Blink Mini 2K+ assessment: Incremental upgrades for a pint-sized cam

Greatest Costs At the moment: Blink Mini 2K+

The Blink Mini 2 is a straightforward safety digital camera that lives as much as its identify: Small, unobtrusive, cheap, and easy; it’s “mini” in each sense of the phrase. However its 1080p decision isn’t precisely dazzling in 2026.

That’s absolutely why the Amazon-owned operation gave the digital camera an improve with this newest launch—the Blink Mini 2K+—boosting decision up 2K ranges whereas throwing in just a few further, if much less seen upgrades.

Specs

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The Blink Mini 2K+ and the Blink Mini 2 we reviewed in 2024 (that mannequin stays available on the market for $40) look an terrible lot alike; they’re each tiny, squared-off gadgets that, at 2 inches per facet, match simply within the palm of your hand. The digital camera connects to 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and stays powered through a USB-C cable. It’s designed for both inside or exterior use, with IP65 climate resistance promised—offered you utilize a Blink Climate Resistant Energy Adapter (offered individually for $10).

A 138-degree diagonal viewing angle is barely tighter than the 143 levels that the Mini 2 delivers, and the unit may also be paired with a second 2K+ digital camera and the Blink Arc adapter (assessment forthcoming) if you wish to approximate a 180-degree ultra-widescreen impact.

The Mini 2 featured a tiny highlight meant to be used as a form of evening gentle, however this characteristic will get an improve on the 2K+ to offer sufficient illumination for “colour” evening imaginative and prescient in case you so need. Customary black-and-white infrared evening imaginative and prescient can also be included in case you desire your safety to be extra discreet. And whereas two-way speak stays within the combine, Blink now boasts that the microphone contains noise cancelation options. And whereas the unique Mini 2 included individual detection as a subset of its movement detecting system, the 2K+ provides automobile detection to the combo.

The digital camera stays accessible with both a black or white end, with the facility cable in an identical colour.

Set up and setup

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The Blink Mini 2K+ options very deep-set USB-C ports (designed to be weatherproof), and as soon as the included cable is related, bodily setup is basically finished. The unit maintains the identical mounting system because the Mini 2, with a bracket that may be simply snapped on and off from the digital camera physique and completely affixed to a wall or ceiling with the included screws if desired. The digital camera may also be merely rested on a bookshelf or tabletop for extra informal or short-term use.

The Blink app gave me complications through the digital portion of configuration, as I acquired a number of connection failures all through this part of setup (an issue I encountered persistently with two Mini 2K+ cameras I examined). However this and different facets of setup are extra nuisance than downside, together with bugs just like the app’s failure to recollect your Wi-Fi login credentials, forcing you to re-enter them for every machine you arrange.

Whatever the occasional headache, I used to be finally capable of get the digital camera arrange and working efficiently inside a couple of minutes of effort.

Utilizing the Blink Mini 2K+

The older Blink Mini 2 has strong video high quality given its decision, and that’s improved additional with the 2K+. By daylight, video is crisp and clean, with nearly no distortion evident. Below infrared lighting, nevertheless, I discovered the evening imaginative and prescient mode to be middling at finest, with footage quite grainy and dim. A critter the digital camera captured in my yard on many late-night sojourns stays definitively unidentified, even at a spread of lower than 15 ft. (Skunk or raccoon are the prevailing theories.)

The stronger highlight on the 2K+ does assist fairly a bit, and in case you don’t thoughts the digital camera making its presence identified, the ensuing video after hours marks a substantial enchancment over that captured below the IR bulbs.

I discovered the 2K+’s movement sensor to be extremely delicate, a lot in order that I spent per week dialing it down till it was on the lowest stage accessible. Even then, the digital camera nonetheless recorded tons of of movies with no movement evident that I may see, with notifications duly delivered to my cellphone. Clips are cataloged in a chronological checklist, and when you can type clips to filter for folks or automobiles within the picture, by and enormous scouring via recordings for what you want is a scroll-and-tap affair, scrubbing via one clip at a time.

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One notice of recommendation with this digital camera: It gained’t file in any respect until the system is about to “Armed” within the app and the digital camera’s movement detection setting is about to “On.” It’s a complicated design that Blink outlines on this help web page, however the upshot is that the Armed/Disarmed settings allow you to disable a number of cameras without delay, whereas movement detection is a per-camera parameter.

Different key settings embrace adjustable cooldown/retrigger time (10 seconds to 60 seconds) and configurable clip size (5 seconds to 60 seconds). As an Amazon product, strong Alexa help can also be included.

As with different Blink digital camera merchandise, the digital camera can’t save video until you’re paying for additional providers. You’ll want a Blink Subscription Plan to file stay video, which is saved to Blink’s cloud service for as much as 60 days. The plan can also be wanted for individual/automobile detection and prolonged stay streaming (maxing out at 90 minutes). The plan runs $4/month or $40/12 months (up 33% this 12 months) for one machine or $12/month or $120/12 months for an infinite variety of gadgets.

For these allergic to subscriptions, you may add a Blink Sync Module 2 ($50) or a Blink Sync Module XR ($70) to your community to retailer video from as much as 10 Blink cameras domestically, though each gadgets solely retailer motion-sensed exercise and might’t retailer stay video clips recorded on demand just like the subscription plan can. You’ll additionally want to offer native storage to plug into both machine: a USB thumb drive for the Sync Module 2 or a microSD reminiscence card for the Sync Module XR. There’s most capability of 256BB in both state of affairs.

Must you purchase the Blink Mini 2K+?

At $50, the Mini 2K+ is hardly a significant funding, although the requirement of a subscription and/or further {hardware} to unlock all its options adjustments that calculus a bit.

In case you already use different Blink gear at house, upgrading to those cameras on an as-needed foundation makes nice sense, although few customers will probably be compelled by the upgrades to interchange present Mini 2 cameras in the event that they’re nonetheless working nicely.