Arlo Pro 4 Spotlight Camera -(Pack of 3) - Wireless Security, 2K Video & HDR, Color Night Vision, 2 Way Audio, Wire-Free, Direct to WiFi No Hub Needed, Black - VMC4350B

I wanted to install a cameras to enhance my whole house security system. The Arlo Pro 4 cameras are a bit pricey, but I think, over-all, worth the cost. I especially like the magnetic mounts. They are very strong, easy to install, and so far, I have not had any problems with wind changing their positions. When purchasing the cameras, you have a choice of connecting them to your existing Wifi router or using a hub. Since the cameras will only connect to 2.4 G and most Wifi routes broadcasts both frequencies, my mobile device had to be connected to the 2.4 G instead of 5 G in order to set up the system. I didn't want to go into my router and turn off 5 G ... with past experience, when I do things like that, I usually cause another problem and didn't want to risk having all the devices on my system stop working. I purchased the Arlo Hub VMB 4540. Before installation, I went on-line and downloaded the manual for the Pro 4 cameras to my computer and read through it. You first must download the Arlo Smart App to your mobile device. After you figure out how to use that, the installation of the smart hub and cameras is a breeze. Prior to installing the cameras, I tried to find the optimal place to put them by downloading a free App called the Airport Utility App. It allows you to walk around your house and scan the 2.4 G and 5 G signals from your router to see where you have the best 2.4 G signal. (You will also see the signal strengths of your neighbors as well.) You can tell that by running the utility and looking for your router channels 1 to 11 (since these are the channels that broadcast 2.4 G) and see how strong the signals are. Anything from -50 dBm to - 68 dBm is a strong signal and your cameras will work fine in that position. Keep in mind you don't have to use this Airport Utility App. When you set up your cameras, the set-up procedure allows you to walk around the house and check your signals in the same manner for each camera you install. I installed three cameras. I just wanted to have an idea where I could place my cameras for a strong signal before installing them. My Router and Smart Hub are in the same room but about 20 feet apart to prevent signal interference. The ethernet cable that comes with the cameras is only about 4 or 5 feet long. I wanted to keep the hub much farther away from my router and wireless printer to prevent signal interference. The Smart Hub broadcasts a 2.4 G signal which travels much farther than a 5 G signal. I also purchased the Arlo Battery Charging station that allows the charging of two batteries at the same time. The batteries that came with the camera seem to be partially charged and took only about an hour to fully charge. On the other hand, I ordered three extra batteries, and those took several hours to charge to full capacity. I wanted to have a full replacement set charged, and ready to go. so that when the batteries in the camera were low, I could easily replace them all at one time. The batteries in the cameras are holding their charge well and have been in use now for three weeks or more, and all still have about an 85% charge left. It looks like we are on target for what the manufacturer says is about a 3 month window before you have to replace or recharge the camera batteries. When doing this, you don't have to take the camera down and disturb its placement. Simply press the button on the bottom of the camera, and the camera body slips out of the housing allowing you to easily change the battery and slip it back into the housing. You don't disturb the camera's aim at all. Once the cameras are installed, you can play around with the activity zones in the Arlo App and set your cameras to ignore motion in certain areas and alert to motion in others. I also found that the sound pick-up by the camera's microphone and speaker is excellent. Arlo gives you a free three-month trial subscription to their app with all the features. After three months, if you don't subscribe, at a fee of $9.99 per month, you lose most of the features of the Arlo app. I like those features, and most likely will subscribe after the trial period. To ensure that I have a hard copy of all events monitored by the cameras, I installed a 128 GB flash drive on the Smart Hub. This way, the recorded events are not only recorded to the cloud for a period of time, but also to my flash drive. I have the recording on the flash drive set to overwrite previous recordings as it reaches its capacity. Overall, I would rate the Pro 4 camera's 2 K resolution very good. I didn't want to spend the extra money for 4 K resolution.... it was just too pricey. So far, I am happy with my purchase. One disappointment I had, was when I opened the three pack of cameras that I bought, they had only two magnetic mounts and an Arlo adjustable mount. Since I wanted all Arlo Magnetic mounts, I had to order a two pack (doesn't come in a one pack) of Magnetic mounts at an additional cost. My only other disappointment is that in a 2400 square foot ranch house, I could not get signal strength strong enough with the hub to monitor my back patio and entire backyard. I had to settle for only a partial view of the backyard by mounting the third camera at the side of the house where it received a strong signal from the hub. Range extenders for the hub or purchasing another hub wasn't a viable option that would work. A second hub would still have to be connected via ethernet cable to my Wifi router, and that would require another ethernet cable run from the Wifi router, down to the basement, and over and up through the floor to where a second hub would need to be located. It wasn't worth the investment or the hassle.

