The best cheap video doorbell just got even better

It doesn’t matter how versatile or advanced a smart home device if it’s hard to use or exorbitantly priced. For a lot of people, that’s part of the charm; smart gadgets should be smart enough to make setup and management easy, and it shouldn’t take an incredible investment to outfit your home with a decent selection of them.

So, while fancy features like high-resolution sensors, pan and zoom functionality, and always-on recording appeal to the most demanding smart home enthusiasts, most people just want stuff that works without headaches and doesn’t cost a fortune. That’s where Amazon’s Blink security camera brand comes in. There aren’t many devices in the Blink family, but an upgraded entry in the singular video doorbell line launched today. It’s improved just enough to remain among the easiest smart video doorbells to recommend (Source: Bloomberg).

Seemingly minor (but actually important) upgrades

When things work right, we tend not to notice them

Behold, all the smart devices currently available in the affordable Blink family.

Amazon’s latest budget-friendly doorbell cam didn’t get a massive makeover. There’s nothing really wrong with the previous model — which is half off while still in stock on Amazon, by the way — but competitors have left it behind in two critical ways. Those two issues are exactly where the new Blink got some love.

The most noticeable is the expanded field of view. The last-gen model captures 135 degrees horizontally and 80 degrees vertically. The new one delivers a 150-degree field of view in a 1:1 aspect ratio at a pixel density comparable to that of 1080p. Several leading video doorbells have moved to a similarly square, wide-angle aspect recently to capture all the front porch happenings without cutting off packages waiting on the doorstep.

The second, which you ideally won’t ever notice, is improved human detection. As Bloomberg rightfully termed it, the new Blink doorbell’s “computer vision-enabled person detection” leverages an AI model to figure out what it’s looking at, so you don’t get false alarms when cars drive by, or blurry pictures of moths at all hours of the night.

The latest Blink Video Doorbell retains the infrared night vision, two-way audio, and long battery life that make it such a well-rounded security gadget. The reasonably priced $30-per-year subscription still provides access to helpful features like unlimited cloud storage, 90-minute live camera feeds, and automatic local backup (and you will need the subscription to use the doorbell’s person detection). Refreshingly, the upgraded model did not increase in price, and is available bundled with the required (and also redesigned) Blink Sync Module Core for $70 at Amazon.