Arlo - Indoor/Outdoor 720p Wi-Fi Wire-Free Security Camera - White/Black

I wanted a security system for my home but was a little intimidated by having to run wires inside and outside my house. So I was thinking that a wireless system may be the way to go. I was concerned that the quality would not be good enough for my needs. The Arlo wireless system from Netgear takes all those worries away! When I first received my unit the first thing that I noticed was the Arlo logo…a bird that has the wireless logo as its wings – very clever! I unpacked the unit and had a base station, power cord, Ethernet cable, 4 magnetic wall mounts, mounting screws and anchors, and cameras with batteries. The quick start is nicely illustrated and will get you up and running very quickly. The first thing you need is the Arlo app…you can search for it in your respective app store on scan the QR code in the guide. You then have to hard wire the base station to your router. You plug in the power adapter and turn on the power button. The base station is very light at 11.5 oz. At waiting a minute or two, the power and Internet LED will turn green and now you are almost ready to start playing with your new cameras. You launch the Arlo app (or you can use your computer) and select New System Setup. You put in an email and password to setup your Arlo account. You now put in 4 CR123 batteries into each camera. You bring each camera within 1-3 feet of the base station to complete the sync process. You press the Sync button on the base station and wait for the Camera LED to blink green and then press the Sync button on the camera. A blue LED on the will blink rapidly and then go out – a green Camera LED on the base station will let you know the camera is now ready. Launching the app will bring up the views of the camera with a play triangle in the middle of each screen. Pressing the button will activate the video feed on the camera. You can connect up to 5 cameras for free (nice as some companies charge you for this service) with 1 GB of cloud storage. You can only login in from one device at a time. I was amazed at how easy the setup was to get the cameras running! At the bottom of the app you will see four selections: Cameras, Library, Mode and Settings. Cameras is where you can see your video feeds – you can activate one or all of the cameras. Library is when you will see a calendar with the dates of your recordings. Mode is where you can set up a schedule for when you want the cameras to record motion. Mine had a default setting of 8:00 AM – 4:59 PM Monday-Friday to record motion and all other times had motion turned off. It is very easy to change any of the settings by just dragging the time sliders. Settings is where you can change the settings of your system. You can adjust the sensitivity of the camera and the length (from 10 seconds to 120 seconds) of the recording once motion has been detected. You can also change the names of your cameras and the base station. You can also adjust the orders of the cameras as they appear in your feed. Once motion is detected, your iPhone will get an alert telling you. I recently got an Apple watch and now the alert also appears on my wrist! How cool is that! The video quality of the cameras are simply stunning! HD quality at 720p is amazingly sharp – I guess I didn’t expect such quality in a wireless camera. I tested both indoors and out and got good results in both. I would recommend you downloading the manual from the Netgear website. It gives you much more information on all aspects of the camera – for example – “For best results, the path of expected motion should cross Arlo’s field‐of‐view and not head directly into or away from the camera. For example, if you want to detect motion near a couch, place the camera to the side of the couch, rather than above it or opposite it.” It has a great diagram that shows that the detection zone for motion is 20 feet at maximum and 5 feet at minimum. There a motion detection test feature that that will flash the camera’s LED amber when motion is detected. You can also adjust the motion sensitivity of the camera. This is something that helped me. I had a camera pointed at my driveway, but it keep alerting me for motion whenever I car passed on the street in front of the driveway. I adjusted the sensitivity so that it would only detect motion in the driveway and not the street. The directions also walk you through how to set up a schedule to have the camera record motions at a certain time – for example Monday-Friday from 9-5 when you may be at work. I didn’t want it recording on the weekends during the day when I was on my tractor mowing the yard! It is very easy to click record everything on motion if you want to supercede the schedule. Night vision works very well for short distances. I have one camera directed on my front door and at night I can easily see what’s going on. However, the camera I have on my driveway, because it covers a larger area, is pretty much useless at night. The directions say the best height for the camera is above seven feet – the driveway one is about 15 feet up and covers a large area. I have two suggestions for Netgear for this product. I appreciate that the system comes with four magnetic mounts. This will allow you to mount them in different locations and move the cameras as needed. However, since they only attach to the back of the camera and the mount is not completely round it limits the angles you can get with the cameras. You can only attach the camera to the mount at the back of the camera (quite firmly I might add). It would be nice (and probably an engineering nightmare) to make it so that they could be attached at the top and bottom as well. Also, instead of including the four half-round mounts – maybe include one of their adjustable mounts (VMA1000) or a table/ceiling/wall mount (VMA1100). As of June 2015, the shipping times on these from Amazon are 1-3 months! My only other concern about these cameras is the battery life. They only record when they detect motion so battery life won’t be wasted. I’m hoping that I can get up to 6 months on a set of batteries. I’ll update in about six months and let you know how I did! I realize that in the colder months the battery life will not be as good. The basic Arlo account gives you seven days of secure cloud DVD storage (up to 1 GB) and support for up to 5 cameras. You can upgrade if this basic service does not meet your needs. These cameras are also weatherproof. They have already survived a couple of good thunderstorms will no ill effect. I hope they will do equally well in a western New York winter. This is an amazing home video security system! I am so glad that I found a wireless system that meets my needs, has a ton of features and has a great app and website. I mean it when I say that the setup and features on this system is amazing! Product sample.

