Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

After a long wait, my 3 cameras arrived today. I had them going within minutes and working with Alexa shortly after. I was so worried from reading all of the negative reviews here and from seeing that as of today Amazon isn't selling any more of the Blink XT2 (I was thinking maybe they jumped ship), that I almost didn't open the box and try them out. My husband convinced me to give them a go, and I'm so very glad I did. I'm so happy with them that I want to add at least one more camera to our system. They currently aren't for sale (6/9/2019), but hopefully they will be soon. I'll break down what my non-tech savvy findings are: I have the sync module located 8 feet from our router. I have one camera in the same room for watching our dogs when we are away. I have the second camera on our front porch, approximately 20 feet from the router, and the last camera is upstairs in my son's room approximately 30 feet from the wifi router. I'd like to get one more for our driveway, as the front porch can see our cars and front door, but not the street or our mailbox. So far, all cameras in the house are getting all bars on their wifi signal (porch camera 4 bars) and my son's room has 2 bars with the sync module while the other inside and outside cameras have all bars. I'm trying out different locations with the sync module to increase the bars with my son's room. I have my settings set up to record the maximum of 60 seconds. I realize the battery life will not be as long, but I'm cool with that. Live view goes for those 60 seconds and I can keep the live view open beyond that by touching one button on the app in my phone to extend it. Initially we had a total of 10 videos that were 60 seconds long stored in the cloud that were of us trying to install the cameras (that probably would have been funny to see on youtube). So a total of 10 minutes. That took up 5% of our allowed storage in the cloud. Not bad. I easily selected which ones to delete. I could have saved them. There are options in the app for how long you want them to store the videos in the cloud, those options go up to 1 year. Again, not bad. You can arm/disarm the cameras individually. Awesome. Other reviewers mention the delay of the notifications from when the motion detector senses movement and records. That delay is expected as we're dealing with wifi and the cloud. You need a different security camera system that's wired for a faster response. You shouldn't deduct stars because this system isn't as fast at alerting as a wired system. That's just not going to happen. And the slower your internet or the further away your camera is from the internet and sync device, the slower the notifications and recording. Period. It can't be helped. The sound is amazing on the cameras, but talking to whoever is on the other side of the camera is garbled. I'm not deducting a star for that, because I'm happy the sound of the camera recording and in Live View is so superior. The picture/video is outstanding. Daytime is colored and awesome. Yes, night vision is in black and white. It is so clear and detailed. I was quite surprised by that. In the app you can see information for each camera. Here is an overview of what it shows separately for each camera: name, status (monitoring or off), battery (mine says 'ok"), temperature, whether motion detection is on (enable/disable), activity zones (a new feature so you can select which regions are active or inactive), retrigger time, sensitivity, clip length, whether to end clip if motion stops, controls for the IR illuminator, video quality, enable/disable microphone, speaker volume, last updated (with an update button), camera to wifi bar status, and camera to sync module bar status. Linking with Alexa required me to add the skill "Blink Smarthome". I downloaded it to my phone, opened it, signed into blink via the app and gave a 4 digit code for arming and disarming with Alexa. The two apps linked. Then I told Alexa to discover the devices. Make sure you rename your camera to the same name in your blink and Alexa apps, so Alexa can find the cameras. Then I went to my Echo Show and asked Alexa to "Show me the front door" and she did. So cool. I then tried out each camera. No problems. This is one of the reasons why I bought the 2nd Gen Show and ordered the cute new smaller Shows (have yet to receive them) and our Echo Spot. One of my dogs and my son both suffer from seizures. My son also has other major medical conditions. I like that if I'm away from home I can check on my dogs. I especially like that from my bed at night, I can watch from my Echo Show or Spot and see my son in the dark and check on him should I hear a noise or if I just want to check on him. And also check on him during the day when I'm downstairs, without having to go up and down the stairs. He's mobile and all, I just worry he's having a seizure when I hear strange noises. I live with pain, so going up and down the stairs is hard. This setup I have will cut down on unnecessary trips. The included mounting stuff (I can't think of the right word at the moment) is perfect and I don't think you need to purchase anything else. It has just enough movement, up and down, side to side, that suits our needs. We have our outside camera real high up and out of sight, but yeah, someone could steal it by climbing a ladder. I'm not particularly worried about it and like that I can pop it off to easily change the batteries (via a ladder). I recommend this system if you are willing to have a few seconds notification delay, ease of installing, and this low price. Otherwise, this may not be for you if you want instant notifications. A few seconds delay is not bad for my purposes. I love how incredibly easy this was to setup and how it works with Alexa. Oh and if you don't have Alexa, checking the video or Live video is easy in the Blink App. For a reasonable price I have a nifty smart home with opportunities to add more cameras and features. I have two Nest thermostats working seamlessly with Alexa as well. I'm grateful to have such amazing technology at my fingertips. We also have a Fire TV for my son who's blind. It has a built in screen reader and also works with Alexa. He can tell the TV to go places like Netflix or HULU, to go to certain shows or movies, ff and rewind, and he can tell Alexa to lower or raise the A/C. I'm loving this new technology. If you are having trouble setting up, your wifi router is the first thing you should look at. Investigate if your router is optimal for what you are trying to do. I read a tip from a reviewer that I will pass along here, as it was excellent: set up your individual cameras when you are near your router and sync device (the cameras will need to be recognized and their firmware updated), then move the camera to the location you want after. If I think of any other advice, I'll come back here and add it. Good luck. Take a deep breath and take your time when setting up. I'm a novice non-techie chick. If I can do it, the odds are you can. Whatever issues these may have had initially, I believe they fixed with a software update.