Blink Outdoor 4 review: Bountiful battery life

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It’s been a bit over a month since I received the Blink Outdoor 4 for a review. Normally, that’s plenty of time to get some insight into a product’s performance.

But the Blink Outdoor 4’s biggest claim to fame is two years of battery life from a pair of AA batteries.

How can I reasonably test that claim in a month? The answer is: “I can’t”.

So, for the benefit of my sanity and a timely review, I’m just going to accept that the Blink Outdoor 4’s battery lasts a really long time. I also appreciate the fact it uses standard AAs, so even when it does die, you can just pop a couple of new batteries in and keep going.

So, outside its impressive battery life, how does the Outdoor 4 perform? Pretty good, it turns out, though Blink’s ecosystem is still lacking that of its competitors, and that’s a bigger problem than it should be.

What is the Blink Outdoor 4 offering?

The Blink Outdoor 4 is a compact little home security camera, measuring in 70 × 70 × 41 mm, and weighing just 141 grams.

In the box you get one of Blink’s Sync Module 2 units, which lets you save clips from the camera to USB storage, without needing a subscription plan.

One sync module can support up to 10 different Blink cameras, so you can set up a pretty comprehensive home security system around your home and only have to change batteries every couple of years or so.

Despite its name, the Blink Outdoor 4 is suitable for both indoor and outdoor environments. It can record both during the day and with black and white night vision.

Recording quality is 1080p, which is far from the best quality you can buy these days. But Blink’s whole schtick is to deliver much more affordable entry-level home security products, so it’s a worthy sacrifice.

You get a 143º diagonal field of view, which offers an expansive view of your home’s environment.

The camera also offers motion detection alerts and two-way audio communication. If you spring for the Blink subscription plan, you’ll also get person alerts.

From a specs' perspective, the Outdoor 4 is limited to 2,4GHz Wi-Fi, supporting 802.11 b/g/n standards. That’s a far cry from today’s Wi-Fi standards.

Accessing all the recordings is done via the Blink app for iOS and Android, which is a pretty barebones app for home security, but does what it needs to.

What does the Blink Outdoor 4 do well?

As I found with the Blink Mini 2, the Outdoor 4 is incredibly straightforward to set up and use. Simply pop the batteries in and connect it to the Blink app, and you are good to go.

The fact Blink has bundled the Sync Module 2 in the box is a great inclusion, as it lets you get started nice and quickly with offline video recording. To be honest, offline video recording is probably the second-biggest reason to consider this outdoor camera, after the battery life.

You only get as much storage as you plug into the Sync Module, and the more cameras you have the more storage it will take up. Accessing videos from local storage takes a bit longer than cloud-based videos, but it also doesn’t cost you a monthly fee, which is a nice touch.

But the biggest advantage here is the battery life. I’m used to having to replace the batteries in my Ring cameras every month to six weeks. Stretching that out to two years is a game changer.

What could the Blink Outdoor 4 improve?

Blink is geared towards people after entry-level home security, so it’s difficult to get too upset by missing features. That said, there is no integration with either Google Home or Apple HomeKit – you can view recordings and video through Alexa-enabled devices, though.

There’s also no colour night vision, instead only offering black and white footage.

The two-way audio quality is okay, but a bit glitchy. From the Blink app, I could hear a subject on the camera well enough, though it was overwhelmed with my voice being played back on the camera on a delay.

But the greatest challenge, like with the Mini 2, is the ecosystem. Currently, only this and the Mini 2 cameras are available in Australia, and there’s no crossover with platforms like Ring, despite both being owned by Amazon.

That means that if you want a Blink home security camera and a video doorbell, for example, you will need to pay two security subscriptions to enjoy cloud backup and person detection.

I’m certain Blink will look to fill its product gaps over the coming months to minimise this particular challenge, but right now, the biggest decision isn’t with the home security product, it’s with what ecosystem you want to choose.

And despite its impressive battery life, tracking it is not possible. There’s no real battery life indicator – when I log in to the app, it tells me battery life is “OK”. I’m sure there would be an alert when it gets too low, but I would like the ability to manually check.

Verdict

The Outdoor 4 is a basic home security camera. It doesn’t have a huge number of groundbreaking camera features or specs. It just records solid HD footage while offering groundbreaking two-year battery life, at an affordable price.

But it’s only worth considering if you’re prepared to commit to Blink as your home security camera brand of choice. With limited hardware choices, that’s not an easy commitment to make, but it should change over the coming year.

If you’re prepared to make that commitment, the Blink Outdoor 4’s impressive battery won’t disappoint.

Buy the Blink Outdoor 4 online

Blink Outdoor 4

RRP: $149

Check Price @ Amazon