topic Re: Arlo Pro 4 XL in Arlo Pro 4

Arlo Pro 4 XL

LongTTran — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 20:02:31 GMT

Done numerous research and review from other customers, and many recommended the Pro 4 over the Ultra 2. Overall a bit disappointed and below are some of the things that I found while using the Arlo Pro 4 XL:

Short Battery Life - Required charging within a week. Even at lower resolution and sensitivity. So lower resolution and sensitivity defeat the purpose of having a 2k camera.
Night Vision is not the greatest (a bit blurry), black and white unless turned on flood light. Turning on the flood light will shorter battery life.
The camera goes offline more than expected when viewed from a phone App. Not sure if this is the App issue or the camera.
Lagging in cloud storage. The video won't show up for viewing days later. For instance, December 31 won't show up until today Jan 4, 2023.
Replace the battery, there is a chance that you may have to remove and add the camera again from the App. Otherwise, the camera will be offline.
Don't bother to zoom in because the clarity will be useless.
Can't delete multiple videos at the same time from the App. Hopefully, this option will be available for future updates.
Day time video is very good, need to figure out how to preserve battery life.
The price is fair compared to other cameras
Easy installation.

A few comments regarding my Arlo for new users and those considering buying Arlo.

Re: Arlo Pro 4 XL

StephenB — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 12:19:36 GMT

Some comments based on my experience.

@LongTTran wrote:

Short Battery Life - Required charging within a week. Even at lower resolution and sensitivity. So lower resolution and sensitivity defeat the purpose of having a 2k camera.

Some confusion here - resolution from the camera videos is always 2K, unless you enable auto zoom and track.

My own XL batteries last a lot longer. So either something is wrong with the camera, or there is a lot of motion detection happening with your camera (despite the lowered motion sensitivity).

Do you know how many seconds of video you are streaming per day? You need to remove any activity zones to estimate this.

@LongTTran wrote:

The camera goes offline more than expected when viewed from a phone App. Not sure if this is the App issue or the camera.
...
need to figure out how to preserve battery life.

This might be related to the battery issue. Frequent connection drops will drain the battery quickly, as the camera is actively looking to rejoin the network (using more power than usual).

Have you tested with the camera in a different location (closer to the base or wifi router)?

Also, if you don't have a base station - what router (or mesh system) are you using?

@LongTTran wrote:

Replace the battery, there is a chance that you may have to remove and add the camera again from the App. Otherwise, the camera will be offline.

I haven't seen this myself when just replacing the battery, but it is true that there are times when you end up having to re-onboard the camera. That is a nuisance (actually much more than that if you aren't on site). Definitely something that could be improved.

@LongTTran wrote:

Night Vision is not the greatest (a bit blurry), black and white unless turned on flood light. Turning on the flood light will shorter battery life.

It's actually infrared, but rendered as black and white. Low-light color with the spotlight is sometimes better, but sometimes actually worse. IMO nighttime performance could be better with this camera. Some more controls (in particular some thresholds you could tune) might help.

There are some other things you potentially do. IR floodlights would improve the picture quality of "classic" IR nightvision, by increasing the IR illumination. But they would likely need to be powered, so installing them might be a pain.

@LongTTran wrote:

Lagging in cloud storage. The video won't show up for viewing days later. For instance, December 31 won't show up until today Jan 4, 2023.

Definitely something wrong here. My videos show up in the library right away (as soon as I get the notification). You might want to contact support on this one.

@LongTTran wrote:

Don't bother to zoom in because the clarity will be useless.

FWIW, 2K (and even 4K) isn't as high a resolution as many people think. The cameras are wide-angle, and therefore have a big field of view. Arlo 2K is 2540x1440. Zooming by 2x with electronic zoom gives you 720p (1280x720) resolution, anything more reduces resolution into the standard definition range. So zooming in to read license plates, etc will often be disappointing.

Another aspect here is the low video bitrate Arlo uses. Modern compression does reduce clarity (making the video blurrier) as the bit rate is lowered. Personally I'd like to see a higher bitrate option (ideally letting me reduce retention in order to get more clarity).

@LongTTran wrote:

Can't delete multiple videos at the same time from the App. Hopefully, this option will be available for future updates.

That's something that got missed in the new "Feed" experience - you can delete multiple videos from the older "Library" experience. I agree it should be added.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is no undelete. We do sometimes get posts here from people who accidentally deleted the wrong video, and want to get it back. That can't be done. Personally I only rarely delete a video, I just let it stay until the retention period ends.

Also, if you need to preserve a video, it is important to download it promptly. Once it's deleted from the cloud for any reason, it is gone forever.

Re: Arlo Pro 4 XL

jguerdat — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 13:42:32 GMT

1) Battery life depends on amount of recording/live viewing as well as signal strength/quality. Testing is needed to optimize.

2) Night vision will always be less clear than daytime due to lack of light. The sensor has to have enough light to maximize the image.

3) See #1

4) Sounds like a cache issue. Force closing the app and clearing cache may help. This isn't normal (mine come through quickly).

5) Just replaced a battery last night with no issue. Others have reported this issue but doesn't seem to be widespread.

6) Understand the technology. a 2k video is ~ 3.6 megapixels and then compression is added. Also, these are NOT ID cameras, their function is to monitor a wide area (note the wide angle lenses).

7) Agreed. The old interface allowed multiple selections.

😎 Battery life is spec'ed for <5 minutes total recording and live viewing per day. Camera positioning to eliminate unwanted/unneeded areas if the camera view as well as potentially lowering motion sensitivity in modes and rules can make a huge difference.

9 & 10) Yup.