Blink XT2 cameras
Discussion
I’ve bought a 5 camera XT2 system, had it a couple of days but I think it will be going back.
Pros:
- easy setup
- cameras are obviously very portable and no wires gives great flexibility
- cheap
Cons:
- daytime image quality is so-so, on par with something a camera phone would produce 20 years ago, impossible to pick up a registration number at a distance beyond about 10m
- night time image quality is appalling, probably could not identify a person that walked past the camera, let alone at any distance
- very slow to respond via the app, to get a “live” photo view takes about 10 seconds for the system to respond
- cameras will sometimes light up to show they are recording but will not actually upload a clip to the cloud
- the camera that is above our front door at first floor window height would not pick up me walking out of the front door, onto the path and back again, even at high sensitivity
I will give it another couple of days, but at best during nighttime it will probably tell you someone is where they shouldn’t be, but not much more.
Pros:
- easy setup
- cameras are obviously very portable and no wires gives great flexibility
- cheap
Cons:
- daytime image quality is so-so, on par with something a camera phone would produce 20 years ago, impossible to pick up a registration number at a distance beyond about 10m
- night time image quality is appalling, probably could not identify a person that walked past the camera, let alone at any distance
- very slow to respond via the app, to get a “live” photo view takes about 10 seconds for the system to respond
- cameras will sometimes light up to show they are recording but will not actually upload a clip to the cloud
- the camera that is above our front door at first floor window height would not pick up me walking out of the front door, onto the path and back again, even at high sensitivity
I will give it another couple of days, but at best during nighttime it will probably tell you someone is where they shouldn’t be, but not much more.
My Blink setup caught some scum trying to nick our RS3 yesterday evening. My neighbour disturbed them.
https://youtu.be/keQTHifdWVE
8pm!
https://youtu.be/keQTHifdWVE
8pm!
SHutchinson said:
My Blink setup caught some scum trying to nick our RS3 yesterday evening. My neighbour disturbed them.
https://youtu.be/keQTHifdWVE
8pm!
Who set the recording off your neighbor or the scrote?https://youtu.be/keQTHifdWVE
8pm!
Dan_1981 said:
Appears much cheaper than equivalent Arlo system? also without the charge for cloud storage?
What's the downsides?
battery lifeWhat's the downsides?
camera picture quality
range of cameras and ecosystem of devices available for Arlo is better (doorbells, lights etc)
I have a 4 year old arlo original 3 camera kit supplemented with Arlo Q (usb powered) and Arlo go running off solar panel. The latter not touched since install over 2 years ago, just works great off the panel.
The night vision and general picture quality of the "standard" Arlo is still much better than Blink.
In typcail consumer electronic fashion, Blink are built down to a price, Arlo was built up to a minimum acceptable spec. Arlo still have patents on low power wi-fi to prolong battery life - none of the other copies can do this they need to fit huge batteries or present the battery life figures in a different way to make them look acceptable.
Arlo are not perfect and you can get cheaper systems if you can go wired/mains powered. You pay a premium for ease of installation.
Im sure If we all had no budget constraints we would have 4K professionally installed wired systems
Dan_1981 said:
SHutchinson said:
My Blink setup caught some scum trying to nick our RS3 yesterday evening. My neighbour disturbed them.
https://youtu.be/keQTHifdWVE
8pm!
Who set the recording off your neighbor or the scrote?https://youtu.be/keQTHifdWVE
8pm!
bogie said:
Dan_1981 said:
Appears much cheaper than equivalent Arlo system? also without the charge for cloud storage?
What's the downsides?
battery lifeWhat's the downsides?
camera picture quality
range of cameras and ecosystem of devices available for Arlo is better (doorbells, lights etc)
I have a 4 year old arlo original 3 camera kit supplemented with Arlo Q (usb powered) and Arlo go running off solar panel. The latter not touched since install over 2 years ago, just works great off the panel.
The night vision and general picture quality of the "standard" Arlo is still much better than Blink.
In typcail consumer electronic fashion, Blink are built down to a price, Arlo was built up to a minimum acceptable spec. Arlo still have patents on low power wi-fi to prolong battery life - none of the other copies can do this they need to fit huge batteries or present the battery life figures in a different way to make them look acceptable.
Arlo are not perfect and you can get cheaper systems if you can go wired/mains powered. You pay a premium for ease of installation.
Im sure If we all had no budget constraints we would have 4K professionally installed wired systems
Bought a 3 camera Blink setup last week for £190 and, so far, love it. The build quality of the Blink isn’t as good as the Arlo, admittedly, but I only know how solid the Arlo felt because I had to take it down/put it up so bloody often. The app is much of a muchness, not much experience, but for the amount of time an average user will be on it (after the initial playing around), there really is no difference.
Battery life on my Arlo’s was, at VERY most, 3 months. That’s with 4X CR123 batteries at £12 a set and on the rear camera that triggered maybe twice a day when the cat came in and went back out. The front ones that triggered every 5 minutes because fluff blew across the screen or the moon was in the wrong place went through 4 batteries a month in the last couple of months.
Oh, and the customer services, good god! I didn’t know it was possible to be so bad at it. All of the 4 exchanges cost me £15 to do - EACH - and took around 2 weeks each time. This is after spending 2 evenings doing an online chat with ‘Roger’ in Mumbai who couldn’t deviate from his script and wouldn’t take video proof that they were falsely triggering because it wasn’t ‘enough evidence’.
Just my experience, of course, but I’d rather lose my car than have another Arlo product ‘protecting’ it.
We've had Eufy cam since July and one camera is still showing full charge the other has only lost one bar of battery. The picture quality seems very good especially if you download the full res files. We have have the A.i version with battery backup but the standard setup is only £259 on amazon at the moment..
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Security-Wireless-Compati...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Security-Wireless-Compati...
Muncher said:
That bottom pic is getting blown out by what looks like a wall bottom right hand corner. Try turning the illumination off in the pics were there are lights.I've one camera (older XTs) were the colour and focus is slightly off but it did fall out of a tree during a storm so the IR filter and focus could have taken a knock.
Image quality on mine is great but you have to experiment with the IR illuminator for night time. It's very hit or miss but I've mine working great. Was a lot of faffing about though.
I have the old xt system (1 way audio). The brackets are in no way strong at all. My window cleaner knocked one off its mount and broke it. Had the cheek to say it wasn’t him until I showed him the footage(not the sharpest tool in the box). I was more annoyed he tried to deny it. He offered to pay for a replacement but I said no worries. We have 5 cameras and my only gripe is it’s slow to start recording. People often just appear part way through when recording as it takes about a second to notice the person, wake the camera up and establish the connection to the hub module. We have had ours over a year. Is in a very high trafficked area, our neighbours actively asked me to remove the blanking over their property after an attempted break in and it’s still on its origina batteries.
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