Customer Ratings & Reviews

We have 2 arlo wired video doorbells and a Pro 4 camera. Both of the video doorbells have been replaced multiple times under warranty after they failed within a year. Arlo then recently increased our monthly subscription for 3 cameras from $12/month to $20. So we bought the Base Station to use for local storage and forego the subscription. The base station functioned for about a month until a firmware upgrade with the doorbells caused one of them to fail. Arlo replaced the base station and doorbell but they still do not work and they have now refused to render any further support. Videos are grainy, pixelated or do not fully render with entire seconds missing from each recording. See attached picture. I truly don’t mean to use superlatives, but Arlo has to be some of the absolute worst tech I have ever used. How they managed to swindle NYT Wirecutter into giving them a top recommendation is beyond me. My toddler has fisher price tech toys that are better designed than this garbage.

Adding the Arlo Smarthub VMB4540 to your existing Arlo system is one of the best things you could do. - You get free local storage - No subscription required - Significantly improve your Arlo cameras footage, response, and operation quality - You can livestream up to 5 cameras on 1 single hub at one time. You can also install more than 5 on one Hub, and that also includes video doorbells - You can also add a second hub to your account and live stream 5 more cameras if you want to add to your system - Most, if not all Arlo cameras are compatible with the VMB4540. - Better connection to your cameras - Better battery life to your cameras - The SmartHub creates it's own personal network - The SmartHub regulates Wi-Fi traffic Overall, your cameras work much better connected to a Hub, especially if that Hub is connected to an eero Pro 6E Wi-Fi router which will give you maximum Wi-Fi coverage.

The VMB4540 Smart Hub is a good buy. It allows you to save videos to the hub, locally, instead of the cloud. I can't believe Arlo made this mistake. They seem to push the cloud as much as they can. With their cloud prices, I guess they would. But this hub is really nice. Like I said, it stores locally so you can view the stored videos on your Arlo app. You do need a thumb drive attached to the hub, and they told me only 5 cameras can record at one time, except you can record more if you get their latest model cameras. One other nice thing is you can set certain cameras to work in the HOME mode and/or in the AWAY mode, If you are at HOME, you wouldn't want inside cameras activated, but in the AWAY mode you would. It also accommodates older cameras like my Pro and Pro2. Nice smart Hub and good price.

Why might you buy this? -Ability to connect a hard drive for local recording -HomeKit integration -Gets all the cameras off your normal wifi which should help with speed a bit. Its annoying you need this for HomeKit, but it does what its supposed to and I don't have any complaints. I use it for HomeKit integration (streaming video, notifications, and they can be used as motion sensors), I have a HDD plugged in for redundant storage with the cloud, and it helps get 3 cameras off of my very loaded wifi. NOTE: You will need to reset every single camera and re-set them up using this.

The first 30 days (when the Arlo plan trial is active) everything is smooth and perfect but if you choose not to enrol and go with local storage using the base and a flash drive, the cameras will randomly loose connection, crazy slow when loading in, the option to view videos while on local will sometimes not even show. Camera quality is good but very frustrating to work with.

If you don’t know already arlo is an online storage camera system. If you think this will help with storage or anything with that it’s not for you. This is a WiFi extender to help the cameras be more efficient. But as for that it works great.

Easy setup . With a very good picture and very easy to used Good price

I ordered the Arlo Smart Hub for local storage of surveillance video for our business. The device was packaged nicely and arrived promptly. Setting up the device was a little bit of a challenge as the instructions, including on the ARLO app were not very clear. Once, I got it all connected, it seems to work well. I have not pulled the USB storage to verify local recording has been successful.

