It feels as though the best video doorbell market gets more crowded by the day – or at least by the week – and the latest model to come to our attention is the 2nd-gen Blink Video Doorbell, a budget option from the Amazon home security camera sub-brand.
The affordable price really is the main selling point here, and it’s a camera that you’ll often find available at a discount too (this is Amazon, after all). With that price in mind, you don’t get top-tier specs and features, but there’s enough here to probably satisfy most people.
Having used the Blink Video Doorbell 2025 for a couple of weeks and given its features and capabilities a thorough testing, I can tell you everything you need to know about the device – and whether or not it makes sense as your next smart home investment.
Blink Video Doorbell review: price and availability
You can buy the Blink Video Doorbell now, direct from Amazon. Its official retail price is £59.99 / $69.99, but as mentioned above, this is a device that’s often available on offer – the widgets on this page will guide you towards the best Blink Video Doorbell prices currently available online.
Blink Video Doorbell review: design and setup
Everything you need to get started with the Blink Video Doorbell comes in the box: the doorbell itself, the mounting bracket (plus an angled, optional attachment), screws, wires for a wired setup, the Sync Module Core (and a power cable for it), and even three AA batteries. It’s a simple looking camera with a basic design, but it gets the job done, and the doorbell button is at least nice and big, and easy to press.
The sync module is like a bridge between your Wi-Fi network and the doorbell, and it’ll manage up to 10 of your Blink devices – so if you already have the latest sync module set up with a different camera, you can just get the doorbell on its own. Unless you have multiple Blink cameras at home though, it seems rather redundant to have a secondary device that does nothing but syncing.
(Image credit: Future)
You need to get the sync module plugged in first, and you can then use the Blink Home Monitor app for Android or iOS to get the little box connected to Wi-Fi. With that done, you can connect your video doorbell – it’s a pretty simple process that takes minutes, though I’m not too impressed at having to sign up for yet another account, with entering a mobile number compulsory.
Speaking of accounts, a lot of features are locked behind a subscription (though a 30-day free trial is included with your device): they include person detection, video recording history, and video sharing, and prices start at £2.50 / $3.99 per month. Without the subscription, you just get alerts when someone passes by the doorbell or presses the button, and access to the live feed any time you like.
Blink Video Doorbell review: Video and features
As mentioned earlier, this is the second generation edition of the Blink Video Doorbell, a 2025 refresh following on from the 2021 original. The main upgrade here is the video resolution, which is up to 1440p from 1080p, but there’s also been something of an aesthetic revamp to give the device a more modern look.
If you don’t wire it up and go for the battery option, Amazon says the three AA batteries are good for about two years of use – depending of course on how often you’re checking in on the video feed, and how many people are ringing your doorbell. I couldn’t verify that, and the app doesn’t show real time battery levels either (it just showed “OK” for the battery level for the duration of this review).
(Image credit: Future)
Crucially, the video is of a perfectly acceptable quality. it’s not the sharpest or smoothest I’ve ever seen, but it’s more than good enough to see who’s at the door and what’s going on outside – and remember just how affordable this doorbell is. The night vision is perfectly passable too, though you’d struggle to see anything much beyond your front porch in dark conditions and it’s only monochrome (no colour).
There’s a square 150-degree field of view both horizontally and vertically here, which means you can just about see everything in front of your door, including packages that have been left on the doorstep. This is another notable upgrade from the original camera, which offered 135-degree horizontally and 80-degree vertically in terms of the field of view.
(Image credit: Future)
Other features to know about here are the two-way audio – a standard for video doorbells – and an IP65 rating for protection against the elements. I didn’t get any snow or thunderstorms at home during the time I was testing the Blink Video Doorbell, but it did survive several rain showers without complaint.
Smart home protocol support is limited to Amazon Alexa – you can’t use this with Google Home or Apple Homekit. Fortunately, the bundled app is straightforward to use, and gives you easy access to features such as privacy zones (for blocking out certain sections of the video feed) and motion detection settings.
Blink Video Doorbell review: performance
(Image credit: Future)
The motion detection worked perfectly well in my testing, and you can always adjust the sensitivity of it if you need to – anything passing by the front door was picked up and generated an alert on my phone. There are some trade-offs for the lower price though, and you don’t get the sort of AI-assisted descriptions and recognition some other video doorbells have (though you do get person detection, with a subscription).
Another omission is any kind of wireless connected chime, so to know someone is at the door you need to wire it up or make sure your phone is always to hand. You can actually use a Blink Mini 2 security camera as a chime, if you have one, which is a good idea (and encourages you to stick with the Blink ecosystem of course).
Blink Video Doorbell review: verdict
As an Amazon sub-brand, Blink has now established its position as a purveyor of basic, affordable, straightforward smart home devices. To a certain extent you already know what you’re getting from a Blink device before you’ve even set it up – and the Blink Video Doorbell met my expectations almost exactly.
You can’t fault it in terms of the jobs that a video doorbell has to do, whether that’s chatting to someone at the door via two-way audio, or checking on your driveway at night. It all works as advertised, and quickly, through the app on your phone – an app which is straightforward and easy to get around.
(Image credit: Future)
Some of the extra bells and whistles that come with more expensive cameras are missing, and the video quality isn’t the highest, but at this price you can hardly complain. Of course a local storage option would be welcome, but Blink isn’t alone in trying to push users towards a cloud subscription if they actually want to keep their video recordings.
As with the Blink devices we’ve reviewed previously like the Blink Mini, you get very good value for money and a device that’s reliable and solid. I’d say it’s also worth the upgrade, just about, if you have the original Blink Video Doorbell – that extra video quality and extended field of view is going to make a difference.
Blink Video Doorbell review: alternatives to consider
We’ve reviewed some excellent video doorbells in recent months here on T3. The EZVIZ EP3x Pro earned itself our highest possible review rating, for example – it costs significantly more than the Blink Video Doorbell (most alternatives do), but it comes with a host of useful features, including two cameras that give you full coverage of your doorstep. It supports local storage too, with no cloud subscription needed.
We also awarded top marks to the Aqara Smart Doorbell Camera G410 as well. Some of the reasons why include its high quality video, its affordable price point, the polished companion app you can use from your phone, and neat extra features like face recognition. As with the EZVIZ model, you get a local storage option, but there is a cloud storage service available if you want to pay extra for it.
