Amazon announced this week that Blink, its budget home security camera brand, now has five new cameras, including the wired indoor Mini 4K+, a $70 camera that captures 4K resolution video. The rest of the line, which is up for preorder now, includes a new spotlight camera, a long-distance one for remote outdoor monitoring, and a $50 indoor/outdoor pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera.
The Mini 4K+ is somewhat unique; on top of being Blink’s first 4K smart home security camera, it’s still fairly rare to find that resolution in any such device. (That said, resolution isn’t everything, so don’t expect to be blown away by its video quality.) The Mini 4K+ records in HDR, offers night vision and 10x “enhanced” (read: digital) zoom, uses dual-band Wi-Fi 6—which is increasingly common lately, though not on sub-$100 cameras—and has a built-in siren you can trigger from the Blink app.
Those are all fairly impressive specs for a budget security camera, but it’s worth noting that it won’t really do much besides basic motion detection locally without a subscription to one of the company’s Blink Plus plans. Those start at $3.99 per month for a Basic plan, which covers a single camera and offers up to 60 days of cloud video storage, person and vehicle detection, and more. You can add one of the company’s Blink Sync Modules to get local storage, however.
The four other cameras Amazon announced include the Mini Pan-Tilt 2K+. The brand’s first indoor/outdoor PTZ camera can pan 350 degrees horizontally. This is a plug-in device, so mounting it outdoors will be tricky but doable if you have a nearby plug. For $50, it could be worth it, especially if you already have a Sync Module for local storage.
There’s also the $110 Spotlight 2K+, a 2K outdoor video camera flanked by four small spotlights that the company says reach up to 400 lumens. You’d need to buy a separate Sync Module for local storage. For comparison, the 2.5K Wyze Cam v4 is less than half the price of the Spotlight Cam 2K+ and accepts microSD cards for video storage but only has a dinky 75-lumen spotlight.
Lastly, there are the Blink Frontier XR+ and Outdoor 2K XR+ cameras. They’re similar, as both ship with a Sync Module XR+ hub that lets them be placed more distantly than you’d get from normal Wi-Fi. The main difference is that the Frontier has a big ol’ antenna on the side that lets it reach up to 7,000 feet away with a direct line of sight, while the Outdoor 2K can only connect to its hub from 2,700 feet at most. That range drops to 800 feet if there are obstructions like buildings or lots of trees. Both would easily work in a residential setting, but Amazon suggests using the Frontier to monitor “gates, pastures, outbuildings, or remote job sites [that] are far from the main building.” Its lack of cellular connectivity means it’s less useful as a dedicated trail cam or deer stand monitor.
All of the new cameras are available to pre-order now on Amazon and will be released either on October 27 this year or January 1 next year, depending on the model.
Source: Gizmodo