Arlo Wired Video Doorbell

We have had the doorbell installed for just under one year. For what it is worth our 5 camera Arlo system came with a free 7 day cloud memory for the life of the product and a base station that could back up video to a thumb drive. Within the first year that base station memory failed on us. I bought the Arlo doorbell to integrate with our existing system.

CAUTION: Installing a smart home camera system and living next to a busy street will result in an exorbitant amount of notifications that will quickly accumulate into the hundreds or thousands of saved video per day and possibly kill any device battery receiving notifications. It is not realistic to look through all of the video footage. Unfortunately in these circumstances it can be best to pay for a home security firm to do the job for you.

Pros

  • I like the smart feature that sends a quick video image of what triggered the camera.
  • 180 view
  • I felt that the sound was superior on the Arlo doorbell camera compared to the Ring and Nest.

Cons-

  • The smart feature image doesn’t always work and it requires paying a monthly fee to use it!
  • Video lags and cuts out
    • The camera might record someone as they walk up to the door or as they walk away but not the entire event. I specifically bought a hardwired doorbell camera hoping to avoid this recording lag issue but apparently it remains prevalent in Arlo.
  • Too many notifications drains phone battery

Our house has a 70ft long set back from the street so cars driving by our house or people walking by do not trigger the camera. However we have a feral cat community, raccoons, and loose dogs that constantly trigger the camera. I ended up having to turn off the notifications because it was killing my phone battery. I wish there was a way to turn off “animal notifications” except we need the camera to film every time a loose dog is on our property so this becomes counter intuitive.

  • It is missing the devise “On/Off”

In the Arlo app my Arlo Pro 2 cameras all have this nifty “On/Off” switch that is easily activated from the Device menu of the camera. The doorbell does not offer this feature. This means that if you just want to quickly turn off the doorbell there is no easy way of doing this. Instead you must go into the Mode Settings and unlock the recording settings.

  • When I tried turning off the “animal” notification alert it still sent me false trigger alerts for the animals but instead identified them as “vehicles” or “other motion”.
  • The video footage is horribly unpredictable. Sometimes the video recording is blurred or streaking. Other times there is only a still image with audio that plays. Lastly the video is often times cut short and only captures 1-2 seconds and not the entirety of the triggering event. It’s 100% unreliable and I haven’t felt confident in its recording and motion sensing ability to take down my Arlo pro2.
  • Lag is worse than the Arlo pro 2. So the lag between real time and the recording is like 20-30 seconds. The worse part is that the doorbell camera seems to have an additional lag. So the doorbell is triggered, records, and then pauses or lags for another 10-30 seconds before recording again if it even records again. More often than not I am not seeing the full picture of the triggering event.

Conclusion

People should have simple low expectations of the hardwired Arlo doorbell camera. If you want better performance In recording and aren’t already fully invested into a smart camera home system then I would look at nest and Ring! I now understand that recording video quality outweighs any sound issues.

I think a lot of people buy doorbell cameras to monitor package deliveries to their front porch. I have used the camera for this exact purpose. In fact I have camera settings called “package delivery” that I can activate when I am expecting deliveries. The video footage will show me a package is on my front porch but doesn’t record the actual delivery! Honestly though if someone is going to steal the package from the front porch they are going to wear a hoodie or a ball cap and hide their face and the police aren’t going to waste time looking into the theft. I guess there is some solace in confirming it was stolen! Unless you can definitively identify the person on the video footage then the doorbell camera is useless against theft.

Having a doorbell Camera is essential for where we live. With living in a lawless community where police officers don’t respond to calls and when they do they demonize the person calling. We felt that we needed an added layer of eyes on our property. The day we installed the doorbell camera one of the neighbors from behind our house drove in front of our house and started filming us, sadly the camera was not activated yet but this on top of many other incidents was enough to file for a restraining order.

Last month the camera caught some neighborhood kids door dashing. While we were home they would run up to our door, ring the doorbell and run away. It was interesting because the kid ringing the bell was a relative of the neighborhood kid and he eventually figured out to put his hoodie on so the camera wouldn’t see his face! However the actual neighbor kid just stood in the driveway without covering his face. Remember our driveway is 70ft so the doorbell picked up on them before getting to the door and I saw them at the end of our driveway as I was coming home, this isn’t rocket science here!

We don’t live in a quaint quit suburban neighborhood. We live in a very hostile neighborhood where at least 3 to four of our immediate neighbors have threatened us, caused us physical damage to our property and severe mental anguish. While another neighbor down the way is in and out of jail for meth use. Our neighbors suffer from severe mental disorders ranging from drug abuse, domestic violence, animal hoarding, hoarding of vehicles, appliances, and pallets to anti social behavior. Any attempt to have a civil conversation with our neighbors has resulted in them threatening us or worse.