Initially this seems like a great product, none of my issues are with physical build quality of the product. I purchased the 4 camera system and took it home and installed it that evening, setup is fairly simple and straightforward, the interface on the mobile app and web client are both good in my opinion. The issues began to present themselves when I started reviewing footage the next day to see how the system performs. I had 3 cameras mounted on the front of my house, 2 approximately 10-12 feet above the ground, mounted outside of a window, aimed at my driveway and the sidewalk in front of my townhouse, and one 8-10 feet, above the front door. Problem #1-Motion detection is terrible, I made sure the cameras were aimed properly when setting them up, utilizing the mobile app to look at the camera view as i adjusted them, making sure I was covering the desired field of view, etc. When reviewing footage intermittently over the next day and a half, I found that the motion detection was rather spontaneous, sometimes the cameras would turn on for someone walking a certain path, other times a car could go by and they wouldn't turn on. I had an extra camera that I placed in my living room just out of curiosity and found the same thing, sometimes it would turn on when I walked in the front door and up the steps, sometimes it would not. Sometimes it would capture my dog walking around, other times, no. I ended up with an abundance of 10 second video clips of people or cars leaving the frame, which leads to problem #2... Latency. When the motion detection does work, it seems that there is an excessive amount of time between the camera detecting the motion and starting recording, again, the majority of clips captured were things leaving the camera view, so you have 1-2 seconds of someone walking away and 8-9 seconds of nothing but empty frame. Problem #3-Record Time/Battery life. So out of the box, the cameras are set up to record in 10 second intervals. Honestly with a security camera, if I'm going to rely on motion capture, I'd like to have at least a 30 second clip from when motion is detected. Now this is possible, at a price. You can set the record time up to 2 minutes. The factory 4-6 month stated battery life is a 4 minutes per day of those 10 second clips, 4 minutes=240 seconds/10= 24 events per day on average for 4-6 month battery life, or 4 minutes per day x 120-180 days= between 480-720 minutes of recording. So if we wanted 30 seconds and still averaged that 24 events per day we'd end up with 12 minutes per day which would translate to 40-60 days of battery life. These cameras take 4 CR123 batteries each. So $20-25 every 6 weeks for batteries is going to add up, call it $150 per year. So cost is going up...and here comes problem #4... Cost- So in addition to the battery cost, the 4 camera system comes with 4 silly magnetic mounts, OK if you're using this indoors, maybe they'd be alright, they hold the camera sturdy and there's nothing wrong with them per se, they just don't make sense for outdoor use as someone could throw something at the camera and knock it off then steal your camera. The system does however come with one single adjustable outdoor mount, this one attaches to the camera via a screw post and is rather nice. So here's why this is included in the cost section, the nice mounts cost $20/each (maybe $15 online somewhere), seems to me that they include one in hopes that you'll prefer it to the magnetic half sphere mounts and go spend $60 more. Also included in cost is the subscription based web-DVR setup. 7 days worth of DVR/Archive is included but if you want more, it'll cost you. So lets look at the real cost of this system over 6 months, I paid $510.69 with tax for the 4 camera system, plus $75 ($150/year) for 60 day DVR, plus $60 for 3 more of the secure mounts, plus estimated $100 for batteries over that timeframe...$750 so far for 6 months. And after the initial investment, if you want more than the 7 day DVR, I'd estimate its going to cost most people at least $250 per year to have this system. Final thoughts, for $599.99+ tax, I went out 2 days later and bought a 4 camera wireless (powered cameras, wireless signal to DVR) system with a 1TB hard drive and free web based viewing and reviewing. I really wanted to like the Arlo system, I think its built well and super easy to install and user friendly. It just doesn't work well or financially make sense for me.