Absolutely a waste of money! The camera batteries drain faster than you'd think. Cameras quit working during cold winter days. That's not even the most irritating thing! What irritates me most is how much these cameras fail to pick up. IE: I have a camera mounted on the front of my garage and have my vehicles parked in front of my garage. Had someone try to break into my car, and I was allerted by my car alarm. The cameras caught absolutely nothing until my husband went outside. When it does catch something, it catches it after it's either halfway through the frame to completely out of frame. The furtherst camera from my hub is maybe 30 feet, and the lag time is ridiculous. Had I realized the return policy had changed to 15 days, I would've tried returning them sooner to get my money back.

It is wonderful after i got it installed. Had to call tech support to get it installed. I had already purchased and installed the cameras and found that I had to get a plan or this. Arlo does not tell you to get this and you don't have to get a plan. I had to look it up on the internet. Now it records and I don't have to pay them 20 a month so i am happy

It worked great with all the different Arlo camers we installed in our home. It was easy to setup and synch with the Arlo app. It's a great product!

Works great for connecting legacy H8 and Pro cams. However, my gripe is with ARLO's operating system. They just recently did a firmware upgrade and the unit or the wireless Doorbell Cam will no longer connect through the HUB and I have tried every possible trouble shooting method known on the internet. Grok and ChatGPT both concluded that it's a firmware issue. Would give 5 starts otherwise.

We are happy with our purchase of the Arlo System. The video quality and ease of installation are excellent. The only negative is that in order to record video, you must subscribe to a service, which is $20+ a month. I did not anticipate this when I purchased, but I am still happy with the cameras and video quality.

The hub is in my opinion a mandatory add-on for anyone who thought any of the cameras are 100% standalone. Since none of the cameras support local storage if anything hinders the uploading of a video to the cloud you get no notification on any events. So if your Internet plan limits the upload bandwidth (as most do), once you reach that limit your camera is worse than useless at this point and silently dropping events.

I have two cases open now they can't seem to fix. The techs are nice but they have a dozen or so fixes and if they don't work, you're out of luck. After you have this system, you will learn the fixes. But your system may be down until you notice and perform them. And most of them cannot be done from the app so if you're not home your system will be down until you get home, the time you need it most in some cases. I have woken up several times to find it has been down all or most of the night. If the cameras are quiet, I now go outside to see if they are working before I go to bed. I also have three open issues on their community page with no results. One has been entered as a "known issue". How much time do you have to constantly troubleshoot your system? If you are looking for a new hobby these may be good. The subscription cost more for cameras greater than five than it does cameras 1 to 5. The techs solutions for this was use two accounts and two email addresses. They have several similar fixes, band aids, for known issues. Another example: Arlo is a video business but the technical reply page only allows you to attach still shots not videos. So you need to send them to and separate email address and then reply to the given reply system to tell them they have mail. "it's a known issue" is their answer to this and many other issues. This seems to be an acceptable answer? Plus, this system "processes" your videos remotely. Internet down, your system is down and the videos cannot be recovered. And there is a website to see when it is down, so don't put a protected by Arlo sign in your front window for the thieves to check when your system is down. This system is down or malfunctioning so much of the time I am losing the $1200 I spent on it and buying one that is not remotely process based. They are great for wildlife but not security. I have called tech support 25+ times. Today was 50 minutes with no solution. So Arlo please don't respond " you would like to hear about it".

My old hub stopped working, Arlo recommended replacing it, so I bought a new one. Arlo technical support could not get the new one to connect, but was able to get the old one to connect so I returned it.

Has operated great. No real issues so far. Has not caused any real down time. My only concern has been how the usb recording feature has been implemented. Does not allow much freedom for sharing over the network for the administrator.

Didn't like having to buy a new hub when I upgraded my Arlo cameras, but you have to in order to use them. It works great and supports the new 4K cameras without issue.

Great hub but the replacement Arlo 4 camera that I bought to replace an older camera that wasn’t working required this new hub as the old one doesn’t work with it, Should be backward compatible but it’s not. I wasn’t planning to buy an new hub but was forced to in order to make the camera work.

excellent unit, good quality....very easy to use, worth the purchase