Arlo Cameras are they worth it?

[LouNawlins]

Does anyone else believe these are over hyped and not worth the time and effort, much less $$$?

[DCS36]

No, do not waste your hard earned money or time on the Arlo system. Buy a wired system instead. Their outdoor camera’s only last a few months at best. The motion sensors constantly stop working and you spend entirely too much time removing batteries, the camera from the system and rebooting everything. For example today one of my main camera’s only recorded 4 motion alarms out of the 40 it should have recorded. I know this because I have 2 camera’s on the same location. One recorded the 40 motion alarms, yet the other Arlo Pro 2 camera on the outside only record 4. Oh, and yes, you will need to place 2 camera’s at any important locations that you wish to monitor with the Arlo system. So you spend twice the money with less reliability.

You will spend more time fixing the Arlo system, it is an absolute waste of your time and money! I have owned this system for two years and am completely dissatisfied! This will be the last year that I use Arlo! I will be installing a wired system in the next few months.  Hope this helps you find a more reliable system than Arlo.........

[mikej04]

Currently Alro is experiencing a widespread service interruption. My cameras have been down for 48 hours.

Spend your money on a more reliable product.

[kevin_in_az]

no they aren't.  I have 5 originals and I am constantly replacing bateries and about once a month I get a message:  

This Arlo device is offline Please make sure it is connected to the Internet. Visit   support.arlo.com  for help.   When it finally gets working, I have to resync ALL of my cameras (which I have to lug a ladder around the permieter of my house to access them, which takes about 2 hours), then it forces an update and the batteries die.  Then I get the message the next month and have to repeat.  

[Edinburgh_lad]

I agree. The Arlo app on Android didn't work properly for months. Netgear started to cut corners, thinking that none of us would notice. As the competition is getting better, so is the choice of other cameras out there. My message is clear: stay away from Arlo and invest in some other system.

[HiveIntellect]

So far my experience has been total garbage. One of the 2 cameras I purchased is dead on arrival out of the box and their tech support team refuses to offer any help even after calling 4 times.

I am perfectly glad to persuade as many people as possible to not buy into this Arlo system. I had high hopes before trying to install it due to problems I have with the Ring Doorbell system.

However, the problems with this Arlo system are FAR WORSE than anything I've experienced with the Ring products.

[kevin_in_az]

..follow-up from my message from yesterday...

I had no problems for 2 years then they started this awful firmware updating on the base station.  Not to mention the whole interface is **bleep**.  In order to sync a camera, it "looks for firmware updates" for the base station every time you try to add a camera.  What should be a 10-minute task turns into a 2 hour CHORE every time I have to "resync" my cameras in order to link the base station after an update.

The cameras work fine, then an update is forced on us.  The base station goes offline and the cameras try to find the base station for 48 hours and the new batteries that I just installed at the end of March are now all dead....so I cycle power on and off on the base station, remove it from the app, "re-find" the base station, grab a ladder and set it up to access a camera, replace its batteries, start to resync the camera, wait for the f-ing software to "find new firmware" for several minutes, then go through the syncing process (blinking blue light, etc), wait for the camera to sync, point it in the right direction....then  get down from the ladder and access the next camera.  I have to go through the exact same process again with the f-ing "try to find new firmware for the base station" process because it took too long to "add the next camera" since I had to climb down the ladder, set up the ladder, etc....and repeat for all 5 of my cameras.   These things are a pain in the butt.

What kind of idiot designed that?  I swear to god.....my blood pressure just boils when I see the "cameras are offline".  Arlo support?  please, they are useless.

[Roxianna]

I, too, am advising people to look elsewhere for security cameras.  Sync problems, viewing video hassles ... waste of money and customer service is a joke.  I'm stuck with four of them - spent over $500 all up.  What a waste. 

[dsealer]

Arlo is NOT worth the money.  Constantly offline, no manufacturing support either.  Someone from the forum may reply when you have questions but you can't talk to someone from mfg support when you need it.  A total waste of money!

[ensanguined]

No, no, and no.

[Minburn57]

No.

Will you get some degree of benefit from them: yes.

Are they worth the cost and headaches: no.

In several years of ownership, I'd wager that I haven't had 2 months of problem free operation from them.  I purchased 5 cams and station up front.  Good wifi at my property and really no other net issues wiht such chronic issues as this security cam system.  That said, it has served my purpose to a degree and took care of security concerns I have, but I'll 'never' consider any of these systems again if in the future I am in need of a system such as this again.   As they die, they won't be replaced . . . .

[731787]

No. These are the worst piece of garbage I've ever seen or used. We bought six cameras from Costco. First off they have this crappy recharge system that only lets you use the ONE charger you receive with THREE cameras. Don't think that like with every other mini-charge plug device you have you can use those cords. Nope....you have to use their one cord and charger making charging a long task. But that's peanuts compared to the tech problems these poorly designed beasts bring to the table. Add another user?  Good luck! I added my wife and two of our cameras went down (they were in our condo three hours away) so we couldn't restart them for two weeks. Then all of a sudden I lose all access to the cameras. Troubleshoot? Good luck. The Arlo/Netgear customer service consists of message boards with genuises giving you their best guess on how to fix things. NO JOY or HELP from the friggin maufacturer. If you're thinking of buying these pieces of garbage beware. You're in for hours of headaches and heartache and out of a signifigant amount of cash for something that dowsn't work properly.

