stops within the frame of the camera for however many seconds so if someone does roll up on your place with intent to do harm it'll trigger a recording and not a bunch of pictures of just vehicles going by. And true, feature rich local storage. But all in all, despite their problems which are really just minor, you can't really go wrong with Blink cameras. I spent some six hundred dollars on just five Reolink cameras and solar panels (they were in a two-fer bundle each) and I ultimately sent them back. For the price paid for five cameras I could've gotten five Blink cameras and third party solar panels for cheaper or could've gotten several more than five Blink cameras and panels for that six hundred dollars. While you do get what you pay for, there's no reason that home security cameras have to cost a small fortune.

Weather proof: This camera is amazing! it has been through a lot of tests. When I first got it, I taped it to a Crape Myrtle in my backyard. It was fine through the rain, so I started putting it in different locations. A pond that I made, attracted different wildlife and I wanted to capture images. I can't tell you how many times I found that camera face down in the water! 🤣 I pulled it, out saw hilarious footage of a camera falling into the water, and put it somewhere else. This camera is still going strong. Battery life: I have changed the batteries once. It is several years old! I don't like to review something until I've had it for a while. I recently bought three more of these outdoor cameras. Connectivity/range: I put one inside of a shelter box that I put outside to help a cat that has been coming around every night. I spotted him on another blink camera mounted to the eave of my garage. I set the motion sensor on, so if a different critter had gone into the box I could have scared it away making noise on the microphone. I have the hub plugged in to an outlet, near a window, inside my laundry room. It is a good 30 ft away from this cat shelter box. The camera is inside the box which is inside another box with a layer of insulation in between. Video Clarity: It recorded the cat up close, and not blurry. It is pitch black inside that box. It is so clear, I'm hoping to be able to find the owner now! The eave camera that caught him in the first place, provided a little bit too blurry of a video to identify him. That is not a complaint! It's very far away and very dark! We live on an island, and there is very little ambient light here when the sun goes down! Camera Noise: The camera must also be quiet! The cat did not flinch when that camera came on. I believe there's a little infrared dot light that comes on when recording, although I'm not sure about that. Anyway, I think you can turn that off in the settings. But, cats cannot see infrared light, I'm pretty sure. At least that's what I read on the internet so it must be true! I highly recommend this camera, for any application. I also use one inside as a monitor for a different cat that I rescued. That's a story for a different day. Mounts: There are various mounts that work to achieve bigger viewing angles, I have some of both. In all, I have 6 Blink cameras. 3 indoor and 3 outdoor. I would recommend any one of them!

So far now it works really really good. Naturally I saw some negative reviews but figured I’d take a stab at ordering a $100 camera. Like a lot of places in America since the pandemic, my neighborhood has been seeing an increase in crime. I want to get three of these so I can have cameras watching my car my front door in my backyard. But I started with one just to make sure the stuff works. The camera came in from and boxing it I had it all set up and ready to go within about 15 minutes. It didn’t connect to my Wi-Fi the first time, so I tried it again and it worked great and has not lost connection now for about three weeks I think? The motion sensor works fantastic, in fact may be a bit too sensitive because when the sprinklers go on it notifies my camera. I actually think this is a good thing because it means nothing can escape the attention of the camera. So far things are OK, and the night vision is great and I’m getting some interesting shots of animals coming by the front door of my house at night. I like that I can adjust how long the video is, how sensitive it is, and how long to record the video. And the attachment it came with were really really easy. All I needed was a power screwdriver and I was able to mount it in the wood above my front door. I’m not sure if it would go well into stucco, but it would surface works great. So far I’m very satisfied with these, and I plan to buy two more so I can have video footage of my cars in my backyard. There of been a lot of car break-ins in my neighborhood so I’d like to see if I can catch these crooks. [update June 2021] I've had the camera now 3 months and the "trial cloud subscription" has expired - and I'm happier!!! I bought the USB stick to plugin so now I can leave it on and record more. With the cloud there was storage limit and it was annoying - now I have 64g to store as much as I like and delete as I please. It's a bit slower than the cloud but not much. STILL HAPPY! I should get two more now.

