Arlo (VMC4030P-100NAS) Pro 2 - Add-on Camera, Rechargeable, Night Vision, Indoor/Outdoor, HD Video 1080p, Two-Way Talk, Wall Mount, Cloud Storage Included, Works with Arlo Pro Base Station, Kit Only

UPDATED 2020-08-28 - Its been a couple years now and I have to change my rating from 2 stars to 5 stars. While still frustrated about the "pixel detection" (see full details in original review below), I have to admit, Arlo has done a great job with their firmware and software quality. All of the gripes I had are ALL resolved (except physical limitations of PIR through window and flash claims of pixel detection).I have Arlo pros, pro 2s, and more recently Pro 3's with the Smart detection. I am impressed with the improvements and have become a bit of an Arlo fanboy.... total 180 degree change from where I first got them and kept hitting issue after issue. KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK TEAM ARLO!Since owning these for >2 years, as well as the smart lights and more recently Pro 3s, they've served me well! They've prevented 2 burglaries, and gave me peace of mind this past week when I had to evacuate my home due to fires in the Santa Cruz mountains.____________[Original review from 2017 - left here to show that Arlo has listened and done a 180.... and I AM now a big fan!!!]You may have guessed by my headline that I am NOT an Arlo fan! I want to be, and I keep getting suckered into buying more Arlo products and services in hopes of overcoming their shortcomings, but it's pointless and one of the most frustrating things ever. I own an Arlo base station with 3 Arlo Pro cameras, 2 add-on Arlo Pro 2 cameras, and 2 Arlo Security lights, and the lightbridge (which I had to buy separately due to their increasingly deceptive marketing).Speaking of their marketing... kudos to that team! They are AWESOME! They've created a nice looking brand and slick site... if only the product could live up to their false claims (which I'll cover in detail in this review).HARDWARE:OK, I'll give the hardware team credit where credit is due. I think they hardware is great! The image quality is great, the sound quality & mic sensitivity is decent. Battery life is quite awesome too although it is a non-issue as I now have all of my 5 arlos plugged in. I eventually plugged them all in in part to prevent having to rotate batteries, and also to support the CVR - continuous video recording - service that is available at a cost for the Arlo Pro 2. A service that I'll slam later in my review.So you've got great hardware (and I am making the stretched assumption that they actually have a decent firmware version, which they tend to re-release and break working features constantly!).... but hardware alone isn't a full solution. This is where software comes in, and it's the software that drives me absolutely crazy! There seems to be absolutely NO decent QA done on releases, and things are constantly breaking or not working correctly. I had hoped that as time goes on they'd achieve some kind of stability, and given that their sales seem to be good and there are enough owners out there that it's worth investing in getting it right, they constantly miss the mark.OK - Why the Arlo Pro 2 instead of the Arlo Pro? I had 3 Arlo Pros, but there were some features I wanted in the Arlo Pro 2 that pushed me to add one to my set to overcome the limitations of the Arlo Pro.***ARLO PRO AND ARLO PRO 2 DO NOT WORK THROUGH WINDOWS!!!! ***I read about this in the forums, and being a techie, I somehow thought I could be clever enough to make it work. Surely the other members weren't as persistent & determined as me. NOPE! I was just plain stupid to march on and buy into the system knowing this *could* be a limitation.Arlo Pro - It won't work through glass because in order to detect (ie. trigger), it uses PIR (passive IR). This does NOT work through a window: period. I initially read this in reviews and Arlo official statements said that it wasn't "reliable" through a window, and you may get too many false positives or glare. I came up with clever ways to get rid of the glare (cam has to be squarely pressed on the glass, night vision disabled, and LED charged full indicator disabled). Following these steps, both Arlo Pro and Arlo Pro 2 visually work awesome through the glass of my windows. I can view "live" through the cameras (accepting the fact that the lag is about 5 seconds, which makes 2-way comms through a camera extremely frustrating and more or less useless), but I can't trigger to record!Enter "Arlo Pro 2", and it's "pixel detection".