Customer Ratings & Reviews

Great product for managing security outside of my business. It is easily monitored through an app on my phone!

The product is good and works well. But Arlo as a company unscrupulously raises their price to monitor their camera every year and the total infrastructure (Camera and monitoring) are no longer a good value. But since I bought hundreds of dollars worth of cameras, I now have to pay hundreds of dollars a year to monitor them. Do your research before deciding on a whole home monitoring system.

it is a good camera - easy to set up and use - try it today

Very good picture quality. It was easy to connect to my existing Arlo base station and WiFi.

camera works well, but you need a paid plan for it to work correctly, oh well wasted money retying to add to my other 2 cameras

Great footage, durable outdoors, and just an overall good camera.

Long time Arlo user. Always easy to set up and install.

Quick, Fast shipping?......... Definitely. Get one

I like the product. I bought 2 of them. They are nice.

Clear as day, Love this unit. Enjoy the APP! ARLO ESSENTIAL IS NEEDED IN ALL HOMES.

Works great, each new generation seems to be better.

Great camera so far .i had got some ither camera they did not work so i got this ones look good so far

very good product. using at home very useful for survelience and easy installation

Great quality and value easy to set up as an added camera.

This camera works great and was easy to add to our existing system.

I have had an Arlo system for over 4 years now, and have experienced the good and the bad that comes with this system. The Arlo Essential is the latest update, and it is probably one of the better more recent camera releases. Unboxing the camera is as easy as it gets – there is no heavy tape or covering. It is a quality box though with adequate internal protection, so there are less worries of possible damage when shipped. Comparing the Arlo Essential to their previous cameras, the first thing I notice is a considerably smaller overall footprint. It’s shape is different as well, with less depth. I like the design. It allows for a much more minimal profile once installed, sitting much closer to the wall. The next thing I noticed is the camera battery cannot be removed. It is an internal, fully integrated battery. It will be interesting to see how this holds up over the long haul. Installation is no different than any of the other cameras, but the camera mount is much more subtle and ergonomic than my previous cameras. It was easy to connect the camera to the Arlo app, but that’s where my difficulties began. The Arlo app required an update to a completely new and refined interface. Ultimately, I think I will most likely like it, but it gave me quite a few problems migrating over. The migration was a bit wonky, but there were 2 primary issues that stood out and couldn’t be tagged as new release bugs: some older devices were tagged as unsupported (namely my lights) and the prompt for a different plan rather than fitting my existing plan was confusing. There are now 2 plan types from what I can tell, Arlo Secure and Arlo Safe, and that needs to be sorted through. From what I can see, Arlo is moving in the right direction. I just found it confusing to deal with so many changes just by adding a newer generation camera. There are other issues I had with the app, but I will get to that later. Once installed and connected, the Arlo Essential has a very clear and detailed picture for an HD camera. It has 130 degree field of view, and seems to display a clear and consistent picture from end to end. I feel this is one of the strong suits of this camera – the consistency of the picture quality from edge to edge. This camera does an admirable job with motion detection, detecting and recognizing important objects and distinguishing such from just random motion. It still does something I’ve seen in nearly every Arlo camera: it mistakenly detects sun and shadow changes as motion. I don’t know if there is any way around that with where the trees are in my yard. Every detection with the Arlo Essential is of course recorded in the cloud and made available in the Arlo app. The new version of the app has a landing spot for such activities. It’s called the Feed. Well, for me, it needs work because it is very slow when you have a significant amount of activity. I constantly sit watching spinning wheels waiting for it to fill in the thumbnails and sometimes the list. If I pull up the my.arlo web interface, it works perfectly (I really like the web UI more), but the app sometimes seems to bottleneck. I also run into more buffering issues when viewing videos on the app – a problem I believe could be associated with it trying to fill in the data for the Feed. When running properly, it works. My only other issue with Arlo is how long it takes to receive a notification from a detection. This is something I have been talking about for quite some time. Netgear needs to work on shortening the time a notification is received – it is significantly slower than many competitors. I would rather get the notification at first trigger, then be notified of the “what” post your recognition algorithm. That way I don’t lose time when a real incident occurs requiring attention. Should you buy an Arlo Essential HD camera? If you currently have an Arlo and need additional cameras, or want to replace older cameras, then the answer is a resounding yes. It is sleek, has good battery life, a good picture, a spotlight, and good night vision. For those looking to take the Arlo leap, I would look at a multi-camera bundle.

This camera has been working great even with our low strength WiFi and was easy to set up!

It is a great security camera, easy to use app and simple to set up.

This camera is amazing. Quality is GREAT!. Definately recommend!

It was a easy set it up with no problem. Especially with the app. Very helpful