Here are my thoughts on the device. 5 Stars for Setup - can't get any easier than this. 5 Stars for complete wireless setup - absolutely no wires 3 Stars for wireless distance good reception, works well up to 50-60 feet, after that connection drops quickly so does video quality. 3 Stars for video quality, I would not call high-definition 1 Stars for field of view - states 130, but real world view is 90 two cameras barely cover 180 - see pictures 1 Stars for dependable recording - you must have a good internet connection that is up all the time - ONLY records to the internet, nothing local, if Internet is down, so is your monitoring. 0 Stars for other use - these cameras will only work if you have an arlo account, internet access, and the cameras connect to the base. 0 Stars for motion recording - motion recording only sets off when action crosses FOV, delay from motion to start of record, usaully equals activity has already moved out of FOV, or just get few of activity. 0 Stars for more than 5 cameras - you can only record to the cloud, more than 5 cameras you have to pay subscription. 0 Stars for monitoring - cannot actively monitor without running the batteries down very quickly. NO 4 camera constant monitoring, unless you want to spend $25 on batteries every 2 days. 0 Stars for simutaneous monitoring and recording - if you or someone else is viewing the camera feed live, it will not record any motion detection, the viewer would need to select record. 1 Stars for logging and viewing - takes about 2 minutes to get to live video feed. Far to slow to catch something in realtime 0 Stars for stated battery life - based on using the lowest video setting and very limited motion detection (5 mins per day)- no one ever would buy a HD camera only to reduce it the lowest settings. 4 Stars for Indoor Battery life, these perform well in a constant temprature. 0 Stars for Outdoor Battery perfomance indication, well below freezing tempratures, batteries will quickly report low or out. Must climb ladder, and re-seat batteries, to reset low battery warning. 2 Stars for Outdoor Battery life, iinstalled in Mar where temps -0 Batteries have lastest 1 month in a camera effected by pet traffic. 2nd camera seems to be holding up ok, 2 months. I have tried multiple WiFi Cameras, these work comparitively well, much easier to setup and use. After trying many WiFi cameras was going just bit the bullet and get a lorex, swan, or q-see system, then saw the Arlo. Wish I just went with my original choice of a wired system. This system is perfect for the NON-serious security monitoring. Not meant to replace a video recording system.

Honestly I hate to be frank, but really these cameras should have never been released, they have a critical design flaw and some lack-luster software support. I will elaborate, however here are my minor complaints. 1) the 2nd day my app said my base station was offline, it however had green light to cameras and internet. While i had the app open i power cycled the base unit and low and behold it all came back to life. Having a cloud only unit that does not properly reconnect to the cloud on problems is unacceptable. I have my entire network battery backed up including the Arlo base unit, power wasn't an issue. Needless to say this does not instill confidence in me as a reliable product when I need it. 2) The software while looking pretty is practically functionally useless. 10 seconds to 120 seconds recording option? Really why not record X seconds after motion stops. If you leave it at 10 seconds (factory setting) it's just garbage since the clips are not consecutive. IE lag, 10 seconds record (of UPS truck driving in), another maybe 10 second gap (where important stuff happens like UPS guy throws package down that you missed), 10 seconds recording (of UPS driving away). So as a user your forced to select 120 always making the other settings useless. Related note on Android you can't even scrub the video playback, you see a play button that you can toggle between playing and pausing but you can never go back in time. The only way to do it is to force refresh the chrome page. If you're going to use built in web pages to play the video make sure the actual player web pages work. I have a Google Nexus 5 so it's not like this is a custom setup. 3) Last and by far the most critical. Motion detected to camera recording lag. Wow this is bad, and I mean REAL bad. This product should have never gotten made if this is indeed a physical design problem. I have the camera over looking a large area, so lets say a person walking is like 20 feet away, they are able to walk anywhere from 1/2 the frame to 3/4 of the frame before it kicks into video mode. So basically you're forced to put the cameras so far back to give adequate boot up time for camera recording that the video quality is useless. People have reported online anywhere from 5 to 20 seconds of lag, mine was definitely over 5. The solution posted on your forums is to use 2 cameras to over lap an area and daisy chain the detection of one to start the next one. At $150 a camera that is NOT acceptable. You've gone and said, look that base station, really is a 2, maybe 3 camera max, at 300 a camera. WOW, and hopefully you have enough space to not care about the initial 5 to 20 seconds of video. Sorry to sound harsh but I'm just amazed that this product is on the shelf at major stores and costs this much for these major holes. As soon as another company makes a weatherproof battery powered wireless camera you're going to have some serious problems.