I do not know where should I start. First, I have never ever seen a security or surveillance camera which does not have date/time on the recorded/live video. This camera has neither. This is why is not not referred to as a security camera by Blink. They just call it an outdoor camera. This is why it is also so low priced. Local storage: Since the Blink Sync module is included with this camera, I only needed a good quality USB flash drive for local storage. The recorded video at highest quality is max 4-12MB in size, so even a 8GB flash drive would record for months. The caveat with local storage is that the camera will record ONLY when armed AND movement is detected. That's it. It will not record anything else. This is mentioned clearly in the Blink cloud storage plans. With cloud storage, it can do live recording but only on demand. Movement sensing: Horrible. Absolutely horrible. The camera setup describes that the camera should NOT be pointed to any moving objects like streets, trees, plants and shrubs, areas with lot of movement etc. Where does that leave us? I mounted it to watch over the car parked on the driveway. Then I masked off the street and trees and everything else. But, the driveway gets lots of sunlight. So, shadows cast by moving cars cause false notification so any times. I tried to reduce sensitivity to 3 but then, randomly, the camera would ignore movement when my wife's car pulls on the driveway. It is a Honda Accord, so not small in size. Now I have to live with so many false notifications. Even in the night, if a car's light shine on my parked car, the camera causes false notification. If any slightest movement is detected, for example, by a shrub swaying in wind, the camera will detect motion and send notification. If running the camera on battery, these false alerts will cause battery to deplete quickly. A word about zones: The motion detection zones are only rectangular. With Advanced setting, the rectangle size only gets smaller but they are still rectangular, so either I have to mask off everything in the entire rectangle or leave it unmasked. So, if a rectangle covers some part of my car and some part of the street, I have to mask off the car because otherwise the movement on the street triggers a false alarm. Compared to Ring camera, where I can define non-rectangular zones, this is a huge negative. Now, most of my car's rear is masked off to prevent false alerts from the cars on the street. Even if the rectangle covers 99% of car but only 1% of street, it will trigger false alert even on sensitivity set to 3. Major problem. Recording: The recording starts after camera senses a movement, so there is no pre-movement recording. I have cameras which record 5-10 seconds of pre-movement video so when watching the recording, I can clearly see what triggered the camera. With Blink camera, since recording starts after it detects movement, only first one second of video has the event which triggered the camera. If it is a quickly passing object, almost impossible to figure out what happened. You have to have really sharp eyes to catch that. Recorded Files: Since there is no date/time stamp on the videos, the only way to see the date/time of recording is by downloading the recorded files. The file name contains the date/time. However, if the USB flash drive is removed and connected to a computer, these files do not have date/time and their creation date is in UTC time. Unless someone carries a UTC to local time converter in their heads, impossible to know the date/time of recording. Absolutely horrible design. The recorded files can be deleted one at a time from the Blink app. This is extremely slow and frustrating process. I tried to remove the USB flash drive and delete the recorded files by connecting it to a laptop, but ran into the issue of UTC timestamp instead of local time. Speed: This camera is slow, slow, slow. I am guessing that the live video viewing and accessing recorded files passes via Blink cloud, it takes long time to see the live video or access the recordings. After viewing maybe 30 seconds of live video, the app asks me to press the continue button to keep watching. This is a major annoyance. Live video: The camera does not automatically show live video when the app is launched. It shows a static picture of the monitored area which I took when setting up the camera. So, if the camera is later moved (say it moves during battery change, it will definitely move during battery change and there is no way to position it exactly the same), it would be a good idea to take a new picture and readjust the motion zones. Another major annoyance. So, I purchased a power adapter. Now the camera is powered from the USB and does not require battery change. Battery operation: There are some settings which Blink recommends for optimal battery life. If left on those settings, the videos recoded with IR on would be so poor quality that you won't be able identify any person. They are grainy and pixelated. Good idea to power it by USB power if possible. Mounting: Again, plain horrible. It takes a ton of strength to push the camera into the mount but it gets knocked out very easily. When doing setting, if I moved the camera beyond the mount's limit, it would just pop-out and fall off. Then I would have to push it again into the mount and restart the process. Same thing will happen when the camera needs a battery change. Entire setup and motion zones would need to be setup again. I only got this camera because it is inconspicuous when mounted on the front. Other cameras are bulky and have a snout protruding out. We do not have much crime in the area, only sporadic, petty car break-ins have been reported in the recent months, so I am keeping this camera. Otherwise, I would have gone in for a more robust, real security camera. Update 5/1/2023: I have configured the camera to record for 1 minute after movement is detected. However, it is recording clips of 1-10 seconds duration only. Opened ticket with their support and they just keep blaming the ISP/WiFi Router/WiFi speed and so on without providing any evidence of any actual wifi related issue. All this while the Blink app keeps showing a full 4 bar signal between camera and sync module and wifi connection. Support is totally useless. Save your money and buy some other camera.