***WARNING: PIXEL DETECTION IS FALSE ADVERTISING!!!! THIS CAMERA (Arlo Pro 2) DOES NOT DO PIXEL DETECTION***After several extremely frustrating support engagements (I'll comment on support later), I finally got confirmation that pixel detection (ie. activity zones) rely on PIR. That's right... PIR is the ONLY detection means.... and with pixel "detection", it filters out whether the activity was within the range of pixels that it is supposed to trigger on, then triggers if any pixels in the zone change. But none of the pixel detection software is used until a detection is triggered, which as I mentioned is via PIR only.... which DOES NOT WORK THROUGH A WINDOW!This is why I got the Pro 2... I would be able to use it through a window! WRONG! But it's OK... I had a Plan C... the Arlo Pro 2 supports CVR - continuous Video recording. Sure, you have to pay extra for this feature ($9.99/mo for one cam, $14.99/mo for 2 cams, and you can get a 17% discount if you purchase a year upfront... about $150/yr for 2 cams). I was going to go forward this plan, but those clever marking folks got me yet again! PRE-ORDER the Arlo Security Light!I went this route (Arlo Light) instead of going the CVR route... initially. Why? Because detection wouldn't work through the glass, even if I recorded the action with CVR, I'd have no activity markers to use to find interesting activity. And most importantly, I wouldn't be able to get any actions to trigger, such as sounding the siren, or recording on other devices, or notifying me. Boo :(I was pleased to see the intro of the Arlo Security light, so I pre-ordered it. CAREFUL, the Lightbridge is MANDATORY, even if you have an Arlo base station. The setup was dead simple... or at least it was intended to be, unless you ran into issues, as I was lucky enough to with one of my cameras. In the app, the lightbridge is managed separately from the Arlo base. When you make rules, you have to make 2 sets... one under arlo base, the other under light bridge. Interestingly, when you create the rules, you can only choose triggering devices from the rule base you start under, but for the actions, you can use devices from either lights or arlo base. Why they haven't merged this in the UI is beyond me... that would make my life easier. But if they did it, that would be yet another software update that would take too many iterations to get right, and in the meantime would leave customers stranded with a partially dysfunctional system... but hey, that's par for the Arlo course...OK, so I got some Lights and lightbridge. Mounted my lights OUTSIDE, and had my cameras inside. FINALLY! I had a pretty awesome system that did what I wanted. And then... my condo HOA buggered it all up and made me take down my light :( I found a workaround for one, light to keep it outside, but the other had to come down. Not Arlo's fault (for a change), but really annoying! And while I had them up, I wasn't able to plug them in. After tweaking how long to keep the light on for (10s), I found that the battery would last a couple months between changing. Nice! Again... Arlo makes great hardware in my opinion, and the light is no exception.I had 2 window cameras... one I could leave the light up, and the other I had to find an alternative. My Plan B (C or D?) all along, and why I went Arlo Pro 2 (instead of just the original pro) is for the CVR feature. Without a way to trigger (ie. my light), what a disappointment! But at least I could get constant coverage... or could I? Maybe... the jury is still out on this one!With CVR (and yes, my Internet connection is fast, and my signal from bridge to camera is strong.. should be since they are only 10' apart), I am still trying to figure out just how far the video lags. In the UI, it has a real slick timeline. Navigating is a decent experience on both mobile laptop browser. I like how easy it is to zoom in and out on the range, and get down to a specific time. The markers of events are clear for video movement and audio... but they aren't accurate. OK, maybe they ARE accurate, but unfortunately, on the timeline where the events show, there's no movement in the video. After a few basic tests, I was HORRIFIED at my findings!Again, seems like even the simplest QA tests weren't performed before shipping the software, and charging customers. Here's a test: walk in front of the camera (behind a window... remember, there's no detection), and then stand there or move around. Then, open the timeline and see yourself at the time of the test. Can't see yourself? What?!?!? I couldn't!I tested initially, and it seemed fine. Not even 24 hours later, with the camera still rolling, I thought I'd check again. Using a time event from one of my balcony cameras that is outdoors and does detect, I saw a person walk through my condo complex in the direction where the CVR of the window cam would pick them up. There was no way they couldn't show up on camera... yet I couldn't find them! There was video at that time... never missed a beat (as some reported where they had huge gaps in their video), but the person just never showed up! I checked a full 10 minutes before AND after (20 min total), and the person never showed. They I was really concerned that I was just looking at a static picture with a false-sense that it was a video feed. Like a feed-loop you see in any heist movies. What was going on?!?!?So I walked outside and stood in front of my camera for 10 minutes. I had my phone in hand and in the timeline view, I bumped the timeline to "Live". I did not show up!!! I was horrified! So I thought it was behind... and I kept waiting and minutes crept by. So then I went into devices, and clicked the play icon to see LIVE view... and there I was! I was lagged by about 5 seconds, which is normal for these, but still... I was there! I even snagged a couple still images to put them in my library (useful to create a timeline for the support call I am dreading to make