The Blink Mini 2 is the latest release from Amazon’s other security camera brand. Ring has garnered more attention, and not always for the right reasons, but Blink slid under the radar with its affordable security cameras. I’ve tested a few of ’em, but the Mini 2 is the first one I’m prepared to recommend. It is cute and compact, and it offers some crucial upgrades over the original.

It captures crisp video, reliably detects motion, and can slot in just about anywhere you want to put it. After a couple of weeks testing indoors and out, I’m impressed by the quality of the footage. Low-light performance is much better than the original, and the expanded field of view (up from 110 to 143 degrees) enables it to take in a whole room. Perhaps most important, the person detection works well to ensure that every shadow, passing cat, or waving tree branch no longer triggers an alert.

Many cheap security cameras require you to subscribe to unlock the best features, and the Blink Mini 2 is a prime example. I’d go as far as to say it’s not worth buying if you don’t plan to subscribe, so factor in the extra cost at the outset. (The Basic subscription starts from $3 per month or $30 per year.) But even with a subscription, the Blink Mini 2 is still a tempting purchase.

Keeping It Simple

Boston-based Blink was founded as a microchip firm in 2009 (Immedia Semiconductor). When it developed a chip capable of processing high-resolution video and running for months on two AA batteries, it pivoted to consumer electronics, launching a security camera campaign on Kickstarter. Amazon acquired the company in 2017, and Blink has continued manufacturing compact, budget security cameras powered by its own purpose-built chips.

Even though Blink has added quite a few features with the Mini 2, there’s a simplicity to its offerings that extends to the slick setup process. Scan a QR code, connect to Wi-Fi, and you are done. I encountered a glitch setting up on my Pixel, but I’m putting that down to prerelease software. I switched to my iphoness and had the camera connected in minutes, and it worked on my Pixel just fine after that.

The Blink Mini 2 is one of the smallest security cameras around, and it has a slightly more rounded design than the original, but it’s still basically square. The circular base has a cover that pops loose to reveal two holes for screwing the mount into a wall (screws and fixing provided), or you can simply sit it on a table or shelf. It's wired, with a recessed USB-C port around back, and it comes with a 6.5-foot cable and a power adapter.

It also scores an IP65 rating, which means it's dust-tight and secure against water jets. You will need to buy the bundle with the Blink Weather Resistant Power Adapter for an extra $10 if you plan to use it outdoors. (This also adds a 13-foot cable.)

Solid Performance

Using the Blink app on androids and ioses, I found it responsive and quick to load the live feed, generally within three seconds, though it occasionally took longer. You have three simple tabs along the bottom. Home shows a frame of your last clip on each camera, Clips lists all your recorded videos in chronological order, and Settings lets you dig into your account, plan, and schedule.

The Blink Mini 2 can stream and record smooth and crisp 1080p video at up to 30 frames per second. That high frame rate is a rarity in cameras this cheap, and it ensures less blurring of moving subjects. However, the default quality is lower, so you must dig into the device settings if you want to change it. You’ll also need a decent Wi-Fi connection at the locations (3 Mbps minimum). In Settings, you can also select clip length, between 5 and 30 seconds, and retrigger delay, between 10 and 60 seconds. The default video quality is adequate for most indoor uses, but you might prefer a higher-resolution camera for outdoors, particularly if you want to cover a large area or be able to zoom in and pick out a face or a license plate.

The new LED spotlight is quite handy if you plan to use the Blink Mini 2 outdoors. You can set the brightness, dictate how long it should stay on when triggered by motion, or turn it off completely. When I installed the camera on a side path at my back door, it was enough to illuminate the way and let me capture short-range color footage at night. The black-and-white night vision extends further into the gloom.

I set the camera to record clips when it detected a person, and it hasn’t made many mistakes. (It has categorized a couple of clips with people in them as motion, but there have been no false positives.) Most recorded events seem to have been captured in full, but a couple of times, it missed the beginning of someone walking into the frame. You can also tweak the motion sensitivity and set privacy or activity zones by graying out squares in a grid to reduce false positives or cut out areas you don’t want triggering recordings.

While the overall sound quality isn’t great, it is better than the original Blink Mini. You can carry on a two-way conversation with minimal lag. Certain sounds and weather cause distortion, so it sounds better indoors but is passable in a pinch. Blink cameras also work well with Alexa, but there’s no official support for Google Home or Apple HomeKit. However, there are lots of IFTTT integrations that provide workarounds to use Blink with Google, Samsung SmartThings, and other platforms. One last feature I like in the app is the biometric lock, so you can open it with your fingerprint or face.

Subscribe or Pass

You can use Blink cameras without a subscription if you buy a Sync Module 2 ($50) and stick a USB flash drive in it to record locally, but I can’t recommend the Blink Mini 2 without a subscription. Only subscribers get person detection, live view recording, cloud recording with 60-day video history (30 days in the UK and Europe), video sharing, rapid access, and a few other perks. Person detection is a must unless you want lots of false positives.

Without the subscription, your live views are limited to five minutes, and recorded videos may be much slower to load. This is because videos are uploaded to the cloud from your USB flash drive and then sent to your phones. I have tested without the subscription. With a fast internet connection and flash drive, my videos loaded fairly quickly, taking maybe a couple of seconds longer on average, though they occasionally took much longer. If you subscribe but already have a Sync Module 2, it defaults to a once-a-day backup of your videos. (You can also stick the drive into a computer to review recorded events.) You can see the complete subscription comparison here.

You get a 30-day trial of the subscription with each Blink camera. After that, the Blink Basic subscription, covering one camera, costs $3 per month or $30 per year, which is about as cheap as it gets nowadays. The Blink Plus subscription, covering unlimited cameras, costs $10 per month or $100 per year. Since Amazon owns Blink, you can connect your Amazon account and manage your subscription through the Amazon site.

Many of the best indoor security cameras require you to subscribe to enjoy all their features. But if you can’t abide another subscription, the Cync Indoor Smart Camera ($70) or TP-Link Tapo C110 ($30) are good alternatives. You can find better, but not cheaper, outdoor options in our Best Outdoor Security Cameras guide.