Left Arlo After 5 Disappointing Years

[derickwatsun]

A note to those interested in purchasing Arlo and entering their ecosystem: Don’t.

Their products look good on paper, if you can swallow the price for a premium device. However, the performance is lacking. Battery life is way off from advertised, wireless range is lower than competitors, and the lag between the cameras and app is unacceptable for a paid subscription. Basestation recording features are abysmal, which I believe is intentional to force you into their subscription service.

I’ve given them the benefit of the doubt for the last 5 years to improve products via software updates, having purchased their newest and flagship products, hoping they would improve the lag times. They have not.

The nail in the coffin is the continued subscription price increase. Over the last three years, they doubled the subscription prices, all the while reducing features (reduced cloud recording history; 4k/2k limited, etc). I purchased a 2k Video Doorbell as recently as February 2024 and when I found out about yet another increase, I dropped them.

I’m not going to give this company another dime.

Products owned over the last 5 years

4 Arlo Ultra - VMC5040

3 Arlo Ultra 2 - VMC5040

1 Arlo Pro 3 - VMC4040P

1 Arlo 2K Video Doorbell - AVD4001-100NAS

1 Arlo Ultra SmartHub - VMB5000 Smarthub

[Edinburgh_lad1]

Really pleased for you! A liberating experience altogether. 

I've had Arlo for 6 years now, starting with Arlo HD. The first thing I noticed was a change in resolution, me thinking it was my internet connection until I learnt on here it's not. Since then, it's been a pretty disappointing experience owning Arlo products.

While I'm not in a position to get rid of my system yet, I've made a start by selling unused cameras that I once was excited to purchase for the just in case situation.

However, this company is not getting more money out of me, unless they *significantly* improve their approach to the customer, software and firmware updates.

That's where I am.

[derickwatsun]

I was hesitant to buy any more of their products halfway into ownership, but ended up buying the doorbell earlier this year to replace an aging Ring and consolidate service subscriptions.

The lag and delay on the 2k Doorbell was significantly worse than a 2016 Ring, to the point my wife called it out. It would also fail to connect half the time, and fail to pickup motion. I tried to convince my wife it wasn’t so bad, but ultimately needed to drop them they raised subscription prices yet again. 

I needed to rip off the bandage and just end anymore investment into a company that clearly doesn’t care about product quality, and focuses their effort on increasing revenue.

Arlo Ultra 2 Wireless Security Camera Ultra SmartHub VMB5000 Arlo Video Doorbell 2nd Gen  Arlo Pro 3 

[Rioriver4]

1000% agree.  I am pissed too.  I got Arlo at the recommendation of a Best Buy representative.  When I purchased it, it was a monthly subscription of $14.95 per BASE STATION!  So I paid about $30 a month for systems at 2 different houses.  My account lapsed for a bit because I had to cancel the CC that was tied to it and then when I went to get the subscription again a few

months later, it was now $14.95 per CAMERA &  every 2 weeks, so essentially $30 per camera!?!?!?!!!!!  My 4 camera system at each house went from $14.95/month to $120/month!!!!!  What-the-flying-f$@#????  That is like an 8X increase!?!?  That should be illegal!  You should be locked into whatever subscription price you paid when you bought the system… lapse or not, as the subscription fees are a big part of the purchase decision!  For them to increase that cost by 8X after you’ve spent hundreds or thousands on the equipment, is f$@#ing criminal!  I will never give them another dime and I won’t sell my equipment so that some other sucker can get bent over by them either!  Straight to the garbage… and I will be sure to tell everyone for the rest if my life, to NEVER buy their product.  Greed is gross Arlo.  If you claim “product improvements” as the reason for an 8x price hike, yet those improvements were so unnoticeable that I had to google “why the price hike?” then you’re full of “..it”.  I hope they go bankrupt after getting sued for being a crap company.  There is surely some scam going on here.  Shame on you Arlo.  I’m moving on and for the record, it’s not me… it’s 100% you!

[StephenB]

---

@Rioriver4 wrote:

when I went to get the subscription again a few

months later, it was now $14.95 per CAMERA &  every 2 weeks, so essentially $30 per camera!?!?!?!!!!! 

---

No.  There are no plans with a billing cycle of every two weeks.   US pricing for unlimited cameras in one location (Arlo Secure) is currently $13.99 per month. This does depend on what country you are in, but you can easily check the subscription pricing for your country on www.arlo.com.  

I suspect you over-subscribed (purchasing more subscription plans than you needed).  The other possibility is that you purchased the continuous video recording (CVR) plan, which is per-camera.

FWIW, there never was a requirement to get one subscription for each base. 

[Fallguy]

Getting close too. 😡

[CodyG]

I for one will be finding another product as I have had 3 years of frustration with a refurbished Arlo Ultra 4k base with 2 cameras. Battery life was great but the experience overall was very frustrating. I was able to get mine fixed almost every time by just unplugging it and starting over several times but what got me the most was that my base would only locally recorded up to 25gb on a 1tb SD card. I wanted a big card so I wouldn't have to offload my videos so much but once I reached 25gb I would have to start over each time, as my videos would stop recording to the SD card. It took several painful trial and error to narrow it down to the 25gb threshold. My SD card is fine and would do ok in a laptop to xfer stuff over that 25gb mark but in the Arlo base, not so much. No where could I find documentation on how big of an SD card would it accept. 

[StephenB]

---

@CodyG wrote:

No where could I find documentation on how big of an SD card would it accept. 

---

The limit I've seen is 2 TB.  Some posters here have had success with 1 TB, but I haven't seen anyone post success with two.  There are a lot of scam 1 TB and 2 TB cards out there that don't hold as much as they claim.  They might behave differently in the smarthub than they do in a PC.

FWIW, IMO 1 to 2 TB is overkill.  256 GB will store about 200 hours of Ultra recordings.   So I think storage in the 128-512 GB is sufficient. 

I use 128 GB myself - one of my smarthubs holds about 85 GB of recordings at the moment the other holds 107 GB.  

[CodyG]

It is possible that my SD card could be the culprit, I haven't tested another one as of yet. I do know that I got it a fairly cheap price though 😕.

I find it odd that it shows up as 1tb in my laptop though and it even says 1tb in the base station too. 

I'll have to do more research. When you have as much traffic as I do, I want as much as I can get to alleviate offloading files every 12 months vs 3. 

Thanks for letting me know that there is others that are using a 1tb as well.. 

[StephenB]

---

@CodyG wrote:

Thanks for letting me know that there is others that are using a 1tb as well.. 

---

My comment on on that was from memory (hopefully correct!).  

I suggest sticking with well-known brands.   I've had good results with Samsung.  Though I'd expect Kingston, PNY, and Sandisk to work equally well.

[CodyG]

 

[StephenB]

---

@CodyG wrote:

 

---

I think this is likely a counterfeit card.

Toshiba spun off their memory division as a separate company (Kioxa) back in 2019.  AFAICT,  after that their memory cards were all branded as Kioxa, and not Toshiba.  While some early 1 TB cards were on the market in 2019, they were really expensive.

There is a freeware tool you can use to test it:

• https://h2testw.org/