Which Arlo is best?

[Barbs]

Trying to figure out which is best to get. This is for our farm and to monitor inside the barn. Night vision is a must. Barn is around 100 feet from router is house. But I do have a “bridge” in place and can plug into Ethernet in the barn. I do have power to plug into as well. Magnetic mount would be nice as well! Any suggestions?

[TomMac]

If you have wifi and power out in the barn, then I would go with the Q cameras ( superior motion detect as it is pixel change based ) These link directly to the home wifi system, down side is they must be armed separately.

If you have etherent access in the barn (power near it too ) for a base unit, the Pro cameras ( for me anyway ) seems to have better night vision while the Pro2s have a couple extra options if they are powered by ac ( 3 sec look back, zones )

If both are battery powered, not much difference

( Q no mag mount , while Pro/Pro2 do have )

see product info at top of page

[Barbs]

Thank u!!! WiFi reaches but not the best. I will check out the Pro and Pro 2. We have Uniden wired G455 now but they don’t make the cords any longer. Do any Arlos have a monitor I can put in the house?

[AncientGeek]

If you want truly live viewing the Arlo Pro and Pro 2 are ok, but not “real-time” solutions.  The video from those cameras must transmit from the cameras to Arlo’s servers in their data centers (or cloud infrastructure) and then transmit back to your computer or mobile device.  This results in a couple second delay from “live” until you see it.  Typically these systems are not designed for “active surveillance”.  They are for passive monitoring for motion or sound and recording and alerting us to that activity.  If you don’t care about a few seconds, that isn’t a big deal.

Supposedly the new Arlo Ultra cameras will allow “local” Live Streaming which should eliminate the delay from a practical perspective.

If you truly want “Active” surveillance (meaning you want to have camera images viewable at all times on a monitor) and don’t need the smart alerts and battery operation, there are other solutions as well.  “Axis” is one.  Their primarily focus has historically been active surveillance.

You could likely run Power Over Ethernet (POE) to Arlo Q Plus, Axis or another vendor’s POE cameras and reach up to 100 meters from a power source.  Though you have to watch out for mice when running wires.  I had mice eat all of the insulation off a CAT-5 network cable I ran in my workshop.  The outer cover and insulation off each of the eight strands.  A whole new meaning for CAT & mouse. You might want to use conduit.

[AncientGeek]

About the monitors... there are none directly from Arlo.  You can use a PC, Mac, iPad, Android tablet, and Apple TV plugged into an HDMI port on an HD TV, etc.