Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsNot useful as an actual doorbell. Batteries last 4 Months at most.
Reviewed in Canada on December 17, 2023
Have had the Blink Doorbell with sync 2 module for about 2 1/2 Months now.
The Blink Doorbell is not actually very useful as a Doorbell. The app takes about a minute to 3 minutes or a bit more to connect to it when someone rings it. By that time they have given up and left.
Also when viewing the clips it takes a long time to load them with a message that says "USB Clips Take a little longer to load" This makes absolutely no sense. Clips from local USB on my own network should load faster than clips from an internet server. The only reason I can see for this is that Blink purposefully slows them down to try to convince you to sign up for their subscription service.
I had to install it very low on my door and also sideways because the field of vision is much wider than it is vertical. So I had the choice of seeing 1. Who is at my door (But not packages on the ground in front of it) or 2. Packages on the ground in front of my door (But not face(s) of who is at the door. Or the one I opted for. 3. Install the camera sideways and a bit low on the door in order to see full view of who was in front of the door and also packages on the ground in front of my door.
This is a poor design in my opinion. The Camera should have had a better vertical field of view.
There is a lag between motion detection and the camera recording so you always miss the first few seconds of any motion activated recording.
It's probably good enough of a security system for me to see if anyone messes with any packages in front of my door but that's about it.
I would have regretted purchasing this item more if I hadn't gotten it on a 50% off sale and would definitely not purchase it at regular price. Not even too sure I would purchase it again at 50% off.
Blink disables some function that should work just fine such as saving live views to the local USB storage because I opted out of purchasing their subscription service.
Still though they are one of the few doorbell camera systems that offers a local storage option at all so I have added 1 Star for that.
The picture is pretty clear and the night vision seems ok as well (I always have a light on at my front door so not generally fully dark.)
I put a 256GB USB storage in the Sync Module and that may have been overkill as it has never gotten over 1% full. I stopped deleting clips about a month or two ago and it records all motion at my front door (Which includes my neighbours going back and forth 20 - 30 times a day lol.
The Battery level just says "OK" Would be nice if it had a percentage or something so I knew how "OK" it is? Not sure what it will go to from "OK"?
Hopefully they will update something with firmware or something to that the doobell function is not totally useless. The Doorbell is about 20' from my router through one wall (& Obviously the door of course). So there is no reason why the signal should not be strong enough to produce a much better experience.
Update: Now after only 4 Months the very expensive Li-Ion batteries are dead. The camera does activate about 5 - 10 times a day but that should not reduce the rated "2 year" down to 4 Months. These batteries are incredibly expensive. At this rate the batteries are going to cost me almost what the subscription I was trying to avoid would. NOT impressed at all and would not purchase again nor recommend.