Went to look at home security cameras since I live in a shady part of the city. There are lots to choose from. D-Link, Dropcam, Belkin even has their own. Then I saw the Netgear Arlo. Netgear has made great networking products in the past, mostly with their network routers which I use at home. Initially, I couldn't justify the $500.00 price tag, and just wanted the two camera system. The cameras themselves are $160 each (March 3rd, 2015), so realistically I saved $140.00 by purchasing the four camera system. Now let's get into details. Pros: - Very easy to set up. Plug in the base that looks almost like a Netgear router itself, plug it into your router, turn it on. Put the batteries in the camera, and press "sync". Your done! - Interface. I set Up a camera by my garage looking out into the street and one looking by my front door. From the website or app, I can rename the cameras, give priorities, adjust the motion sensing up or down, choose the recorded lenth of video. What's nice is that when you receive a message either through text or email, and start watching the camera, it will record as long as you watch. You can set it to record anything from 10 secOnds to 2 minutes, or manually record as long as you like. Of course, there are more options for Premire and Elite members, but I choose to stick to the basic free membership. I am allowed 1GB of online storage, and a continuous seven day storage, so on the eighth day, if any video was recorded on the first day, it will be deleted from the cloud. I'm fine with this, because I can pick and choose what videos to save to my computers before the cloud erases them after seven days. I just wish Netgear would come out with a software update to allow all motion from video recording, of say like a 3:30 minute timeframe, instead of manually having to Record for 3:30 minutes, or being able to catch the motion on a whim at work and watching to record activity until it's over. I can check video feeds on my smartphone from work. Android or Apple, no word on Windows. - Size. I do want to note, that these cameras are about the size of a soap bar. Pretty small for what they offer. - Picture quality. 720p looks very good for being completely wireless. - Instalation. Screw in a screw, drop the magnetized connector, connect camera. - Weather. It's snowing and below 20 degrees right now, both cameras outside are having no issues with the cold. Now the Cons: - Batteries. These cameras take four CR123 or CR123A (same thing) a piece. Finding them is hard, and when you do, buying them is expensive. I recommend finding some rechargeable CR123 batteries. The battery life is rated at 4 to 6 months. I have heard reports of less than that. I have heard reports of only a few days battery of constant video survelence. From my experience, I have probably watched over 3 hours of video, and recorded over 30 minutes of video from my street view camera, and it's still showing a full battery. So far, I think the battery life is good. - Mounts. It's nice that Netgear includes six magnetized indoor wall mounts with anchors. What is upsetting is that they only supply you with one outdoor mount. The outdoor mount has longer screws, uses three instead of one screw, and has a proprietary tripod mount for securing the camera. I used this one for installing the one on my garage looking out over the street. If you want more of theses mounts, Netgear will be selling them for $20 on April 1st. So for now, the Arlo camera on my garage looking towards my house is only held on by the magnetic mount. I'm scared that if strong wind were to swing by, it could send my Arlo camera flying. - Audio. No audio going to or from the cameras, but I'm ok with that. - Subscription based. The free subscription works fine for me. There are two different paid subscriptions at $10 and $15 each. Both offer more cloud storage and a longer back catalogue of video recordings. I don't need these because I'll just save a video if I need to. Scheduling would be nice, as it allows you to schedule video at certain parts of the day instead of just motion off or notion on, but I can't justify $10 for that feature. Overall, buy these of you want an easy use security camera with great picture quality and wireless everything. Don't buy these if you want 24/7 survelence, hate the idea of cloud storage, or don't want to be on a ladder changing out the batteries every few months.

