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Wireless home security systems are all the rage at the moment, and it’s not hard to see why. A wireless doorbell lets you see who’s at the door before you open it, lets you communicate with them if you are out and records a video clip of anyone who approaches your door, even if they don’t press the bell.
An indoor camera lets you keep track of what your pets and children are up to when you’re out, and of course, can capture footage of anyone who, God forbid, breaks into your house with nefarious intent.
The last part of the home security trinity is a good weatherproof outdoor camera to keep an eye on your yard, garden, or drive. With both motion detection and on-demand video feed, this is the ideal system to keep an eye on your home and get alerts when something is amiss.
1. Complete home coverage
Inside the £164 (or £132 with code BLINK20) Blink Whole Home Security Kit Plus, which is available exclusively from Currys, you’ll find everything you need to monitor and secure your home and receive notifications of anything suspicious happening.
In the package, you’ll find a second-generation Blink Video Doorbell, a Blink Outdoor 4 external security camera and a Blink Mini 2K internal camera.
Because all three devices are made by Blink, you can access and manage them all via the Blink app or via any Amazon Alexa device. You can also store the recordings from all your cameras in the same Blink cloud account or on the same USB thumb drive plugged into a Blink Sync Module.
A word of explanation here. The Whole Home Security Kit Plus comes with the Sync Module Core, which acts as the hub of the system. When using the system as sold, Cloud Storage is the default option provided. However, if you prefer to store your video recordings locally and remove the need for a Cloud subscription, you can replace the Sync Module Core with a separately sold Sync Module 2 for just £39.99.
If you are willing to forgo a handful of the most advanced features, such as smart differentiation between people and vehicles, the Blink system still offers a complete experience without a subscription.
However, if you want the peace of mind, along with the added layer of security, that comes with storing your video clips in the Blink cloud, the prices are eminently reasonable: a single-camera plan costs £2.50/mth or £24.99/yr, and an unlimited-camera plan costs £8/mth or £80/yr.
The USB storage feature is important to note because some wireless home security systems absolutely demand you take out a subscription to store any of your footage.
If you are prepared to forgo some advanced features, such as smart motion discrimination between people and vehicles, you can access all the core Blink features without a subscription.
If you want the peace of mind that comes with storing your video clips in the Blink cloud, the prices are eminently reasonable: a single-camera plan costs £2.50 a month or £24.99 a year, and an unlimited-camera plan costs £8 a month or £80 a year.
2. Affordable smart security
For the price, you get a lot in the Blink Whole Home Security Kit Plus. To start with, all three cameras are IP65 rated, which means they will shrug off even the worst that the inclement British weather can throw at them.
All three of the bundled cameras also offer high-quality wide angle video feeds – 1,440 x 1,440 150-degrees for the doorbell, 1,920 x 1,080 143-degrees for the Outdoor 4 and 2,560 x 1,440 138-degrees for the Blink Mini 2K, and support both colour and infrared night-time recording.
What all that means is that no matter what the time of day or night, you get expansive, bright and sharp video recordings of events in and around your home.
The Blink Mini 2K also features a built-in LED floodlight that can be activated and deactivated manually or set to turn off after a preset time. The light can also be set to activate when motion is detected to deter intruders.
It’s also a system that’s easy to expand without breaking the bank. Additional Outdoor 4 and Blink Mini 2K cameras can be bought and added to the app at any time, or you can opt for a motorised Blink Mini Pan-Tilt internal camera that lets you move the camera lens through 360 degrees for a perfect view.
3. Easy to set up, easy to use
For anyone worried about lacking the tech or DIY expertise to set a Blink system up, rest easy because it could not be simpler.
Setting up a Blink account could not be easier, especially if you already have an Amazon account, because once you link the two, all your payment and details from the latter apply to the former.
To get going, all you need to do is download the Blink app from your app store, set up an account and then it’s simply a case of plugging in your Sync module, scanning the QR codes on the back of the devices, and Bob’s your uncle, you’re all sorted.