with these clowns).So I went back to timeline, and sure enough, I could see myself under "live". And then poof! I disappeared! I saw the trees and building that are in view from the window, but not myself, even though I was 2 feet in front of the camera monopolizing most of the view. I rewinded a few seconds... I was no where to be seen! I was convinced I was looking at a static image anytime I looked at the timeline because there was no movement... but that was also what you'd see when there's no wind to move tree leaves. And then I saw a squirrel! It was a glorious little squirrel that proved my image wasn't static. But where was I?!??!Frustrated, I returned to head back inside, hell-bent on writing a review since the last straw had finally snapped after a year of dicking around with these amateur products. And then something unbelievable showed in my timeline... it was ME!!! There I was... I could rewind and fast forward on the timeline. There was no jerkiness... the arlo didn't miss a single frame! I thought maybe I'd see a jump to where the window was emtpy and then I'd magically appear (if it had to throw out a buffer), but nope... I saw me walk up, stand there looking at my phone, occasionally give the camera the finger (for the live snapshot of course!), and then go back to my phone. Man, do I ever look funny when I am puzzled and frustrated and staring into my phone like a zombie for over 10 minutes!So what happened? I was 45 MINUTES LATE ON THE TIME LINE!!!! WHAT??! I appears that all my footage queued up in a buffer somewhere then wrote into some incredibly slow storage in arlo's own or some cloud provider's datacenter.So the timeline, with it's motion (green) and audio (blue) event indicators on it seems to be accurate. The time of those activities seems correct (assuming you can trigger), but the audio and video is timeshifted... but a LOT. I somehow fell behind 45 minutes over the course of 15 hours of recording. Totally unacceptable! But how can if ever catch up without sacrificing some frames? I think some discards are necessary now... just to get me caught up.NOTE: My video setting is set to "Best Quality", which may be lossless, and may be what contributed to the buffer getting so far lagged behind.So that's my experience with CVR so far. I had hoped it could overcome the limitations, but seems just as dumb and dysfunctional as the other falsely marketing features that don't do what they say.And then I found their latest ploy "Arlo Smart Plans". Apparently using AI, they'll magically detect faces, pets, activity, etc and do customized alerts. Wishful thinking, and some great marketing... but seriously, they aren't capable of basic activity zone detection or normal recording, so how will they pull off this miracle? Oh ya... AI! Now if they leverage a reputable tech giant's machine learning APIs (such as google's or amazon's), then maybe they could pull it off. But if it's the same dev team that have been mangling their existing software stack, I wouldn't hold my breath.So... that's my next course of action... I'm in this far, and sunk in a lot of $$ already, let's throw another $3/mo/cam on TOP of CVR subscription and capital outlay at the problem and see if that works. If I were smart, I'd cut my losses. There HAS to be decent cloud-based solutions out there. How's Nest? Google tends to good job...SUPPORT:OMG! Very quick responses! You'd think that would be a good thing... but you're assuming the responses are even remotely helpful. They are NOT. They don't even read my issues before hitting me with auto-responses, which I reply to , and they give me even more autoresponses. This team is outsourced, and the caliber is the lowest I've ever worked with in the industry. After spoon feeding them all my detailed QA work I'd done troubleshooting problems for them, and finally made it to engineering, best I would get is a response to confirm "you're correct", such as with the pixel detection debacle.How about warranty? I had a camera that had a bad USB port. Eventually, they swapped my camera for another.... it took 10 weeks of back and forth! I'd update my case, hear nothing, create new cases referencing the others... this would go on for weeks, with me updating my tickets DAILY with "hello?!?! Is anybody there?!?! " Finally, it was going through twitter that I got my cases escalated so that someone would look up my case IDs. I thought i was in the clear and it still took months of back and forth to get a replacement camera. UGH!!!! Eventually they did. And I promptly sent back my defective camera. If I didn't send it within 14 days with their postage-paid, pre-addressed return express shipping envelope, they'd charge my credit card. I had to give them a card number as collateral before they'd send a replacement. Sure enough, they charged my card and that took a few more weeks of back and forth to sort out. They number they told me to call wouldn't pick up on the other line. And when I talked to support and gave them the phone number THEY gave me with the replacement camera, they said they'd never heard of that number or the location I shipped back to. I then found it written on their site to show it was legit, and the support person was surprised. They are completely and utterly disorganized internally! (Except marketing & biz dev groups... they clearly have their sh!t together and they've done an awesome job sneaking such a shoddy product into Costco, which usually has high product standards).