Introducing Blink Video Doorbell - P
[{'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': ' If you are like me you are a happy existing Blink Camera user who is thinking about adding the door bell to your existing setup. I had a blink camera setup aiming at my front door so at first I was not too sure that I really needed the door bell. However for the cost I am very glad I got one. There are a couple of things to know:\n\n(1) If you are an existing Blink customer, you do not need a second sync module. All you need is the door bell and you can simple add it to your existing account (as easy as adding an additional camera).\n\n(2) If you are planning on hardwiring the blink doorbell to your existing doorbells wires. . . . you still have to use 2 AA batteries to power the camera. This did not make sense to me as I figured my hardwires would power it, but sure enough after calling Blink support I realized I needed to put the AA batteries in the camera. The hard wire will allow your blink doorbell to ring the doorbell in your home but will not power the camera.\n\n(3) You can turn on motion detection or just have the blink door bell turn on when the door bell is rung. This is a nice feature. If you want to catch anyone that comes to your door (whether they ring the bell or not, you can simple turn this feature on in the app). If you want to save battery life and are only interested in door bell ringers you can turn motion detection off.\n\n(4) It has two way audio, meaning you will always hear the person at your door. . . . but you can also choose to speak to the person if you choose. For me the audio the person at the door hears comes across a little staticky, but that could be my phone or the fact that I am using the corner mount.\n\n(5) It has more of a fish bowl view so it catches a wide view (meaning it can cover most of your front porch)\n\n(6) There is no additional cost to having the Blink doorbell or camera system. Unlike other door bell systems out there, there is no additional cost to the Blink Doorbell. The app is free, cloud storage is free, downloading images or videos is free, etc.\n\nIf you are looking to set it up with just batteries and no wiring to an existing doorbell system, setup is a breeze (will take two minutes). If you are looking to hard wire it, it is still pretty easy. I am not a handy man and what I know about electricity will shock you (get my joke) but even I was able to hard wire it. Get the doorbell, you will be glad you did. Hope this review helped.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': 'I got this doorbell because it’s cheaper than the Ring one. It was easy to set up. Two screws into the door frame and I was able to slide it on. The camera works well and I was able to link it to all my Alexa stuff. I did the no wire worked and it works well!'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': 'There’s a few more steps to set up, and requires a blink sync for completely wireless use. Camera quality is there, wish the box came with double stick tape, but I managed. To set up the chiming on an Alexa you’d have to have the skill installed once it’s installed it recognizes the doorbell. For the price features and true wirelessness! I recommend!'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': " I had already had to blink exterior cameras so when I had the chance to pre-order the doorbell camera I jumped on it. The doorbell camera does its job. Image quality is great day, and night. At night time the infrared is good allowing you to have good clarity and resolution. You get quick notifications when someone is at your door. You can set it to capture any motion at your property. You can set focus areas, and private areas. You can set the length of record time from 5 to 20 seconds. The placement of the doorbell we'll also impact what's your camera picks up. But after having had and installing various types of doorbell cameras from Ring and more. I'm satisfied. Why go and buy a $100, or $200 option when you can purchase of $50 option that is just as good.\n\nSure there are some drawbacks, but they will be drawbacks with all of them. If I had to point out any one drawback is that the cameras motion capture has a cool down before it can record again.\nExample: if the camera has a view of the street and 2 cars go by, the second car could go by without ever being captured on video if it wasn't recorded in the same clip as the first car.\n\nYou can extend to about of time each clip is allowing you to get more footage. But longer record times use more battery life.\n\nI got this one because I already had a hub, and 2 cameras I can capture any, and everything that comes my way. All my Amazon packages are safe, and I know whose at my door Everytime.\n\nBravo, and thank you Blink."}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-4 review-rating', 'review_body': 'I got this and just mounted it. I will say that the instructions are not very detailed but being tech oriented I was able to figure everything out. I added the blink app and connected the sync 2 module up using the app instructions which were fine. I did buy a 256gb usb for internal storage which was detected in the app. Once the sync module was up I added the batteries to the camera but left the back off. In the app you add the device as a doorbell and follow the setup. Once done I took the back outside and started to mount it. Prior to mounting you have to leave a small space on the side so you can put the cover on. In my case I left a little on the left. Mine is mounted on the trim which is on a corner so I did use 2” screws with the same thickness as the ones provided and also took a little clear weather caulk to give it as seal. Don’t cover the contacts on the