One word of note, the Blink cameras and Sync module only support the 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi frequency, so if you have set your router to only broadcast on 5Ghz or 6Ghz, you’ll need to switch the 2.4Ghz frequency back on.
When it comes to physically mounting the doorbell and outdoor camera, Blink supplies all the screws and wall plugs you need, along with the relevant plastic mounts.
The doorbell also comes with a plastic angle-mount so you can place it at the side of your door, facing across it at a 40-degree angle.
Though you can connect the Blink Doorbell to a traditional doorbell power supply, we suspect the vast majority of users will depend on the AA batteries in the box.
Both the Doorbell and Blink Outdoor 4 can be quickly and easily unclipped from their mounts when the time comes to replace the batteries. The app gives you a heads-up when the battery level gets low.
Just so long as you have replacement batteries to hand, swapping them over in either the Doorbell or Outdoor cameras is the work of mere moments.
How long your batteries last depends on how you set up your camera. Task it with recording every instance of motion it detects at the highest sensitivity settings, and they won’t last as long as they do if you turn motion sensitivity off, which, for instance, is a good idea if your doorbell is on the edge of a pavement with people walking past all day.
In average use, when we tested the Doorbell, the batteries drained at a rate that suggested an easy 4 months between charges, while the Outdoor 4 looked like it would easily run for more than 12 months on a set.
An important real-world benefit of the Blink Outdoor 4 is just how small it is. At just 70 x 70 x 41mm and 140g, it’s supremely compact, unobtrusive and easy to position.
4. Smarter alerts, fewer false alarms
If you take out a subscription to Blink’s cloud storage, you can take advantage of Blink’s motion discrimination settings. These let you tell the system to only alert you if it detects a person or a vehicle, rather than any sort of motion.
Benefits of such a system are that it reduces the number of notifications the system sends you – nobody wants their phone pinging every 30 seconds because a tree branch is waving in the wind – and prolongs battery life because the system has to come off stand-by less often.
You can combine these motion discrimination features with adjustable sensitivity, selectable motion zones outside of which motion is ignored and adjustable retrigger times to ensure you only get alerts for important events and not every time a leaf blows past or your cat decides to sit down and lick itself in view of the camera.
Other benefits of a subscription include the facility to record from a live view, Blink Moments, a feature which stitches multiple events into a single video, extended live view up to 90 minutes, automatic photo capture, which lets you see what happened between event recordings, and automatic thumbnail updates on the app’s home screen.
5. Works with Alexa
As you’d expect, given that Blink is owned by Amazon, Blink products work a treat with the likes of the Amazon Echo Show 8, and its big brother, the Echo Show 11, which is a real boon if you’d rather not be dependent on your smartphone to manage and monitor your cameras.
In fact, Blink cameras integrate seamlessly with anything that runs Amazon’s cloud-based voice-activated virtual assistant Alexa, which includes the various Fire TV sticks, Fire TVs and Fire tablets like the Fire Max 11.
Any of those devices lets you monitor and manage your cameras without recourse to your phone and lets you control them using voice commands. Just tell your Fire device to show you a specific camera, and bingo, the camera feed will appear on your TV, tablet or Echo device.
6. Blink Mini 2K+ is Blink’s most advanced plug-in camera
The Blink Mini 2K is the latest addition to the Blink camera family. With all the strengths of the original Blink Mini camera, the 2K model has a new sensor that can record video at 2,560 x 1,440 at 24/25fps for a super-clear and super-smooth playback experience and features a x4 digital zoom.
You can also hold two-way conversations via the camera’s microphone and speaker. This is a very handy feature, even if you don’t use it for anything more than yelling “No! Put that down!” at the dog.
Like the Outdoor 4 camera, the Blink Mini 2K is IP65 rated for resistance to rain, and you buy a weatherproof USB power cable so you can use it outdoors as well as in. That makes it one of the most versatile as well as most affordable multi-purpose cameras on the market.
Another advantage of going for an all-Blink system is that you can set the Blink Mini 2K camera to act as a chime for the doorbell, so you will be able to hear the doorbell in a room where you have a Blink Mini, even if you’ve left your phone somewhere else.