[GarryLee77]

Arlo Cameras are they worth it?    Well, that depends...

They will do things other systems won't do because you can put the anywhere within range without running wires and cutting into walls.

That said, be ready to constantly fiddle with them to keep them working. They will drop off the system and that means you have to go get them and re sync them with the base station. This is especially disconcerting when you are out of town and have no way to do it. Cameras seem to have a propensity to simply die completely which means you need to buy a new one if out of warranty. Battery expense is also an issue because they are a re-occurring cost. I have a total of 7 Arlo wire free, one Arlo Q and two base stations. Presently, after 3 years I only have 4 of the wire free cameras and one base station that still work. Tech service is only free for a short time, and then it becomes a pay service. So, if you have to have a wire free system they are worth it but be prepared for lots of aggravation.

[AsoloHeart1955]

No because since the last update my videos are terrible. I should have went with another brand. All that money and I can't get a decent recording. All pixcelated. I hate my cameras now and have brought out phones for my security cameras. I have exhausted myself reinstalling from scratch and resetting constantly. Ever watch the grass move? Nauseating. How can I get back decent videos. I have sepnt hours each days since the last update and no one has answers.

[Aeternus]

No, these things are garbage. Arlo's constant need of doing "updates" that crash the cameras is ridiculous.  I wasted over $500 buying all Netgear modem, router, ameras, and extenders to have this crap constantly crash.  I will be leaving them bad reviews and convincing anyone I can they are not worth any money if they actually want the cameras to work.  

[Aeternus]

Yes, their products are complete trash.  Not worth all the agrevation  Need a class action done

[irishsancho]

No, they’re not reliable enough - not fit for purpose.

[DCS36]

And here we are going into a Holiday weekend and dealing with outages once again! When you need the system to work the most, it DOES NOT! 

That alone is a reason NOT to purchase any Arlo product!

[parsrgood]

The product itself is not great but has some good features. With that said, customer support is garbage and whoever is responsible for developing and releasing their app and firmware updates should be fired. If your looking for security cameras look elsewhere. If you like spending lots of money for a product that gives you 50% security and 50% vulnerability then go for it. Just prepare yourself for long useless calls to customer service. They will insult your intelligence and have you jump through hoops while they give you their generic answer to every possible problem. “ Boot Reboot, Uninstall, Reinstall, Check internet speeds Blah Blah Blah! . They will then tell you It has to be something on your end because they have no other reports of anyone having problems. Personally all I really want to hear from customer support is that they are aware of a problem and they are working on it. One of their moderators advised me on another forum that my iPad was no longer supported by netgear/Arlo. So I bought a new IPad only to find out that Arlo released a faulty firmware update that has made their cameras useless once again. I wasted $500 on a new iPad I didn’t need, and as I’m writing this mine and many others cameras are nothing more than decoys. 

[Ogene]

These things are terrible. Constantly loosing cameras saying is no camera etc. won’t detect motion even when the camera is active and sensitivity set to Max. Bad thing too is you never know when they will stop working. So if you are monitoring anything important DO NOT USE THIS JUNK!!!

[Ogene]

Mine does the same thing only every other day. Take out the batteries, resync maybe it works maybe not these things are garbage. Had em for years. Going to replace them all

[shaneparsons]

I created an account for the sole purpose of giving more visibility to this post, to prevent others from wasting their time / money like I did.

The Arlo system is the biggest piece of **bleep** I have ever seen in my life. All these responses are 100% accurate with the experience I've had with this piece of **bleep** system. Cameras constantly disconnecting, requiring a minimum of 1 hour's worth of bull**bleep** to get them up and running again... Only to have to repeat this **bleep** cycle again in a couple of weeks. Not to mention their support is absolute garbage.

DO NOT BUY ARLO ANYTHING. You have been warned.

[Minburn57]

I maintain my earlier response to this i.e. there 'are' benefits but they aren't something I'd recommend purchasing because of how inconsistent performance is.  And that dismal battery life is ridiculous. . . .

That said, I see before the most recent post the last post was mid-July.  Since about end of July my battery life issue has apparently been resolved (?) through no doing of my own so I'm thinking a firmware update or network repair at server end sometime mid summer??

Again, I still maintain my initial response because quite simply it seems to be hit or miss over time.  And for secuirty cams that simply is a no-deal.

Now, if my good performance of late continues for a year, I might change that opinion . . . .

[Gbright]

No. As someone else has said, these are security cameras. They only work sometimes. That’s unacceptable. Connecting to them is sluggish at best even from your own network. So connecting from elsewhere is super slow. Try something else these aren't worth it.

[BobDempsey]

not worth the money. wasted hour trying to get them working. tryed to take them back to where they were purchased no luck. had them for 60 days when i went to the new format cameras quit working. thinking about going public with this