Sure, Google’s getting most of the smart home love this week, but you didn’t think Amazon would let an I/O pass without releasing a little news of its own, did you? The company just announced the latest version of its outdoor Blink security camera, the fittingly named Blink XT2.
The new model brings a handful of updates to the product — and manages to do so at a lower price. At $90, it’s 25% less than the original model — which was already a decent price point as far as outdoor cameras go.
The new model promises two years of battery life, powered by two AA batteries. That’s courtesy of a new chip — and depends on usage, naturally. Namely, just using motion-activated recording will help conserve on life. The update also brings two-way talk to the product, because sometimes yelling at an intruder is the best way to get them out of there.
Motion sensing has been improved on the product to limit false alerts — a pretty big issue with most of these consumer cameras.
The XT2 arrives online in the U.S. on May 22, with Canada availability following this summer. It’s available to preorder starting today. There’s also a bundled version with the Blink Sync Module that will run you $100.
Amazon acquired Blink in late 2017 in a bid to increase its smart home offerings and better compete with Google post-Nest acquisition.
Update: Amazon notes w/r/t the battery, “if customers use the device exclusively to record video, they’ll get twice the usage time as XT1 over a two-year time period.”