Netgear Arlo Smart Home Security Camera Kit Review

Netgear Arlo Setup, App Overview and Image Quality

Netgear has already produced a number ‘how to’ videos for their Arlo kits, so we won’t re-invent the wheel and suggest that you take the time to watch the three videos they professional produced for customers.

The first video is an instillation video that shows how you can setup and install an Arlo kit in about 10 minutes.

The Arlo cameras can also detect motion, which you can setup underneath the camera settings in the app. You can adjust motion sensitivity and the length of the recording after a motion is detected. The default setting is 10 seconds, but you can increase this up to 120 seconds. This video also covers how to setup rules, modes as well as scheduling. Please note that schedules are only available on the paid premium accounts.

Lastly, here is a video on how to find, manage and share all the video clips from your Arlo cameras.

Here are the screen shots that we took on our Samsung Galaxy S5 when we setup the Arlo security camera with the Android App. We discovered that the app crashed each and every time we took a screenshot due to our phone being out of memory. We quickly discovered that if you share your login information with someone else that only one person at a time can be logged into the Netgear Cloud services and view the video feeds. Setting up “Modes” & “Rules” is not very intuitive and took some playing around, but you’ll get the hang of it after messing around with things for a bit. When motion is detected the camera will automatically record and will send you an email with alerts when the device records. You can not send SMS (without using an email-to-SMS intermediary) or push notifications on your mobile devices.

If you don’t like using apps or would like to access your Arlo account online at arlo.netgear.com.

Image quality during the daytime was acceptable for a 720p camera and while you could see some lens curve it isn’t that bad in all honesty.

Here is an example of the motion detection sensor on the Netgear Arlo. We had the sensitivity set to 100% and left the video clip length to the default setting of 10 seconds. The result was a 10 second mp4 clip that was 512K in size and it can been seen above. We caught our USPS mail delivery driver throwing one of our packages onto the door step. There is no audio in the video clip as the Arlo camera does not have a microphone. The motion sensor detected motion and start recording motion at a distance of 12 feet. Not bad considering that once motion detection is triggered there is a small delay for the camera to wake up and begin the recording. Netgear says that the Arlo normally has a 1-2 second delay, which is about what we saw in our use of the cameras. Sometimes with fast moving objects like a kid running across the filed of view we found that the camera was unable to capture the event. Keep this in mind when placing cameras as you might need to have the camera at an angle instead of facing directly where someone is expected to come. Please note that the motion sensitivity is heat based, and adjusting the “more” and “less” video is adjusting the sensitivity which will trigger the motion detection. Nothing was damaged in the USPS Priority flat rate package, but we caught a couple startling things in the first 24 hours of having the security camera up!

At dusk the night vision image was excellent!

In the middle of the night the night vision worked well within 15 feet or so, but beyond that it is tough to make out what is going on in the shadows from the street light. The motion sensitivity would detect people coming up the side walk, but was not sensitive enough on the maximum sensitivity setting to get any movement on the street or driveway to be recorded.

After a few hours of use we noticed that the Arlo camera that we installed outside already had a low battery. Each camera has a battery meter that is visible under the cameras menu in the app.

When you battery gets low you’ll get an e-mail letting you know. Here you can see our account was setup at 1:45pm and by 5:24pm our batteries were down to just 14% according to the e-mail we got. The battery has lasted for two days in the cold after this error message, so it appears to be incorrect. We talked to Netgear about the low battery issue and found out it is a known issue when the cameras are placed in extremely cold weather. Here is what Netgear had to say about it:

“Since all batteries are effected by temperature, in cold weather they do not perform as well as when it is warmer. Due to a software issue the low battery indication is incorrect and the batteries are not drained, and Netgear engineering is currently working on refining the accuracy of the battery indicator based on the current temperature, which will be available soon as an automatic upgrade to the cameras firmware.” – Netgear

Let’s wrap this up!