After doing quite a bit of research on the Arlo system, between articles and non-bias reviews, I figured I'd go for it, because why not? You can return it if you hate it anyway... My husband, who is NOT tech-computer handy was a bit leery of helping me set this system up. He just told me a few minutes ago that he was surprised and very happy that it went so well and wasn't difficult at all. About the battery life - I've only had it set up for a day, however these cameras are activated by motion. If you have the camera pointing somewhere where there will be motion ALL DAY LONG then you will defiantly drain the batteries. You can also set motion sensitivity, so for instance, if you have plants moving in the breeze, you can change the sensitivity to essentially filter that out so it doesn't record when the plant is moving. So, if you are using it like we are, to detect and record motion when there isn't usually motion, then you'll be fine battery wise according to the many other reviews on other websites. Also, the other reviewer that said the batteries are $10 each, clearly doesn't know how to do a google search for products. You can get these batteries for about $1 each when you buy in bulk - each camera takes 4 batteries, so yeah, it will be $4 to replace them every 4-6 months, but that's not bad considering you didn't have to hire someone to drill holes in your house and run wires and all that. Cloud storage - the fact that this system doesn't require the use of a DVR or computer is cool. At first, I thought that it was weird and I would want more control over my own storage space, but it's actually really nice to not have to deal with another device. The system does require you to hook up it's wifi hub, but it's sleek and small and just plug it into your existing system and go. I will add though, that my existing routers are in the basement though, and when I hooked this up initially in the basement, by the time I got the cameras outside and to the back of my property, the signal wasn't strong enough. When I brought the hub onto the ground floor it worked absolutely fine. The pipes and other metals in the basement aren't too kind to wifi. Overall my household thinks this is great, my non computer savvy husband finds the app easy to use and so do my kids. I am very glad I made the purchase!

I purchased 10 Arlo cameras in total and they have fortified my home with an acceptable cost effective solution to video wireless security. I plan to max out my cloud subscription and technological threshold to 15 cameras. You get free cloud based recording service for up to 5 cameras but if you go over that you will need a 15 camera max Elite subscription for $149+tax ($162) per year. Still far less than a monitoring company might charge you. Since 5 cameras are free I thought I would get smart and just set up more email accounts to circumvent the charge but...Arlo figured this out and made it impossible due to location and personal information required to set up a base, and you would need mutiple wifi routers with unique SSIDs and ip addresses. Too much hassle. Arlo you won. Pros: No wires at the camera point. Arlo mounts by various metallic hub and fixed-post methods. The cameras are held on by an internal strong magnet. You mount the included 2" metallic dome or hub and "stick on" the camera to this hub by magnetic force. The screws and anchors come with the dome. You can buy extra domes, post mounts and table top pedestals so you can easily move the cameras around from location to location because a tug on the camera releases it. It's a magnet. You should buy external skins made of neoprene if you are mounting outdoors or want to change the camera's only color - pearl white. There is a rainbow of skin colors available through 3rd parties. The base units look like a router and come in the same white which I find pleasing. The required base units max out at 5 cameras per base and I have 3 of them. Boxed sets come with a base and warning! The cameras are held in the packaging by a very tight hiddenplastic screw under the camera which you could damage if you tried to pry the camera from the packaging. Base units require to be wired to your primary Internet router by the supplied network Ethernet cable. If you need longer cable to reach your router you will have to buy seperately. The base units are powered by wall wart plug. I had to buy a wide power strip to handle 3 of these side by side. The cameras must be near the base to initially prepare them wirelessly but don't get too close! After 10 cameras I found 4 ft away is optimal. Too close didn't work. After you establish the camera to base link you can go as far as your signal will permit. The phone app that controls the entire system and guides you through setting up the base and cameras, one by one is a free app or you can log in by web browser. It was brilliantly done and is easy to use. Be advised: You cannot first-time configure your base system remotely, that is, register the router once it's installed from somewhere else. I flew 600 miles away only to learn this. I thought I could register and configure the base remotety but you must be on the same wifi connect point. The app must be wirelessly connected to the base for setup. After an intuitive setup session my cameras were online, my bases connected, and I could remotely watch my cameras, review recorded motion detection, turn various modes on and off, adjust sensivity, length of recordings up to the max of 2 minutes, from anywhere! The cameras deliver crisp HD in color during the day and black and white in low light using Infrared night vision, which is amazing working in about the same area a small LED flashlight would illuminate or under bright moonlight you get very distant vision. Shooting in HD burns more power as does adjusting the motion sensitivity. There are 3 settings for resolution, battery saver (low resolution), balanced (I use this average setting and I'm happy with the results but at this level you can't read a license plate in your driveway. 