Upgrade weal batteries

[divingosprey]

The batteries that came with my 5s Pro cameras are ridiculously short lasting.  If I go away for a week with fully charged batteries so the cameras can monitor the exterior of my home as long as the charge lasts, the batteries are exhausted, dead before the week is up.  This leaves days when the cameras are useless.  I did not buy these cameras to be useless when I was away from home for a week.

Arlo should have known these batteries do not last and a week is not too much to expect.  Arlo should, at their expense replace these batteries with ones that are designed to last longer, at least one week...A week would naturally be from one Saturday to the Sunday of the following week which is 9 days.   

Stronger batteries that last one week should not be an upgrade that the company would make available to charge more money.  This should have been considered in the original design.

A wired system should not be an excuse for batteries that can not hold a charge for a typical vacation away time.

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

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@divingosprey wrote:

The batteries that came with my 5s Pro cameras are ridiculously short lasting.  If I go away for a week with fully charged batteries so the cameras can monitor the exterior of my home as long as the charge lasts, the batteries are exhausted, dead before the week is up.  This leaves days when the cameras are useless.  I did not buy these cameras to be useless when I was away from home for a week.

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FWIW, my own cameras go months between recharges, not days.  How long they last depends on how much video they are streaming.  

If you are only getting a week of battery life, then the cameras must be triggering a lot. To get some idea, you should disable activity zones (if you use them), and then see about how many minutes of video recordings you get each day.

Changing the camera positioning and tuning the motion sensitivity are the two options you have to reduce the amount of streaming.  Activity zones won't help with battery life, as they are processed in the Arlo Cloud (and don't reduce the amount of streaming).  Later on, you can add activity zones back in order to reduce unwanted recordings.

My guess is that you purchased the normal Pro 5s, and not the XL model.  The XL battery is 2.5x longer than the normal Pro 5s.  There is an XL battery upgrade kit you can get:

• https://us.arlo.com/collections/accessories/products/vma5410-10000s

Note the XL camera isn't compatible with the magnetic mount - you need to use screw-mounts with them.