Online retail giant Amazon has launched its affordable home security brand Blink in Australia and New Zealand, offering a more accessible entry point to household smart cameras than its premium Ring brand.
Blink originally launched overseas back in 2009, with Amazon buying the company in 2017 and positioning it as a step down from Ring. While the latter offers a wide variety of video doorbells, along with much higher definition cameras and more niche products like floodlight cameras, Blink’s products are more basic by design, making them an attractive option for renters and people who don’t want to spend too much on a smart home camera setup.
Despite being cheaper by design, there are still a surprising amount of features available with a Blink camera. At launch, only two from the Blink security camera range will be available in Australia – the Mini 2 and the Outdoor 4 – but both come with motion detection, Alexa app compatibility and live video feed directly to your smartphone. They also have an in-built microphone and speaker for two-way communication between you and the person in front of the camera.
Blink twice for cheaper security
The good news is that the Blink devices coming to Australia are the latest available in other markets.
The Blink Mini 2 (AU$69/NZ$79), which was announced in the US this year in March, is intended to be both an outdoor and indoor camera, with a mounting plate built into the stand (in case you want to put it up on a wall) and a light atop the camera lens for illuminating subjects in the dark. To use it outside, it’s recommended that you also buy the Weather Resistant Power Adapter, though for indoor use you could get by with the included cable. The Blink Mini 2 is already available on Amazon to buy, although there’s no guarantee there’ll be a discount when Amazon’s second Prime Day sale starts on October 8.
If you want to save recordings to some local storage, consider picking up the 256GB Sync Module 2 as well. This module connects wirelessly to the Blink Mini 2 and is where footage from the camera is saved for you to transfer over to a USB stick. It can also be used as a hub for up to 10 Blink cameras, accessible through the Blink Home Monitor app.
The Blink Outdoor 4, on the other hand, seems to be a more impressive piece of kit on paper and we have high expectations from the fourth-gen model as we quite liked the original in our Blink Outdoor review from 2021. This camera system is intended for outdoor use straight out of the box, with Amazon boasting an impressive two years of battery life from two AA batteries. The camera shoots in 1080p and can be repositioned at will, with a stand and wall-mounting kit included. It’s capable of two-way audio and motion detection, with a Sync Module 2 for saving local video included with your purchase. The additional features, though, will cost you a little extra.
As mentioned, these wouldn’t be Amazon products without a subscription. The Blink Subscription plan comes with the ability to save and share clips from your Blink devices to unlimited cloud storage, where you’ll have up to 60 days to download or share your clips. Person detection, automatic local storage backups, and the ability to record live views and capture photos are included with your subscription.
The Basic tier costs AU$4.95p/m per device, or AU$15p/m for the Blink Plus Plan, which supports unlimited devices. Yearly subscriptions cost AU$49.95p/y per device for the Basic plan, or AU$150p/y for the Plus, again with unlimited devices for the latter.
The unlimited plan also offers a feature called Blink Moments, which stitches together key events captured by your cameras and puts them into one seamless video. It also comes with the ability to snooze motion-activated notifications and grants the user a 10% discount on Blink devices.
Blink vs Ring: which is better?
It’s an interesting time for Amazon to launch its budget smart home camera brand in Australia, with Prime Big Deal Days coming up and gadgets in its Ring home security range currently discounted substantially.
In fact, the Ring Indoor Camera (2nd Gen) is currently going for AU$59 (down from AU$99), making it cheaper than the Blink Mini 2. The Ring Video Doorbell Plus is also discounted to AU$159 (was AU$249), which may be attractive over a Blink system for two reasons: one, it works with the wider Ring ecosystem (Blink gadgets do not) and two, it adds a doorbell to your home security system (which Blink isn’t offering in Australia at the time of writing, though there is a video doorbell model available overseas).
While brand-new tech devices don’t usually see a discount right after being released to the market, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if, come Prime Big Deal Days, the two cameras get some kind of a discount — both as a way of celebrating the big sales event and a way to celebrate the launch Down Under, but mostly so that it’s accurately brought into line with the discounted and higher-end Ring alternatives.
For the price and simplicity though, Blink gadgets are quite a competitive option. Personally, I’m drawn to the Outdoor 4 and how portable it is, along with that massive two-year battery estimation. I can definitely see myself setting one of these up in the window of my home to keep an eye on things.
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