This camera was easy to mount and connect to the Wi-Fi through the app setup. I have the magnet mount attaching it outside. We get a lot of high wind here, so I was worried about whether it would stay attached, but there have been no issues with that. The picture quality is very good for outdoors. The motion sensing seems to work well, but it will pick up movement from outside objects in the wind. There’s not much you can do about that though.The battery life is better than I expected. I’ve had it for about six weeks, and I haven’t charged it since the first day. It’s still at 67%. I bought the solar panel for it, but I haven’t hooked it up yet. We don’t have it running constantly though. It’s only recording/monitoring at night or when we leave. I really did not want a camera that I had to drill through the house and run wires. That would be significantly more complex.Overall, it seems like a solid camera. It’s a nice looking camera, small, easy to setup, and I think the app is pretty decent. It’s nice the app classifies motion as animals, people, vehicle, etc.One helpful note: there is a common complaint about the Arlo app with adding a spouse/friend to view the camera. You have to do it on a laptop browser. For some reason, it won’t work when they try to do the setup on their phone.**Update: Camera is still working great several months later. I got another one recently too. I also installed the solar panel a couple months ago. It works well and now I don’t need to charge the camera—though I only had to do it once or twice in the several months I owned it. I still highly recommend these cameras. Solar panel installs in a couple minutes (only 3 screws) and a cable attached from the solar panel to the Arlo camera.

I did some research and ended up paying the higher price for this camera because it got good reviews. I wanted a camera to be able to have it constantly record, and then be able to go back and review the footage if something happened (I now know it is referred to as CVR). I was excited when it first arrived. It's well built, compact but solid. It was extremely easy to install, which was a huge plus. And the picture is good. So great! Thumbs up.But my excitement was quickly reversed. As it turns out, if you want CVR (which was the whole point of buying the camera), you need to also buy a $100 hub (no idea why), and the camera needs to be plugged in, so you have to buy the $49 outdoor power cord. These purchases more than doubled the original cost. Maybe it is my fault for not researching well enough, but it definitely wasn't clear that I would need all this.Once you have the equipment, you also have to sign up for the service $9.99/month. It doesn't matter that that I can attach my own hard drive to my new hub. I still have to pay a monthly tab.And then trying to use the software and get signed up for the right service was an incredibly awkward process. I had the camera plugged in, and the hub online, and could see the camera, but I could not figure out how to enable the CVR. In trying to troubleshoot myself, and based on confusion with the documentation and the software and not being able to sign up for the right service, I ended up signing up for the wrong service, which only confused me more, since I still could not opt for CVR.I went online to the Chatbot support, and that was frustrating enough to make one go crazy. Awful system. I finally got to chat with a human, and he was able to help me sort out my issue. There were a couple of problems. Since I had originally set up just the camera, it wasn't actually going through the hub (who knew). I had to delete the camera, and re-install it through the hub. And then I was able to sign up for the right service. So I signed up, and paid for the it. When I asked if I could get a refund for the first charge, since I had literally signed up for it about an hour earlier, and definitely did not need it, and only signed up for it because of their misleading documentation, he said no. And I was furious. It was only $5.99, but I really felt taken, and I felt like they didn't care. So I told him as much, and he said that he would put in a support request.Luckily several days later, they did actually process a refund for me, and I felt a little better. But then I experienced how poor the CVR service is.First of all, the flimsy plastic $100 "hub" has a blue light to show that it is online. It turns red if it goes offline. It sits on my desk where I work, and I see it for most of the day. It turns red for long periods of time at least once or twice a day. Even though nothing else on my network is going offline at all. This means that there are gaps in the CVR where no information was being uploaded. So if something happens in those times, I am just out of luck.Then there is the CVR software. It is useless. There are no playback controls other than a slider that you can use to move to different parts of the timeline. Each time you move it, there is buffering for a couple of seconds or more. There is no way to reverse the play, or to speed up or slow down the replay. There is no way to jump in specific increments. So you are at the mercy of the slider. Moving it even slightly changes the timeline by several minutes, so it is really easy to completely miss things. It is incredibly tedious to try and review the timeline. I literally spent hours trying to review a span of about 16 hours, and I completely missed huge chunks of time. I was just randomly checking hoping to see something, with a buffering each time. To make matters worse, if you look on the forums, people have been pointing out that it is useless, and requesting better controls for years. And the company has done nothing about it.I have spent over $300 so far and feel pretty much like it was wasted money.Amendment: They sent me a message saying that they were upping the charge for the continuous recording service from $9.99 to $14.99 per month. I refused to pay that for the crappy service. I have canceled it which now renders all of this hardware that I purchased useless for my situation. Total waste of money.