Arlo Pro 4 - 2 Cameras with Different Battery Life

[YosemiteEagle]

I'm coming up on the end of my 1-year warranty for 2ea Pro 4's.  With both cameras on the Optimized battery setting, one averages 0.66% battery drop/day (so 4-5 months between charges, pretty good) and the other 1.00%/day (i.e., 50% faster decrease in battery; needs charging after 2.5-3 months).  After learning this, I swapped the camera locations and settings, with no resulting change in battery life.  The one that had better battery life in its original location continues to have better battery life in its new location, and vice versa for the other.  This means of course that the battery drain is hardware-driven and not caused by location or settings.

I've seen the horror stories of crazy bad battery drain that others have experienced and am grateful my situation is not that, but I wonder if the faster battery drain in the one camera is something I can and should address while the cameras are still under warranty.

Any suggestions, or should I just be grateful for what I've got?

Thanks, everyone.

[jguerdat]

You didn't mention swapping batteries around which would be the next step to see if it's the camera or battery.

[YosemiteEagle]

That IS a really good next step.  I'll do that next, thanks!  If it does turn out to be the battery, then did I just get a "bad" one to start with, in your experience?

[StephenB]

@YosemiteEagle - two to three months between charges isn't bad, several of my cameras need to be charged about that often.

The charge remaining is just an estimate (based on battery voltage).  The calculations you are trying to do really aren't that accurate.

[YosemiteEagle]

Thanks very much, StephenB.  Re the percent remaining, I've worked this over several months and the one camera consistently and persistently drops faster than the other.  While one has 40% charge remaining, the other has 60%.  When faster-dropping is due for a recharge at 15% remaining, the other will still have >40%, definitely not needing to be recharged.  That's big enough to be a real difference.

Re your first point, I appreciate 2-3 months is "OK;" it's the difference in performance in 2 similarly aged cameras that has me scratching my head.  I will swap the batteries as suggested earlier to see if it's the batteries or the cameras.

Again, I appreciate your thoughts and experience.

[StephenB]

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@YosemiteEagle wrote:

I will swap the batteries as suggested earlier to see if it's the batteries or the cameras.

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That makes sense.  

It might also make sense to review all the camera settings (including the one on video quality), and note any differences.

[YosemiteEagle]

Hi StephenB - other than for designating which camera would provide package alerts and the relevant activity zones, settings were identical across the  board.  When I swapped the cameras, only changes were redesignating the package alert  and "swapping" the activity zones.  Interestingly, respective battery consumption has not been noticeably affected by package alerts. Originally, it was the camera that was much more active with triggers/alerts that had the longer battery life.  Swapping the cameras did not worsen the degradation of the camera with lower battery life.  Anyway, I'll charge and then swap the batteries today and then monitor for a while to see what happens to battery life. No news for several weeks or a month.

[StephenB]

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@YosemiteEagle wrote:

When I swapped the cameras, only changes were redesignating the package alert  and "swapping" the activity zones. 

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If you want to gauge the power use, you need to delete the activity zones.  The camera streams to the cloud whenever there is motion (in or out of zone), and the cloud supresses the recordings and notifications for out-of-zone.

[YosemiteEagle]

Thanks StephenB.  I get your point, though believe I got a fair comparative assessment of battery-consuming motion detections (whether notified and/or recorded or not) when I swapped the camera locations - each experienced the detections that the other would have experienced prior to the swap.

I swapped the batteries just a few days ago, and there isn't enough of a difference yet for me to report anything.

[YosemiteEagle]

Thanks for all the help to date!  Contrary to my expectations, after only a fairly short time I'm seeing the same camera lose its charge more quickly, even though I swapped the batteries.  One more check to go: switch the cameras back to their original locations to see if that remains true.  If it does, then it would be the camera, not the battery, which is the source of the battery draining more quickly.  I'm being encouraged to accept a solution as the answer, which I'll do after this one more check.

[YosemiteEagle]

OK - all experiments concluded; here's the deal: one camera burns through batteries significantly quicker than the other.  No matter that I swapped the locations of the cameras, no matter that I swapped the batteries of the cameras and tested both original and swapped locations - the one camera bought and installed at the same time as the other burns through its battery more quickly.  In all circumstances, the better camera loses 0.5-0.7% charge per day (observed over long periods until charging needed) while the other loses no less than 1% per day and often more like 1.5% or even 2.0% per day.  I am surprised by this outcome as I thought for sure I was going to find it was a battery thing (originally suggested by @jguerdat above).

My warranty runs out at the end of this month...  Arlo says "up to 6 months" battery life, which I get represents a max ideal, but 2 months is just so much less than that.  In your experience, is this a valid warranty claim?  Stated differently, would YOU make a claim with this performance?

Thank you for all the help...

[StephenB]

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@YosemiteEagle wrote:

Stated differently, would YOU make a claim with this performance?

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Personally, I wouldn't.

Note if you were to get a warranty replacement, you would need to pay the shipping to return your camera to Arlo (Arlo would pay the shipping on the replacement).

[jguerdat · Accepted solution]

Tough call. A 2 month recharge cycle isn't exactly horrible and a solar panel likely would extend that a great deal (at extra cost, though). It would be a reasonable idea to see what official support would say since you're still within the warranty period and have extended testing already done.

[YosemiteEagle]

Thank you, @jguerdat and @StephenB for your thoughtful comments.  I'll explore what Arlo has to say as @jguerdat suggests.  I suspect they can look directly at my camera's tech data to see how it's performing, but in any event I'll check with them.

[YosemiteEagle]

@jguerdat  and @StephenB  - thought I'd give an update for benefit of all.  After receiving instructions to put both cameras on battery-helping settings, which didn't change things much, I was told by Arlo support to "reset" the camera (I reset both) by pressing and holding the Sync button for 15 seconds.  After that, it's pretty much like setting up a new camera, which I did.

With both cameras returned to their original locations with settings same as I've always had them, their battery life has improved radically!  It's a pain to set up the cameras with their 2.4GHz-only WiFi, but it was so worth it to get this issue addressed.

Hope this is useful information for you and the community. 

[jguerdat]

Kewl! (Un)fortunately, resetting is a valuable last-ditch effort to clear out some weirdness. Not the first time and certainlly not the last...