Blink Outdoor 4 (newest model) + Battery Extension Pack — Four-year battery wireless smart security camera, two-way audio, HD live view, enhanced motion detection — 5 camera system

Improvement Worth Upgrading
The newer model of the GEN 4’s are worth upgrading them, however the extra battery pack is hokey and makes the camera heavy and wants lower when lightly touched, with a bird landing on it or with heavy down pouring rain cameras notunder eve or roof protection will need adjusted after in countering. Otherwise the quality and picture is better as is the wider angle lense

Easy set up
This is a great camera, easy easy to use easy easy to set up. I love the fact that I can check on my house remotely from my phone anywhere recommend

Nice idea, poorly implemented.
5/17/24 – Last update. I did end up returning the whole kit. Unfortunately it really didn’t meet my needs or live up to expectations.I stand by my saying that this really isn’t suited for any serious or even less serious security needs. Between there being no 24/7 recording ( for obvious power restrictions ) short clips and missing the first couple seconds of an event, to the spotty live view and motion detection, it simply makes no sense to spend money on this. The system is too unreliable. The only thing it really has going for it is that it is simple to setup and self contained.At best I would say these cameras are okay for checking in on a place with the live view, when it works that is.—————-5/3/24 – Updating with a pros and cons list and my thoughts on the subscription.Pros :- Very good night vision, specifically the IR leds and how they are diffused. Think the difference between a frosted light bulb vs a non frosted. There are some IR led setups that are very inconsistent across the entire viewable image with some brighter areas than others but not so in this case. The light is perfectly diffused and reaches the full 170 degree view. I will say though that there is a noticeable loss in detail on the lower settings for IR intensity, which makes sense. The fewer photons bouncing back into the image sensor the less information is being collected. I found medium to be the best balance unsurprisingly.- The image is quite serviceable on standard resolution and pretty good on high. There don’t seem to be many noticeable compression artifacts even when zoomed in.Cons:- The short clip length. If there is some sort of criminal activity you would think you would at least like to capture the whole event while there is still motion if you aren’t able to stop it.- No buffering of video so you miss the first second or two of a motion event, which in some cases might be the most important part. By the time motion is triggered and the camera starts recording the moment may have passed.- Poor indication of battery life. “Ok” is not enough information.- Spotty motion detection. I’m assuming to save battery that they are not analyzing frame by frame changes in video like a lot of motion detection does but instead have hardware in it like a motion sensing switch in a bathroom light switch does. If that’s the case I get why they have chosen that but it also limits the distance a moving object will be detected. You should position your cameras with that in mind. Trying to cover too large an area will likely not net the results you want.Now my thoughts on the subscription are that they have intentionally neutered some features of the app/devices not because of any technological limitation but just to sell people on their subscription. That being said right now the only things that are subscription only are “take a photo every hour” “Person only motion detection” and “Save live view video to clips”. None of these are real deal breakers in my opinion as person only motion detection is useless in my opinion. Taking a photo every hour is nice I suppose but nothing that would ever get me to spend a monthly fee on, and the one thing I do think is useful (and that they intentionally crippled for the subscription) is the live view recording which could just as easily be saved to usb in my opinion. However an easy work around for that is to screen record the app while in live view.—————This is my initial review of this camera system. I just received and started to use them a couple days ago. I’ll give my first impression and towards the return date I’ll give another.I bought the 3 camera bundle with the battery extenders on a pretty decent discount and from my experiences so far I’m am beginning to see why.From the outset I was having trouble even adding the cameras to the system. The sync module connected quickly but all of the cameras consistently gave me errors connecting. Mind you, the cameras, sync module, router and my phone with the app were all in the same room together.I finally brute forced my way through and just continued to try to get them connected and all three finally did after many attempts, but all was still not well.Any time I tried to send a command such as update thumbnail or to change a camera setting it would throw an error. Sometimes the setting would change despite saying it didn’t but most of the time it would not and only recently have the thumbnails actually started to update.It should be noted that the free trial for cloud services is automatically activated and I’ve been using it for these couple days but I have recently canceled the trial because I don’t plan on continuing it when it’s over and I’ve read reports of the system behaving poorly after cloud services are done. So I want to see if there is even more of a reduction in usability now.On the cloud motion detection seems to work well and the clips are usually retrievable quickly. However live view has been extremely spotty even on the cloud. A lot of the time it will never load. I have yet for live view to load now that I canceled cloud services or to have any motion detection.Finally from the outset I’ve had one camera that will arbitrarily go offline and and stay off for an hour or so then come back up.My thoughts so far then are that this system cannot really be trusted for anything important. I would not trust these for any serious security needs. They are far too flakey and inconsistent.If my experience changes for the better (or god help me for the worse) I will update.

Easy to set up works great.
Pair this with the battery extender for long lasting surveillance.