There's a reason Blink cameras cost less
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2024 | Rating: 3/5 | Best Sellers in Amazon Devices & Accessories
i purchased the blink 4 cameras to replace an older arlo pro 2 system at a remote cabin i use the blink 4s outside the cabin i also got two blink mini cameras hardwired so no batteries for inside the cabin the old arlo cameras are now running at my house in the citya side note about the cabin its in rural area on several acres theres no cell phone service  none whatsoever on a good day you have to walk a few miles to get one bar the driveway has a steep section that traps a lot of people naturally they reach for their phones and soon realize theyre screwed no tow truck service will be coming to rescue them so i use the cameras to monitor things and call a tow service or the sheriff depending on what the stranded people start getting in to sometimes it turns into dinner and a showstrangely enough the cabin has blazing fast fiber optic internet service im sure the government paid for the infrastructure  no private business in its right mind would ever invest the millions required to serve the 30 but probably less customers tapped into itback to the reviewthe arlo cameras had two issues first the night vision was terrible especially where there is little ambient light at night at the cabin you can barely see your hand in front of your face second arlo announced the end of free cloud hosting now extended which i want i dont want to buy a device and then be tethered to that company forever relying on them not going out of business just to use iti want to preface my comments with acknowledging that im comparing two technologies that are 3 or more years apart the current arlo cameras may now have better night vision and clearer video but arlo doesnt provide anything but subscription based cloud hosting there is no localfree cloud hosting optionso comparing the arlo pro 2 to the blink 4 the blink 4 night vision seems to be slightly better but still not great i can tell if the intruder is a deer or racoon but only when theyre close enough to be sniffing at the camera you cant read a license platethe quality of the blink video day or night seems clearer and sharper blink does give you the option to increase the ir intensity to improve night vision but i havent used itblink offers a free 30day trial of their cloud hosting i cancelled it but noticed three things that i wish local hosting did that cloud hosting offers first there are no video thumbnails in the app when you use local hosting second you cant delete multiple clips at once when using local hosting  you can only delete your clips one at a time third when you play a clip its takes a few seconds to load the clip in the app these are things im willing to live witha few things i think blink does better than arlo are the scheduling of times when each system sync module is on and off you can have multiple schedules running unique to each day of the weeksomething that the arlo app lets you do that blink does not is to turn off individual cameras it seems like a pretty basic feature but for the life of me i cant find that setting in the blink appa few other items setting up the blink system is incredibly easy the app has a few features that are handy like pausing an entire system for 2 4 or 6 hours or simply overwriting a schedule and turning it off you can also set the clips to automatically delete after 7 14 or 30 days if you use cloud hosting there are more options this way your thumb drive for local hosting wont fill upi never tried to adjust activity zones or use facial recognition one or both of these may only be available with paid cloud hostinginitially my biggest concern with the blink 4 cameras was battery life only time will tell but i doubt if ill get 2 years out of them a few camera locations get lots of  animals passing by also insects birds and blowing leaves which triggers the cameras every day some hardly see any activity after three years the arlo batteries are starting to need replaced and theyre expensivefinally the blink 4 cameras are considerably cheaper than arlos i had an issue with woodpeckers attacking the arlos  they dont care for the infrared motion sensors  so replacing them wont  be as expensive it was funny the first time but not as funny the third time around now i protect them all with coated chicken wire set about 3 inches in front of each camera3 month updatei have ten cameras running around the cabin on two sync modules one camera the closest outside camera to its sync module died after about a week i suspected a bad battery and thats exactly what it wasso much for a twoyear lifespan so be aware that your batteries may not be at 100 charge when you get your camera out of the box and set it upa few of the cameras show very poor network strength but perfect 4 bar connection to the sync module not sure exactly how that works but i suspect its also a partially discharged battery when i first opened the packageif its not a battery issue then theres really no explanation the furthest camera away at least 100 away from the its module shows perfect wifi strength and sync module connectivity another camera on the same sync module but only 20 away directly in front of the far camera shows poor connectivityit also seems like the cameras with poor wifi strength and sync module connectivity detect motion and send my phone an alert but dont record a video again this could be a battery issuenote that despite my suspicion that the camera performance falls off if batteries are not fully charged all of my cameras say their batteries are ok in the appexcept the one that died it simply went dead and offline with no warninganother issue ive frequently noticed with the blink cameras is that if you access the system via the app  and then try a live view on a camera you get a  message that the system is busy this never happened with the arlo cameras this is especially frustrating when you get a motion alert but no video was recorded so you try to see a live viewonly to be informed that you cant do that eitherim hoping that replacing a few batteries might alleviate all of these issues6 month updatea few more months and a few more issuesi get a lot of what i would term false alarms where i get an alert of motion but no video is recordedone suggested solution is to reduce the video quality that didnt helpi also started getting false alarms on the two hardwired blink mini cameras inside the cabin so its not a battery issue i didnt change anything about the cameras prior to getting bombarded with alerts i started getting about one alert per minute or more the only solution i could initially find was to disarm the systemmodule for the indoor cameras so basically the indoor system was completely worthlesssolution number two was to decrease the motion sensitivity that seems to stop the false alerts temporarily but 24 hours later they started again i decreased the motion sensitivity again but it had no impact if it wasnt for the remote location of the cabin id wonder if i was missing something that was going onpossibly a camera reset is in order at this point what could it hurtone issue ive seen others report is that if you have a 24 ghz network required for the blink 4s and a 5 ghz network they should have unique ssids network names i set my network up this way so this wasnt an issue for methe arlo cameras used to capture video of a lot more animals so i suspect that the blink motion detection isnt as longrange as the arlo cameras blink does capture a lot of closeup video of bugs and video of family members when i know theyre visiting so they seem to be workinggetting the perfect placement for the cameras is important you want traffic crossing in front of the cameras not coming straight at them so im still tinkering with placementconclusionswhen the blink cameras work theyre great when they go into crazy mode and start bombarding you with false alarms its aggravating and makes you regret the purchasei trust the arlo cameras more than i currently trust the blink cameras itll take a while for me to get there with blink if at allhopefully ill eventually get the blink kinks all worked out other things on my list to try are 1 reduce the number of cameras per sync module andor add another sync module 2 play with camera placement and 3 move the sync modules around to improve connectivityi guess i would sum up my review this way theres a reason why the blink cameras cost less