Arlo - Essential XL Spotlight Camera – Indoor/Outdoor Wire-Free 1080p Security Camera - White

I love it!Weve had it for a little over a month and barely had to charge it (it still had 25%). We also have ring cameras and this camera honestly is way better then the ring!! We plan on buying a few more of these cameras. The battery life is great, I love that it tell you if it’s a person,animal,or just motion. It also highlights a box around what the camera is picking up! It’s also very clear eve if you zoom in! The only thing that that needs a bit of work is the speaker to speak out to someone because it comes out very low and you can barely hear it if you try to get someone’s attention that is outside, but that’s the only “con”.

Wonderful, reliable camera, battery is lasting, good visual, usually picks up cars and people, but not 100%, works well and storms, the dark, and heat. Does not fog up in the morning. It’s a little expensive. Works well for an inside camera as well.

Great ease of access and smart alerts. I have dogs and a doggy door so being able to monitor while away is awesome. I can turn off animal alerts for my backyard, and have it set to only alert me of people while not away on a long trip. The reason for only 4 stars is for 2 things: At first setup, I didn't want to tighten the camera too much because it's all plastic. It started to noticably droop down more and more daily, so it had to be tightened more. It still doesn't feel 100% tight when I have to tinker with it to recharge the battery. I've had it for a few months now so I know it's not going to fall down but I wish those pieces were made of metal and not plastic. Which brings me to reason 2, tinkering with it to charge; battery life is about 1 month. It's not terrible. I get a notification when it needs to be charged, and I just happen to have an outlet nearby for my patio lights. So I unplug the lights and charge my camera. It's just an annoying task to have to do once a month, and wish it lasted longer. And if an outlet is not nearby for someone else's home, they would have to either grab an extension cord so they can leave it set up while charging, or take it down and bring it inside to charge it for a day.

Returning this product because the motion detection is completely unreliable. It rarely catches/records any activity including cars and people coming and going. Recordings that were captured were significantly delayed and missed the first 5-10 seconds of activity. It didn’t register people who stayed in frame for long periods of time either. I checked the settings with support and the settings were properly configured. Night vision was the most important feature to me and unfortunately the biggest flaw of this camera - it’s terribly pixleated and a headache to even watch. I have the fastest internet available and the camera is located within feet of the router - so unfortunately the poor performance can’t be blamed on connectivity. The spotlight was nice but since motion detection was unreliable the spotlight rarely went off on it’s own. I manually used it a few times but video quality hindered it’s relevance. Photos attached include a manual live view of a coyote that the camera’s motion detection missed and I had to go to the window to see if it was a deer or a coyote since the video was so pixelated.

Home safety, security and peace of mind starts with intel/knowledge. Getting to know your neighbors, having a monitored security system and good locks are critical. Real time high quality video of what is actually going on at my house is really taking it to the next level! Arlo brings it with this camera! So many awesome features at this price point, not to mention how easy it was to set up really propels this to the front of the line in security cameras! I currently have four quality cameras and a popular video doorbell that I have had for about 5 years. The cameras are front and back, one in the main area of the house and one is on our puppy to watch him throughout the day. After testing the Arlo, one thing became clear. It is time to upgrade my older cameras and Arlo is the way I’m going for sure. The features I love: - First was the video quality 1080p, Arlo Looks great and connects fast. Keep in mind your wifi and internet speeds as well as your device you're using (cell phone or ipad) remotely will play into connection speeds. - Arlo’s ease to set up. It was a breeze. This is a big deal. My other cameras, minus the video door bell, were very troublesome and problematic to set up. I mean a nightmare! I bought upper end cameras but great cameras with crappy software = problems and lots of data drops and restarting! The Arlo camera and app has been rock solid! - I like the two-way audio in this spot light platform. My current bullet cameras do not have that capability. I can place the Arlo on the corner of my house like a bullet camera and if someone pulls into my driveway I can talk to them! The audio is much more responsive that my popular doorbell set up. - No wires!!! NONE! My other wireless internet camera out front is wireless in technical terms (i.e. no ethernet cable required) but guess what…it had to have a power chord for power! I had to crawl into my attic and guide a power cable and cuss for hours to get the power cable to the “wireless” camera. Arlo is pick up and move ready to go anywhere I want it!! Indoor/outdoor…Awesome! - It can ID a person from an animal! Super smart and then notify me! - It has a siren I can activate manually or with a trip! That is really cool! Prowler outside in the middle of the night? … I feel like I could yell at them and hit the siren and that would get them running for sure! You can set up the app to call 911 as well or a friend if you want. -The spot light is a nice touch too. The night vision it has is crisp but all night vision has that weird night vision color. With Arlo you can turn the spotlight on as well for a color view. Getting color descriptors of a suspect’s clothing to give to police, like a red sweatshirt or pants is important! The spot light doesn’t illuminate the whole yard but anything close enough for the light to hit is going to capture nicely on the cam! See my pitch black home office and pitch black home office with the spotlight pictures for an example. - Rechargeable with a a one year charge. I can’t really test that yet but that would be impressive even if it was half that time. Consider that at some point you will need to charge it when installing somewhere. Some cons: - Kind of heavy (due to the large battery I’m guessing) this is not a huge deal unless you are going to set it up on a small tripod to move around a room (i.e. baby/dog monitor). On a small tripod it is front heavy and has a tendency to tip forward when pointed downward. Arlo makes a baby monitor that would work better probably for that. - Doesn’t have the option to zoom or pan. Again small complaint because 99% of the time one just points and leaves it. I have two pan and zoom cameras inside my house…guess what…I never pan and zoom. You can digitally zoom on your phone but the image loses some clarity. Also Arlo makes a 4K camera if that is really important to you. The siren really isn’t very loud. I feel my con’s are a little nit picky to be honest. It’s a spot light cam with audio so it’s a little bigger and the weight is well worth the wireless power for a year. Overall, It’s an outstanding high quality camera and has great features. The app is easy to use and install is a super easy! Highly recommend!

Stinky design. I appreciate the extra battery capacity, but this camera weighs too much for the crappy little screw mount that came with it. Mine would wobble around on the mount. I tried to tighten it *just enough* to stop it from wobbling, and the camera housing broke where the mount screws in. Was told by Arlo support that physical damage is not covered by warranty. On the upside, it did capture a nice clear picture of my back yard.

The back part of the camera crack in the could weather

Love it, happy with our purchase of the XL cam and can’t wait to get more. Like the options of direct to WiFi or getting the others with the hub. Easy to use app.