Michael hands over the protection of his home while he is away to Arlo
While the name Arlo means 'Barberry free', the Arlo product offers to bring peace of mind in its role as a camera home security system. Developed by Netgear, the Arlo Smart Home Security Camera kit is available with different numbers of cameras plus other various items. This review is based on the two-camera package, which includes a base station, Ethernet cable, four magnetic mounts for attaching the cameras to walls and two sets of four lithium CR123 photo batteries. There's also claimed to be a quick start card but, in Netgear terminology, this turns out to be a URL from where you can download the relevant document.
The downloaded document leads you through the basic steps of attaching the base station to your router via the supplied cable, inserting the batteries into each camera and then syncing them to the base station. You'll need an Arlo account, which can be created by downloading the appropriate app for iOS, Android or Kindle devices. Setting up an account requires an email address and password. There's also an option to include a telephone in case technical support need to get in touch, but this feature refused to accept my landline number, so I left the box blank.
There are three account types covering various camera and base station combinations. An Elite account allows up to three base stations and 15 cameras, giving 100GB of 60-day cloud storage costing £9.99 monthly or £99 for an annual subscription. With support for ten cameras and one base station, a Premier account gives 10GB of 30-day cloud storage at a monthly cost of £6.49 or £64 annually. I've been using the free account that supports a single base station and five cameras with 1GB of sevenday cloud storage.
Each camera supports the full HD format of 1080p with fixed rate focus stretching from two feet to infinity, plus motion detection and night vision capability. Disappointingly, there's no noise detection feature, but you do get excellent image quality. When viewing content, whether of the live or recorded variety, you can pan and zoom into the image for a close look.
Content is automatically streamed to the base station and from there on to your cloud storage and/or smartphone. The base station comes with 16MB of flash memory and 64MG of RAM. Additional storage can be added using the two rearmounted USB 2.0 ports.
The Arlo app offers a tabbed interface, allowing you to flip between Mode, Camera and Library views. By default you start with Camera showing the view from two cameras, which are identified by a 13-character string that can be replaced with a more appropriate designation such as front or back room. Individual rules can be set up for each camera as to how they should respond to events. Camera view shows icons indicating the status of the batteries (estimated at between four and six months), wi-fi signal and motion detection, plus the number of events recorded for that camera.
Library view gives you access to the recorded events organised by date and time. Clicking on a selected item will show you a playback of the event. Mode view allows you to create a schedule based on a wall chart set up to govern when the cameras are in operation monitoring the situation and sending you push notices regarding possible events. Some experimentation is required with scheduling to avoid being swamped by push alerts. Michael Fereday
Easy home video security system for peace of mind.