Arlo Q Offline, unreliable geofencing, and poor video quality

[DominoUK]

Apologies, this is a long post, but I've got a lot to complain about. TL;DR list: 

• Camera offline and now stuck
• Unreliable geofencing
• Lacking IFTTT actions
• Mode switching needs improvement
• Poor video quality considering it's meant to be 1080p

I've had an Arlo Q for almost two weeks now and unfortunately I've had countless problems.

Having not had it long, I often check its status in the morning before going to work (something I would not expect to have to do every day in the long run). To my surprise, it said Offline. My WiFi was fine, but I decided to reboot the camera and the router just to be sure. No help. I didn't have much time before needing to leave for work, but I also tried to re-sync it several times, but that also didn't help. Lastly, I thought I'd try removing the device and re-adding it, but now it's stuck and won't re-add at all. I wish I hadn't removed it, because now I'm out of the house with no camera on my account whatsoever. I would have also tried a factory reset, but I ran out of time.

I'm pretty fed up with the camera, to be honest. The geofencing (Android) is pretty awful as well; several times throughout the day it will suddenly say I've left the house when I'm just sat there watching TV. Or I'll leave the house and 10 minutes later, having walked almost a mile away, it will still think I'm home. Then randomly at work it will suddenly say I'm home again. I'm getting sick of it. The whole benefit of geofencing is so you can leave the house without thinking about it and expect the camera to arm itself, but every single day so far I've had to constantly check whether it's worked or not, and often it just hasn't.

This wouldn't have been too bad if the IFTTT support would have been actually useful. This was a feature that heavily influenced my purchase decision, but actually having looked at the only two actions it provides for changing modes, Arm and Disarm, this isn't very useful when you rely on the Schedule for the rest of the day. Why aren't there more options? If I could have used my own more accurate geofencing location detection (likely just checking what WiFi connection I'm on would have been enough!), I could have had it intelligently set to Armed (when away) and Schedule (when I'm home).

Also, switching modes, such as to Disarmed, isn't that great if you forget you've done so. I've accidentally had it disarmed all day because of this. Why isn't there an option to, let's say, 'Disarm for x hours'? Even my Do Not Disturb feature on Android can do this.

The video quality also isn't anywhere near what I expected it to be (I've set it to 1080p in the settings). Considering it's advertised as Full HD with H.264 video encoding, you'd expect the quality to be decent, but it's actually pretty awful. The bitrate of the video it produces is really low, and streaming from the web still requires Flash!

The only really good thing I can say about it is the schedule mode. That's been flawless and works really well. Particularly being able to completely configure when it should be on and off throughout every day of the week, down to the exact minute. I also really like that geofencing can default to this on Home mode (though geofencing is too unreliable, unfortunately).

Considering I haven't had the Arlo Q for that long, and I've already had all this trouble, I'm not hopeful for how it will perform in the long run. I have about two more weeks to decide whether to return it to Amazon or not, and I'm very close to doing so (and also writing a poor review of it on there).

I actually made this post in the hope of finding out why my camera has gone offline and now become stuck, so sorry it has become a complete rant. Are there server issues? Being in the UK I have no way of knowing until later in the day, as all the support is US based. A security camera with an unreliable connection isn't much use! Having paid £150 for this, I would expect a much better service. What really disappoints me is that the Arlo Q is everything I wanted from a security camera, if it was more reliable, but I'm really regretting my purchase now.

[JamesC]

DominoUK,

If you removed the camera while it was offline, the camera will need to be factory reset before you can claim it again. This can be done by pressing and holding the reset button until the camera reboots. This is likely why you experiencing an issue adding the camera back to your account.

The camera could have dropped offline due to poor signal strength. What does the signal strength indicator for the camera show? How far from your router is the camera? Poor signal strength or WiFi interference could also explain poor video quality.

JamesC

[DominoUK]

Hi, JamesC; thanks for replying.

I was able to restore it with a factory reset later that day. As for the WiFi, it's 100% signal with no interference as it's only about 1m directly above the router.

I contacted support and they told me they were doing maintenance, which is why it went offline, though no announcement was made. If an announcement was made, I could have avoided this hassle. In future I'll avoid removing the camera if I see it offline – that's if I do decide to keep it.

[DominoUK]

Geofencing seems to be getting even worse. It never switched to Away mode all day today while I've been at work. Despite this, I assumed it would have at least armed itself anyway as I have it set to Schedule during Home mode (and my schedule is set to arm during my work hours). To my surprise, checking the app actually said Disarmed, so it's been off all day.

Seriously getting sick of inconsistent arming and disarming. I thought the schedule was reliable, but I guess not (at least when paired with geofencing, it seems).

I give up on the geofencing mode. I'm going to stick with schedule and hope I just remember to arm it if I leave the house outside of its scheduled times. Really unacceptable compromise; I expected more from this.