Verdict
The dinky Blink mini 2K+ is a solid home security camera, suitable for use inside or out. Its 2K sensor captures crisp and detailed video in a range of lighting conditions, and there’s onboard visible and infrared lighting to help out when things get properly dingy. This is a keenly priced camera, particularly at the discounted price available near launch. The main argument against it is that, like other Blink devices, you’ll need a subscription to get the most out of it.
Tiny, well made and happy to work indoors or out, the Blink mini 2K+ (newest gen) is a likeable compact security camera for a sensible price. Its 2K sensor turns in sharp, detailed footage, and it has both visible and infrared spotlights for when the light drops. The catch is that you’ll need a subscription to unlock its real potential.
This small security camera connects to your Wi-Fi network and helps you monitor indoor or outdoor spaces. True to its name, the Blink mini 2K+ shoots at 2K (2,560×1,440), which is more than enough to pin down a visitor’s face, especially as it can call on visible and infrared spotlights when the light isn’t up to it. With a particularly versatile mount, it’s easy to get neat framing from almost any position.
You can move this camera’s mount between two different points on the case – useful for wall, desk or ceiling mounting. The mount’s balljoint covers about 45 degrees, but with the choice of mount points you can cover pretty much anything. The camera itself rotates through 360 degrees.
Alongside its lens you’ll find two tiny microphones and a status indicator, along with the two small spotlights. At the rear there’s a speaker grille and a USB-C port for the supplied cable.
This camera is wired only, with no battery even for momentary backup. Video is stored in the cloud only. Blink says the mini 2K+ is suitable for outdoor use, but it supplies only an indoor adaptor. The official outdoor one is just £9, but before buying I’d recommend testing your Wi-Fi reception where you intend to place it.
The Blink app is thoughtfully designed. Its Home page shows thumbnails from all your Blink devices; tap one for a live view, with a Save icon to start recording, and others to turn the LED spotlight on and off.
Blink devices work in two modes: Armed and Disarmed. Disarmed, they capture footage without bothering you, but for motion-triggered recordings the system must be armed. This is system-wide, not per-device, which could be a limitation if you want constant monitoring of one area, but you only need to know about another zone while you’re away.
You can edit this camera’s motion detection area, but not separately for each type of motion. Smart detection covers people and vehicles, and there’s a slider for general motion sensitivity. With the mini 2K+ covering my driveway I had to shrink the detection zone to prevent false alarms; helpfully, the zone editor uses a screenshot of the last trigger, so you can quickly see when you’ve excluded the right area.
Device Settings also covers video, snapshot, audio and lighting. There are standard options such as visible, infrared or no spotlighting at night, but you can’t change the resolution. Annoyingly, you also can’t remove the large Blink logo burned into the top-left of every video.
Many of this camera’s features need a subscription, costing £2.50 a month or £25 a year for a single device, or £8/£80 for Blink Plus, which supports unlimited devices. Without a plan you get up to five minutes of live viewing at a time, plus motion notifications – but no recorded footage. So if someone breaks in and you don’t react to the notification, you won’t see it at all. You can’t even record the live view, leaving the camera not especially useful as it comes.
Either subscription unlocks the full feature set, adding unlimited cloud storage for up to 30 days, up to 90 minutes of live viewing, and notification snoozing. Without a plan you’re limited to basic motion detection rather than person or vehicle detection, though you can still edit zones. That said, you can add local storage for up to 10 Blink cameras via the subscription-free Sync Module 2 (around £40).
I can’t complain about the video quality. In daylight the mini 2K+ captured crisp footage and managed exposure well, handling both our dim north-facing hallway and a harshly sunlit street within the same frame.
Shooting at night with no spotlight active, it did a great job of capturing my driveway and road well into a deepening dusk, and produced adequate footage of the dimly streetlit scene even once it was properly dark.
Indoors in full darkness it again performed well, capturing comparatively crisp black-and-white footage of stationary and moving objects under infrared.
Its visible spotlight was surprisingly bright, easily providing enough light for reasonable colour quality.
Whether shooting in daylight, at night or under spotlight, the mini 2K+ generated accurate motion alerts, quickly identifying a car or person within the activity zone. Notifications arrived very quickly – fast enough to challenge anyone loitering via the two-way audio.
I’m not personally a fan of security products that require a subscription, but they do have one significant advantage. If someone steals the camera, the footage it captured beforehand should still be on the cloud, giving you a chance to work out what happened, when, and possibly who did it. You can’t do that with cameras that store video onboard or on an inserted SD card – the thief ends up with your footage.
This small camera is easy to mount, delivers crisp footage, and has AI-powered alerts that really work – provided you don’t mind subscribing. If a monthly or annual fee doesn’t put you off, you get a lot of features, and footage that can’t be stolen with the camera. However, If you prefer to own everything outright look to a subscription-free camera from the likes of TP-Link, Reolink or Eufy. Plenty still dangle optional cloud plans, but the better ones have smart motion detection and alerting as standard.
When we publish our reviews, you can rest assured that they are the result of “living with” long term tests.
Smart security cameras usually live within an ecosystem, or a range of products that – supposedly – all work in harmony. And they are designed to offer a range of different options. Therefore, it’s impossible to use a camera for a week and deliver a verdict.
Because we’re testing smart home kit all day, everyday, we know what matters and how a particular device compares to alternatives that you might also be considering.
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