topic Re: Arlo essential night vision settings problems and black & white image in Arlo Essential Security Camera 3rd Gen

Arlo essential night vision settings problems and black & white image

ctracey_uk — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 12:41:48 GMT

I have a number of Arlo Essential cameras, 2nd and 3rd gen, and all keep suffering from the same problems. First, they now all show a black and white image during daytime. Second, I set the night vision to black and white with the spotlight off, but the settings keep changing to Color at some point later with the spotlight still set to off, which is not a valid settings combo so clearly something has gone wrong. Finally, one of the cameras stopped recording a week ago.

I realise I can factory reset the cameras to get them working again, but the same problems keep reoccurring soon after and I'm back where I started, which makes them mostly useless. I have various other pro cameras that do not seem to suffer the same problems.

Re: Arlo essential night vision settings problems and black & white image

jguerdat — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 14:28:30 GMT

My guess is that the cameras are in a location where the ambient light is more or less at the threshold of where they change from color (daytime) to B&W (nighttime). If you move one where the light is brighter or darker all the time does the behavior become consistent?

Re: Arlo essential night vision settings problems and black & white image

ctracey_uk — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 14:44:06 GMT

It's not that. The cameras work fine after a factory reset, but cant keep doing that.

Re: Arlo essential night vision settings problems and black & white image

jguerdat — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 14:46:16 GMT

The sun's angle does move over time/seasons so that could still be the issue. It's worth testing on one camera.

Re: Arlo essential night vision settings problems and black & white image

ctracey_uk — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:55:32 GMT

I have tried that, moving a camera, but makes no difference. Only a factory reset fixes it.

Re: Arlo essential night vision settings problems and black & white image

jguerdat — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:35:16 GMT

Use the app to go to Settings, Support to see what official support may offer.