Battery life on Arlo Ultra 4k is abolutely terrible

[aussiearlo]

I am based in Melbourne Australia and i have been Running the 2 camera kit for about 3 weeks now, and i must say i am extremely dissapointed in the battery life, i have one unit outdoors facing the street and one indoor unit.

The one in the street needs charging every 3- 4 days which is dreadful

and the indoor unit lasts about 8- 10 days which is still no where near the indicated battery life of 3 - 6 months

I have played with video settings and zones for the outdoor and it has not improved, i still receive up to 50 flase notifications a day and have resorted to completely muting notifications for 24 hours at a time

i have just purchased a solar panel for the front camera, so hopefully this helps but i must say still very disappointed

Would love to know how the battery can last 3- 6 months

Waste of money in my opinion

i may as well keep my ladder permantly fixed next to the cameras to keep removing the cameras to charge them

I also dont see the point of purchasing a 4k quality camera only to have to reduce the quality to gain better battery life, Arlo should factor this in and either not produce a camera that reduces battery blife or put in a battery that at least can last 3= months

[StephenB]

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@aussiearlo wrote:

I have played with video settings and zones for the outdoor and it has not improved, i still receive up to 50 flase notifications a day and have resorted to completely muting notifications for 24 hours at a time

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Zones won't help with battery life, because the cloud determines if the motion is in or out of the zone.  So the amount of streaming that the camera does isn't reduced.

Reducing the motion sensitivity will help, as will aiming the camera to keep extraneous motion (traffic, etc) out of the field of view.  

If there are times of the day when you don't really care about recordings, you can also set up a schedule to disarm one or both cameras during those times.  That might apply more to the indoor camera (depending on what it is covering).

Of course the solar panel will help.

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@aussiearlo wrote:

put in a battery that at least can last 3= months

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FWIW, my own ultras do last much longer than yours do.  Though I haven't really tracked the amount of charging I need to do, I am thinking it is about 8 weeks for the Ultras (excluding one that has a solar charger).  It could be somewhat longer (I have three different camera models, and don't pay that much attention to which models need charging when).   I also keep the power management set to "best video", not the "optimized" or "best battery" settings that they quote here: https://kb.arlo.com/1202753/How-long-do-Arlo-camera-batteries-last

Battery life will depend on the amount of streaming per day, and also will be reduced if the camera frequently loses it's connection to the base.  So the battery life will vary considerably, depending on where the camera is aimed and where it is located. 

That said, I don't know how Arlo came up with the ~5 minutes per day of recording time that they base their battery life on.  

[JM106]

I have the exact same issue. AT BEST my ultra will last 7 days before the battery is completely dead. And unfortunately the first reply is correct when saying either way the camera is streaming the same amount of time. I can’t see any way around that when my camera is for the front of my house and catches all the activity of cars driving by and people walking by. But regardless I wouldn’t want to stop having that activity recorded. If someone is to come on my property most likely they’d have to come from there and I would like to have it recorded. I have been extremely unhappy with Pro2 and now even more with Ultra.

[StephenB]

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@JM106 wrote:
 But regardless I wouldn’t want to stop having that activity recorded. If someone is to come on my property

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Well, the battery life will be short when the camera is in a place where there is a lot of detected motion.  The more the camera is capturing, the more power it will use.

If you need to record it all, then the best option is to power the camera with AC or with the solar panel.