Arlo Pro 4 Spotlight Wireless Security Camera review – protect your home from anywhere

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• VERDICT

The Arlo Pro 4 Spotlight Wireless Security Camera is one of the best products of its kind you can buy that’s easy to set up and manage. It offers high quality monitoring and notifications so you can have complete peace of mind.

The Arlo Pro 4 Spotlight Wireless Security camera combines excellent video quality and ease of installation to offer customers a great way to keep an eye on their home or business.

Arlo has a range of security cameras with varying video qualities – Full HD, 2K and 4K.

The Arlo Pro 4 sits right in the middle with 2K video resolution.

Choosing a camera resolution depends on the area you want to cover and how much detail you’d like to see.

With the 2K Arlo Pro 4, it is ideal for monitoring medium to larger spaces and includes HDR (high dynamic range) so you can zoom in and make out more detail in the brighter and darker areas of the video.

The camera offers up to 160-degree field of view so you can cover a large area.

But it is possible to narrow that field of view down to 110-degrees if you don’t need that much of a wider view.

And even at 160-degrees, the video is still clear and flat and doesn’t end up looking like a highly distorted fisheye view.

The camera is also completely weatherproof so you can place it outside in the rain, the cold and the heat and enjoy year-round security.

And it’s not just all about video, the Arlo Pro 4 also has two-way audio that’s as responsive as talking on the phone.

When motion is detected, a notification is instantly sent to your smartphone via the Arlo app showing video of the incident.

Also onboard is a spotlight to illuminate the area in front of the camera.

There’s also a built-in siren which you can activate manually out set to trigger automatically to deter unwanted visitors.

And when the sun goes down, you can still keep an accurate eye on things thanks to the colour night vision so you can clearly make out colours and more easily identify people rather than the typical black and white night vision which offers hardly any detail.

We set up our Arlo Pro 4 for this review to look into our backyard and to also keep an eye on our telescope from inside while we’re capturing multiple long exposures for hours at a time.

From this vantage point we can also see our backyard fences and can also see our two dalmatians when we’re not home – and even talk to them through the camera.

That’s a lot of use from just one camera.

Of course, you can set up multiple cameras at your place – like we have. We have a camera at the front door, an Arlo Video doorbell, a camera near our backdoor and this new camera in the backyard.

We already have a base station so the camera connected in minutes but it’s also possible to connect multiple Arlo cameras by connecting directly to your wi-fi.

The Arlo app offers a step-by-step guide to get you connected and can detect the camera, give it a name so it can be easily identified and monitored through the app.

Once connected, the camera can also be customised with the field of view that suits your coverage area and you can also activate Auto Zoom and Tracking so if there is movement it can zoom in and follow any movement.

It’s also possible to set up activity zones so you can highlight the areas in the video the areas where you would like to receive motion alerts.

This can help customers avoid excessive notifications if you know there is an area that is being monitored that will have a lot of movement like the road or footpath outside your property, for example.

This way you would only receive alerts only when someone comes on to your property.

The Arlo Pro 4 comes with three-month free subscription to Arlo Secure which can store video for up to 30 days and differentiate between people, vehicles, animals and parcel when detecting an object and sending notifications.

Once the three-month trial is up, users have the option on continuing for $4.49 a month for a single camera or $14.99 a month for unlimited Arlo cameras.

The battery on the Arlo Pro 4 can run for up to 6-months and can be charged via a cable while the camera is still in place or charged with a cable when it’s removed from the magnetic base which can be positioned on your wall with a single screw.

The Arlo Pro 4 camera can also be linked to Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Samsung’s Smart Things and IFTTT so it can be monitored and controlled within those ecosystems.

If you are already using one of those systems, the Arlo Pro 4 can be easily added.

The Arlo Pro 4 is available now and is priced at $369. A two-camera kit is $699 and a four-camera kit $1,299.

VERDICT

The Arlo Pro 4 Spotlight Wireless Security Camera is one of the best products of its kind you can buy that’s easy to set up and manage. It offers high quality monitoring and notifications so you can have complete peace of mind.