5" lettering begins to blur at about 10 feet during the day, and there's 720 Hi definition which they warn effects battery life. Arlo has an acceptable depth of field and angle of view to cover almost all situations. Cons: Arlo's motion sensitivity to objects approaching straight towards the camera is poor. The more angled an object moves as in diagonal to the camera, the faster it detects it. Overall the camera are slow to wake up and start filming an event. Arlo is a late riser. And a heavy sleeper. It handles brightly backlit subjects poorly. Often showing the person as a shadow if the light is bright behind them. Example coming through a front door with the light of day behind them into a darker room you won't see face. I have 10 cameras and the most I can live stream on demand is 2 cameras before the app starts to freeze up. To circumvent this I view a camera live then place the camera on pause then watch another camera live and so on. I have a 60 Mbps connection speed and use an iPhone to watch and control Arlo with cell data or wifi and have no trouble. It takes 4 uncommon sized lithium batteries (CR123 3 volt) to power a camera. These are not your basic C-D-A-AA or AAA size and a 12 pack (3 refills-per camera) will run you about $18, or so. 15 cameras refilled with new batteries every month that's about $270 a year wiith my current usage. Arlo advises do NOT use rechargeable batteries. This is the primary design flaw that dropped my score to 4 stars. If Arlo were to sell Arlo branded rechargeables that met their standards and quality control I would say this is a 5 star product. My two cameras with the most detected motion and have night vision turned on have lost 1/3rd of their power after 3 weeks. The cameras have no use to a thief as they are useless after the are taken out of range of the base signal and would identify their new base location if reconnected elsewhere. Each base and camera have a serial number. I took photos of this info and stored it. However this won't stop some kid from doing it to be stupid and stealing your cam anyway and it will set you back $160 per camera. This is why multi cameras are important, and placement out of easy reach is best. The bandwidth issue. Don't expect to view or record 10 cameras simultaneously / casino style with the average setup.

I've been researching different security solutions from a traditional alarm service to camera / video products like the Arlo so I was excited about the opportunity to look at one first hand. The three camera solution was shipped to me and the retail packaging is smartly designed so that the cameras are very well protected during transit. They each are locked into their own pedestal area and physically mounted to the box with a screw that attach to the bottom of each camera. Setup of the Arlo is a simple process. - Base unit (the wireless device that communicates with the camera) is wired into an existing router. - App is downloaded onto either your iOS or Android based device (iOS for me) - Create an account - Insert 4 batteries (included in the package) into each camera - Pair each camera by hitting a sync button on the base station and the camera itself. Cameras are placed or mounted in locations of your choosing. My base station is centrally located in my house so I have full wireless strength to all of my cameras as none of them are probably any more than 40 feet maximum away from the base statioh with a claimed maximum range is around 300 ft. There are two ways to mount the camera. The first is are magnetic mounts which stick to the back of the camera. Netgear includes screws and a drywall anchors for all of them and the spherical shape of the mount allows the camera to be positioned in almost any direction away from the surface. The second is a traditional camera mount (think the same kind of screw type as a tripod). These are not included in the package but for my purposes the magnetic mounts were sufficient for my home. The cameras have a surprisingly wide angle, field of view is 110 degrees (think GoPro style videos). The app will be needed to help finalize setup as there is a positioning mode that will allow the user to make adjustments to the position of the camera to see what is being captured as well as a motion detection mode where a LED lights up for when motion is detected in the FOV of the camera. One aspect of the software that is not very intuitive is after the sensitivity of the motion detection is set, there is a very small check that has to be hit at the edge of the slider before the settings are finalized and that tripped me up a couple times. The motion detection itself even at 100% can be more sensitive as there seems to be a lag before videos start recording. The rest of the software itself is pretty slick. There can be both app and email level notifications when motion is detected. Interface is slick as videos are stored in the cloud for seven days (for free!) and can be viewed remotely. Timers / rules can be set on when the system is armed so it can be on only during work hours as an example or all the time depending on what is needed. For a longer archive of videos, there is a paid service available via the app. This is a great feature compared to other security systems where a DVR / storage has to be managed locally as well whereas this is all transparent to the user with the Arlo Current battery life has been very good so far. I've had the system for about a month and the batteries still look like they are full. Wireless is a huge plus but there is also a cost for the batteries. CR123's are not as common as the usual standard sizes so budget $4-$6 per camera every 4-6 months which is the stated battery life of the camera. It doesn't look like there are good rechargeable options like Eneloops available in this size. Overall I'm quite pleased with the Arlo system and think it's a good value. Compared to a home monitoring service, there are no recurring charges except for the batteries and for most people, the free seven day video archive is probably good enough. Costs for competitors like Dropcam add up quickly - the same three camera setup with the seven day video access will be $20 monthly so it makes the Arlo pretty much a no brainer. I received this product free of charge from Netgear First Look Review Program for my honest opinions and experience with this product