back. The longer screws hopefully with deter someone from stealing it but my neighbors has been up for months. These screws were long enough to get to the wood door frame. I did change the 10sec delay to 15 so less pics are taken as we are coming and going. Quality looked good on a cloudy day so I’ll have to see how night is as well. So far I like it. We shall see how the battery does. I’m adding the fact that once the 30 day trial ended my local storage took over; however, not having the sub takes away the ability to delete more than one at a time. That’s ridiculous'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-2 review-rating', 'review_body': "A few years ago I was excited to see that BLINK had a doorbell announced at CES so I committed to a multi-camera setup. After it became apparent it wasn't being released, I purchased a RING doorbell and subscription plan begrudgingly. The minute I saw the pre-order for this, I instantly grabbed one. Excited to have everything in one ecosystem, the anticipating and re-excitement from years ago was there. During the waiting period I realized someone pointed out, which at the time was NOT listed on the pre-order page, that you need a Sync-2 module to save the footage/rings. I had a spare but it could have been annoying. Fast forward to today when I received it. It looks beautiful and is a slim profile but the mounting bracket is an absolute joke. 2 shallow screws and no thumbail screw to lock the device in, this could easily be ripped out of the wall within 2 seconds. Combine that with the amount of pressure needed to lock this device into place, theres no doubt in my mind that after a year of changing the batteries some of these small clip/brackets on the plate will indeed snap. The image quality is way too HDR and totally blown out by the sun and bright daylight in the sky, creating a darkness on the face of whoever rings the bell which surprise, kind of defeats the purpose. Lastly, the fact that Amazon did NOT have the mount was the cherry on top. The email they sent later allowed us to order the corner mount free of charge, but inside the blink app it states that it should come with a couple different mounting plate options which it did not. So all in all, I prefer the Blink ecosystem to most and physically this doorbell is great but for something in R&D for 3+ years you definitely dropped the ball on the easiest pieces of the puzzle, especially for a company that owns RING which has an excellent mounting package in the box."}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-3 review-rating', 'review_body': 'I just installed this and it seems to be working fine so far, not more than an hour on it so far. I got the sync module to work fine and it is all hooked up. The door security mount is terrible, it would take someone no time at all to steal it, the set screw that you had on the other model seemed like a better option. But this thing is just out there for the taking, also the 6 retainers that are on this take a bit of time to figure out that you have to push down with enough pressure for them to set and hold. Do you have a recommendation for a better security mount since this one is really bad.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-1 review-rating', 'review_body': "This product is structurally defective, don't even attempt buying this, all you are getting is a poor quality camera that cannot be mounted on any surface, if you want to buy a camera that can't be mounted anywhere without the use of duct tape this will surely be that."}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-1 review-rating', 'review_body': ' In my opinion this is a good product but reason for 1 star is because of the simple design defect and waiting about 1 month for the release of this product. I love blink products but this is something that must be addressed because I see I’m not the only one having this issue. The waterproof seal is a defect either it’s to thick or the seal is to hard and won’t compress enough to allow you to put the back end onto product. Sadly that’s the only fix or blink sends a new seal. In my opinion it’s such a simple defect hopefully someone from blink sees my review and try’s to correct this some how. I’m a tech enthusiast and love all of blinks products but just hate to see the product fail because of a simple flaw after it took a while to test this for consumers. Will later change it until there’s a update in design and there is a fix for this'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-2 review-rating', 'review_body': "Play Video\n I've been a Blink customer since the beginning. I have every iteration of their products and was excited to see them offer a doorbell. That excitement wore off quickly after I installed their doorbell and soon turned to disappointment. Here are my issues with the doorbell:\n1. Short battery life. Even though it's connected to my 24VAC doorbell transformer, it still runs on battery power. I have burned through the first set of lithium AA's in less than 3 weeks of use.\n2. I had to purchase their angled mount ($8) separately because my doorbell button is low and the doorbell camera was cutting off the heads of tall people.\n3. Notifications. This is my biggest beef. Right now, if someone rings the bell, you get a standard notification on your phone. You can also set your Alexa devices to make a voice announcement that the doorbell was rung. That's it. You don't get automatic live video of the doorbell camera on the app or Echo Shows, Spots etc. You don't know who's there. I suspect this is a hardware limitation of the Blink system. When a Blink camera is recording, you can't pull up a live video feed. I'm doubtful that this critical feature will ever be added."}]