The Blink was purposed for a specific task and is a stand alone in my outdoor camera array. Reviews of the product are all over the place so I wasn't sure what to expect either from a performance or reliability standpoint. I'll start by saying the video quality while HD is closer to 720p though it's not a huge issue if the goal is general surveillance. Resolution is good to very good in the monitored area, a narrow dimly lit space about 30' in length. The Blink app is straightforward and the interface uncluttered with quick access to the settings menu, video archive, and live stream feature. Camera settings menu is intuitive utilizing buttons and sliders making basic adjustments to Motion Detection, notifications option, Night Vision, and audio (speaker volume) pretty easy. You don't get the AI features standard with higher end cameras such as Arlo Pro but if the basics is adequate then Blink will meet your needs very well. The unit is powered by two supplied AA Lithium batteries and while product description claims of up to 2 year between changes I believe that to be highly unlikely but only time will tell. My camera has been in place and operating for about 3 months and during that time has functioned normally without interruption or degradation in image quality doing so in very cold Midwest winter temperatures that range from the upper thirties down to single digits at night. WiFi communication between the sync unit, camera, and my Mesh router has been top notch, a consistent strong connection and up to this point anyway not one dropped signal. Be advised that Amazon charges fees for cloud storage related to this camera model. After 30 days if you want immediate access to clips and live views you will be charged $3 monthly for a single camera or $10 for an unlimited number of devices. The $0 cost option is a USB thumb device plugged into the sync module where video and photo capture images are stored for retrieval off line. Overall at around $100, a multi camera bundle will save you money, the Blink is a good value packed with features and simply does what it should do.

I’m not enamored with my camera system. I’ve had it for two days, and right now, it’s just a glorified motion detector for my offline trail camera, which has better night vision and actually takes full-length videos, which I can’t seem to rely on my Blink camera to do despite it being 15 feet from my router. I live in an old brick building and I’m aware of the limitations of my connection, but the only thing separating my camera from the router is a window and some air. Further, I dislike how the motion alert triggers before the video is available to view—by which I mean, the motion alert takes about 15-20 seconds to hit my phone after the camera is tripped, and even though the clip may only be 2 seconds long (because of the issue of it cutting off), it still takes 1-2 minutes for me to be able to view it. There is a man in my neighborhood stabbing tires; he stabs and runs. IF this Blink camera even managed to capture the footage (which I don’t count on), the guy would be streets over and gone before I could see the motion alert video and call someone. It would be quicker for me to go look out of the window myself than to wait for the video to appear/the feed to connect. My Wyze camera’s motion alerts have video previews in the notification itself and clicking on the notification takes me immediately to that clip. I don’t know. The delay just isn’t ideal, at all. Other things I’m not a fan of: **The video quality isn’t great—fuzzy at night, and in daylight, you barely read stationary license plates. My $40 trail cam is miles better. I was hoping this could be a replacement so I could stop feeding batteries to my trail cam, but the police would never catch anyone with this footage, if the Blink camera even stayed recording long enough to capture it. **The IR light is bright. I’m hoping my camera doesn’t get stolen. It’s very obvious exactly where it is in the dark. The guy stabbing tires also likes to steal cameras; he hasn’t found my trail cam with its non-visible IR, but he may have a Blink camera in his possession if he really feels like it. **I keep the speaker muted. It’s loud—just this deafening overlaying hiss on everything. **I don’t really like the app layout. My Wyze cam has a preview of what the camera last saw on its home, which I can switch to a live feed that runs indefinitely. Blink’s home is blank, and then then live feed view seems to stop after about a minute? Then you have to hop out and reload it? **I don’t like how saved videos scrub. You scrub forward through them and the dark (play skip share live) mask drops over the whole view, obscuring everything you’re trying to see in slow motion. **I can’t view my camera’s saved videos or its live feed when I’m not in my house so far. I get notifications when I’m gone and I can’t see what they’re for. The video just doesn’t load. I guess I won’t know if I have an intruder until they get inside and hit my Wyze cam with person detection (love that it tells me motion vs person); my Wyze cam never fails me, records continuously, and doesn’t cost me a penny in subscriptions (it’s also $25). I should have gone with my gut and gotten another one for outdoors. Currently just unhappy with my purchase. Probably won’t hang on to this camera.