spotty performance, no 7 day recordings to cloud, no remote access to local storage

[MLBinVA]

I'm guessing that I'm not alone here but I have to say that purchasing this camera system is probably one of the worst decisions I've ever made, and I've made some doosies.  I've had nothing but spotty performance with the camera's recording and actually saving the video to the cloud, the base station seems to need to be reset on a regular basis to stay working, and now I find out that my only option to retain the ability to view my recordings online at all requires me to purchase additional service plans, even though I was already, begrudgingly, still paying for PVR service.

One of the selling features of the Arlo system was that you got 7 days of free cloud storage of all video, after I purchased the Ultra system (which I did to get the higher resolution) I find out that in order to actually record at that higher resolution you had to pay extra, not ok but fine, now I find out that since my first year of complimentary upgraded service (30 day recording) has expired that the only way to get ANY cloud storage is to pay extra plus another extra if I want it to be at the higher resolution (I won't say 4K because it's not).  All this even though nothing was ever mentioned that these camera's would not retain the same level of service as the other systems after the one year of UPGRADED service that was included with the sale of the system.

As if that's not enough the icing on the cake is their stance is that well you can record to a local SD card BUT you can't access that from anywhere other than shutting the system down, removing the card, and viewing it on another device.  Even though from the very beginning they'd said they were going to allow remote access to the local storage, I guess that's no longer the case.  What's the point in having a video surveillance system if all someone has to do is break in and take the box (which can't be protected since it has to have strong wifi service to all the camera's AND you need to access it to view any recordings).

If anyone would like to purchase additional hardware cheap let me know because I'm done with Arlo and will never buy or recommend their product to anyone.

[JamesC]

MLBinVA,

The Arlo Ultra kit states on the box that "Arlo Smart Service, including cloud recording, requires paid subscription after 1 year". While this is different than previous Arlo cameras, which include 7 day cloud storage at no cost, Arlo Ultra kits have always required a subscription for recordings to be saved to the cloud.

Direct Storage Access, which is now available, allows you to save your recordings to an attached storage device on the SmartHub and view them locally or remotely. For more information on how to set this up, take a look here: What is Direct Storage Access and how do I use it?

JamesC