Blink Indoor vs. Ring Indoor Cam: Which should you buy?

Blink Indoor

Blink Indoor is the company's latest indoor-only cameras. With a light and discrete design, and 2-year or 4-year battery life, Blink Indoor might just be the ultimate, affordable wireless home security camera option.

Ring Indoor Cam

When longer clip lengths or integration with other Ring devices is the most important thing, get a Ring Indoor Cam. It's less money up-front, and it fits perfectly into your existing Ring Protect plan.

Amazon offers several different home security cameras from two of its most well-known brands: Ring, and Blink. But each of these brands offers cameras with very different designs, both physical and in terms of capability, so which is the best to have in your home? The Ring Indoor Cam is a wired camera that perfectly fits the best Ring products. If you've already got lots of Ring devices in your home, this one is probably a no-brainer decision. Blink, on the other hand, offers totally wireless cameras that tie in best with Alexa and other IFTTT-enabled smart home devices.

Blink Indoor A purposeful design

Of these two cameras, Blink offers the sleekest design that's also the most inconspicuous. Blink Indoor uses a rounded square design, with a shiny black body and an understated white frame. That helps it blend in better with normal household objects instead of looking like a camera. The Ring Indoor Cam is very obviously a camera, despite a similar colorway, as its cylindrical shape and cord can't be mistaken for anything else.

Blink Indoor's wireless nature means it can be placed just about anywhere in your home, even those awkward spots where running power for a wired camera like Ring Indoor would be difficult (or impossible). It's also less than half the weight of Ring Indoor Cam, which further enhances its ability to be placed literally anywhere in your home.

Blink Indoor's 2-year battery life also means you won't have to regularly get back into those awkward spots just to change the battery. Blink even offers a battery pack that'll last a whopping 4-years on a single charge. When's the last time a rechargeable battery on anything you own lasted that long?

Ring Indoor Cam It's a new record

But what if you want your camera to look like a camera? Better yet, what if you just don't want to deal with batteries, or have the need for more extensive recording capabilities? Both Blink Indoor and Ring Indoor Cam only record video when movement is detected. Blink Indoor can only record up to 30-second-long clips at a time. You'll also find that the camera has to wait at least 5 seconds until it records a new clip, leaving a potential gap between events.

Ring Indoor Cam is able to record clips up to 120-seconds long, which is four times the length of Blink Indoor. There's also no limit to how long you can keep the live view feed open with Ring Indoor Cam. That's great if something is happening in your home while you're away, and you need to keep an eye on things. Blink Indoor's live view feed is restricted to 30-second windows of time, just like the recording.

On top of being able to record events for longer, Ring Indoor Cam features a wider field-of-view (FoV), which makes it able to see more of your home at a time. If you're placing Ring Indoor Cam in the corner of a room (or anywhere, really), it's going to be able to see more windows and doors than Blink Indoor.

Blink Indoor vs. Ring Indoor Cam it's all about the ecosystem

Both Blink Indoor and Ring Indoor Cam pair perfectly with Amazon Alexa in every way. Amazon owns both companies, after all, so that makes perfect sense. If you're an Alexa user, there's no real difference between the way Alexa interacts with these products. But what if you've already got other smart home products that you'd like to integrate with your new Ring Indoor Cam or Blink Indoor?

Ring Indoor Cam is designed to work best with other Ring products. That's because Ring's software can juggle all the Ring products you own and even help you easily create customized actions for using those products. For instance, if your Ring Indoor Cam spots motion while it's in Away Mode, the Ring app can turn on your Ring house lights, start recording on any other Ring cameras you have in (or outside) of your home, and even set off Ring Alarm. That's all without having to navigate out of the Ring app, too!

Blink, on the other hand, will likely be a better option if you have a mix of other smart home devices or primarily use Google Assistant or Google Home. That's because Blink Indoor (and all Blink cameras) have support for IFTTT, a third-party service that can be used to connect smart home gadgets no matter what company makes them. That means you'll be able to perform similar actions to what was described for the Ring Indoor Cam above, just with devices from many different manufacturers, instead.

Blink Indoor Cloud and local storage

Both cameras offer a live view option for checking your camera in realtime, but what about recording? While Ring Indoor Cam can record longer clip lengths, you'll need to pay for Ring's cloud storage in order to access them. While both companies offer an affordable $3/month storage solution, Blink is the only one who also offers a local storage option.

By plugging in a simple USB thumb drive into the Blink Sync Module, Blink Indoor owners can store recorded clips on their own storage and completely bypass the cloud. That's both an extra security bonus and a reduction in monthly bills, even if it is just a few bucks.

Blink Indoor vs. Ring Indoor Cam Convenience is capability

While both cameras offer their own unique home security brand, the Blink Indoor is a more well-rounded device. That's not just an ode to its design, which makes it easy to place anywhere in your home, it's also a commentary on its capabilities. With IFTTT integration, you'll be able to connect your Blink Indoor cameras to devices from all sorts of manufacturers, making your smart home feel more complete without having to stick to a single brand.

It's also got epic 2-year battery life with 2-AA batteries, and an optional rechargeable battery pack can last up to 4-years on a single charge. That means you can stick Blink Indoor in a difficult-to-reach spot and not worry about maintenance for years at a time. Blink even offers local storage so you can keep your videos without paying for them. Ring Indoor Cam can record for longer, but the hardwired power makes it less convenient, and having to pay for Ring's cloud service makes it more expensive in the long run.