topic Re: 2K vs 4K plan in Arlo

2K vs 4K plan

ceherr — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 12:07:54 GMT

Basically the title. Is the 4K plan worth it compared to the 2K one?

Can I achieve the same as a zoomed in 4K image by activating Zoom & Enhance on a 2K plan? Although I have noticed it seems not very good.

Or could I get 4K while having the 2K plan if I have a microSD card?

I don't want to talk about the price increase, I do not live in the USA.

Re: 2K vs 4K plan

jguerdat — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 15:00:08 GMT

The local recordings are based on what passes through the hub so a 2k plan will only provide 2k local recordings. The use of digital zoom will never be as good as the original optical image. I suppose post-processing would be useful but you'd have to do that since Arlo doesn't.

Re: 2K vs 4K plan

StephenB — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 16:54:48 GMT

@ceherr wrote:

Basically the title. Is the 4K plan worth it compared to the 2K one?

Of course you can only get 4K with the Ultra cameras.

Personally I think 2K is enough - the clarity is limited by the bitrates Arlo is using, so there isn't as much gain at 4K as you might expect. But this does depend on what the camera is aimed at, and how much motion there is in the recording.

@ceherr wrote:

Can I achieve the same as a zoomed in 4K image by activating Zoom & Enhance on a 2K plan? Although I have noticed it seems not very good.

If you enable "Auto Zoom & Tracking", all the recordings will end up 1080p. I personally don't enable that setting, since it doesn't always lock onto what I want to see. So I always leave this off, and then pan/zoom the recording if I want to see something larger.