Questions on battery, video quality, rules.

[dave_n]

Hi Alro Community,

Strongly considering going with Arlo Pro2 Solution and had some general questions I couldn't find answers and hoping you can help.

Battery.

1.  Netgear claims "The NETGEAR Arlo Pro camera rechargeable battery life is four to six months with normal usage " what are you averaging?

2. I realize the Pro2 is still new, but anyone with the older model, how long before the battery had to be replaced and no longer charge?

Video recording.

1. Are you happy with the quality?  Can you read a license plate from the compressed images stored on Netgear's servers?

2. Do you feel confident police could id a thief correctly? I understand lighting will help determine the results.

3. Once triggered it will record for "X mins" how long before it can restart? Assume the subject is always in motion.

 Rules.

1. I'd plan to get the 4 camera kit and placing  2 indoors and 2 outdoors. I'd like to set up the outdoors to always be "Armed", once triggered can I have it "arm" the indoor cameras for say 10mins?  A pet wouldn't trigger the indoor camera on its own but if a thief triggers the outdoor camera would also be caught by the indoor ones.

thanks in advance,

dave n.

[MrTonyToca]

Battery

1.  When I had the Arlo Pro 1 the cameras lasted 4,5 or 6 months. So those claims are acurate.

2.Not sure if you're asking about the Arlo Pro 2 or 1. But I still have Arlo Pro 1 batteries and they are still retaining charge fine and work with the Arlo Pro 2. Now if the question is how long does the Arlo Pro 2 battery last. I have not gotten over 1 month. at 1 point i was changing it every week to 2 weeks. And it is still that way till this day.

Video 

1. The day quality of the Arlo Pro 1 was good, not good enough to see a license plate though. The arlo pro 2 day qulity is much improved over the Pro 1 but unless the car is pretty close I doubt you could make out a license plate clearly. Night vision quality on the pro 1 is MUCH better than the pro 2. Unless there is plenty of steady light around the camera the arlo pro 2 night quality is pretty useless. hazy and blurry. 

2. They could see that a thief was there, but unless its broad daylight and the theif looked directly into the camera I doubt they could identify the person. And if its night and you have an arlo pro 2, forget about. you may make out a silhouette if you're lucky. 

3. the max record time is 5 minutes and would probably start recording again 10 seconds after that 5 minute video was done recording. 

Rules

1. You are able to setup a rule to do that, but again 5 minutes is that record length limit. 

[dave_n]

Thanks  MrTonyToca for spending the time to answer my questions.

I'm disappointed to hear that even with 1080p the quality is still not good enough to possibly id a thief.

I might only get a 2pack to keep an eye on the pets and hopefully deter a would-be thief.

[steve_t]

I have cameras at the front of my house that get triggered 20-30 times per day and the battery lasts 4-6 weeks between charges. I have cameras down the side of the house where nobody goes except once every few weeks and the cameras last 8-9 months between charges. Battery life is highly dependent on recording time.

I haven't had to buy a replacement battery for a Pro or Pro 2 yet

I have all my cameras set to "Best Video" quality as I don't like the other settings

I can read a licence plate about 30 feet away though it seems like at 31 feet, the plate is suddenly very blurry though perhaps it's just the compression 
I can definitely clearly see faces from cameras where the people get close enough. It's all about mounting location.
The Pro and Pro 2 only take a few seconds to recycle and be ready to record again. The original Arlo HD took about 15 seconds and it was ridiculously too long. The person often would have left the area by then.
At this stage, you can have cameras trigger other cameras to record but you can't natively have a camera trigger a change in mode. If you really wanted this feature, you could use Smartthings but there are a number of complications with this too. I would be inclined to run the indoor cameras off AC power full time if possible and turn off the notifications for them. That way, they can silently run and record and won't run out of battery no matter how many times they're triggered. You'll also then get the 3 second lookback feature for the Pro 2 cameras because they'll be powered

[MrTonyToca]

now you say your Arlo Pro 2's last 4-6 weeks with 20-30 triggers a day...... That is only 1 month and 2 weeks tops. My Arlo Pro 1 which was in the same spot as my Arlo Pro 2 would get 5-6 months of battery, thats 21 weeks! with 30+ triggers a day. You dont think thats considerably worse going from 21 weeks of battery to max 6? Wouldn't that seem like a downgrade to you? Because it surely does to me. I would accept a decrease in battery life to maybe 3 months vs. the 5-6 months I was getting with my Pro 1 but 1month? that stinks to be honest. My other cameras would get 6+ months, they now have come down to maybe 2 months, thats still a big decrease. A license plate could probably be read depending on the angle and distance of the camera, and lighting of course. Daytime videos are clear so yes you could identify someone during the day. But as I said earlier, most crimes or issues would happen at night time, which the night vision vs the Arlo Pro 1 again has received a decrease in quality. So to identify someone or something at night would soley depend on how well lit up and how close they are to the camera. And the 3 second lookback is also a dissappointment being as though they sell the Arlo Q which is an indoor camera so why would I use the Arlo Pro 2 outdoor camera inside and have it plugged in. Their best feature is the wireless feature. So technically the new feature doesnt benefit what the camera was intended for which is outdoor wireless setup. Because at that point that makes the Arlo Pro no different than any other wired camera setup. Overall the Arlo Pro 2 is usable but compared to what it could and should have been, its a dissappointment. 

[steve_t]

Battery life will depend not only on the number of activations but the duration of recording. I haven't noticed any difference between Pro and Pro 2 battery life so if you're getting 6 months on Pro, you should get 6 months on Pro 2.

I find the Pro and Pro 2 night videos comparable. Pro probably a little brighter but with less contrast making it look even brighter.

You're right about the lookback feature. Obviously, to have the feature, the camera needs to buffer video full time and that would just destroy a battery in no time. Hopefully the outdoor power supply returns at some stage. I only have three Arlo indoors because I don't feel like I need indoor coverage but everyone's different and I know many people have Arlos through the inside of their homes.

Agree that the Arlo Pro was a massive improvement on the Arlo HD. Arlo Pro 2 is more of a refinement of the Arlo Pro with a few extra, limited use features. During the day, the Pro 2 has about 10 feet more to resolve the car licence plate than the Pro or HD had. That's not massive but enough for me to put Pro 2 cameras at the front of my house in place or the Pro where that ability is important to me and it's well lit enough for me to see no difference in low light performance. The Arlos trigger outside lights to come on as well. You may have seen other threads where I have said that, with the Black Friday deals recently, Arlo Pro would be my pick based on features and value

[dave_n]

Thanks guys for the further replies.

If needing them to be plugged in for some of the features means I might as well just run full PoE network cables and not worry about compression or battery.  Right now I'm leaning to getting a 2 camera Pro2 kit and use one indoor (pet) and one outdoor. Maybe I'll get a few Pro3 next year and use those for outdoor.

thanks again.

[jguerdat]

If you're still talking about Arlo cameras, the only one that uses PoE is the Q Plus but still uses compression since all Arlos are cloud-based.

[dave_n]

Sorry for not being clear,  PoE cameras would be a non-Arlo.

I'd like a high ceiling mount, so if I need to run cable for power... 

Appreciate you calling that out jguerdat 🙂