-----------------Thanks for reading up to hear... as you can see, it's been a serious love-hate relationship with Arlo. The hardware is great, the marketing is SO slick, and the app UI is quite slick too. I figured out geo-fencing, which took 4 sets of rules (lightbridge: home & away + arlo bridge: home & away), but I am quite happy with my monitoring on the key cameras and ones that can leverage light bridge. If you have to record through glass because you have an HOA with strict rules, then save yourself the frustration.I am giving the whole system 2 stars. If support were better, even with all the software issues, I'd bump my rating up to a 3 or 4. Remember, this is your SECURITY you are relying on... and while 99% of the events don't matter if they aren't recorded for any of a number of reasons, the only events that matter are the ones you NEED, such as a break-in, or other incident. I still don't have confidence I'll capture what I need to when it counts.BUYER BEWARE! DON'T BE A FOOL LIKE I'VE BEEN! (or please do, because if sales are even better and Arlo has more resources to hire better QA and support, then myself and every other arlo owner will benefit - I am still holding onto hope they can get their act together, but only because I'm in it this far). SAVE YOURSELF THE FRUSTRATION!

-=First Impressions=-Nice and secure packaging to protect hardware from damage. It white… very white! Not liking that since cameras are NOT supposed to be seen or attention drawn to them. I am sure this can be fixed with some sort of skin… yep, already ordered some. Looking through the box you get two magnetic mounts and NO OUTDOOR MOUNTS. Disappointing… have to shell out more cash.-=Build=- (7/10)Everything is made of plastic. Bright white plastic. This is how these can be made affordably.The cameras have a high gloss finish so they stand out anywhere you put them. The cameras feel light and cheap until you actually put the batteries in them… then they feel like solid cameras. The battery is built extremely well. There isn't any flex in the casing like you find in other cheap rechargeable battery packs. The mounts are plastic with a metal half sphere. I like these mounts for indoor use as they offer multiple angles and flexibility for aiming your cameras. However, these are NOT good for outdoor use since someone can just walk up and snatch your camera. To rectify this, Arlo has included a threaded mounting option for which they do NOT provide. You will need to shell out more money if you want to use these outdoors. Overall, I do not question if these will last. Above average build quality.-=Setup=- (9/10)These cameras were up and running in 10 minutes. If you can install an app on your phone or press a button you have all skills needed to make this work. Mounting where you want them takes the skill of creativity and planning to make sure you are getting the area you want most. All you do is give power to the base, plug the base into your router, and sync the cameras… that easy. The longest part was creating a login for Arlo which took all of 3 minutes. Out of the 10 minutes to get the cameras online, 3 of them you will be making an account unless you already have a Netgear account. If you want to use the Alexa skill, add another minute to setup because you have to link the skill to your Netgear account.-=Things I Love=-+Ease of Use/Setup - this is the fastest camera system I have ever setup. I have use ALL of the other competitors out there.+Arlo App - this app is the best! I can monitor ALL my cameras live if I want to as if I am in front of a security room with screens for each camera. You can have 2way conversations through the app, make camera adjustments, and zoom all in app.+Third Party Integration - the camera seamlessly integrates with Alexa. I love the ability to say Alexa, show me the backyard and I get a full screen (ON TV!) through my FireTV. It works with the Echo Show and Echo Spot well also. It also supports SmartThings, IFTTT, and Strinfigy too.+Free 7 Day Cloud Storage - I don't know of any other company offering a free option for cloud recording. All the others I've tried you have to play at least $3/device. Arlo gives you up to 5 devices on a 7 day plan for free. WINNER!+Battery Life - this battery is rated up to six months. This will all be contingent upon how much recording it does. I like the wired option for high traffic areas+Zones - this allows you to only turn on motion for a certain part of the video feed. If you have a pesky tree near it this will trigger lots of motion+Audio/Motion Triggers - this camera will turn on for sound or motion. Most cameras only will record if you have motion trigger them.+Doubles as Unmonitored Security System - the Arlo system includes a siren that can be triggered automatically if you set the rules to do so. It offers geofencing so if you are away and it detects you are not in your home, you can set rules to sound a siren much like ADT systems with ear piercing decibels. This could make an intruder think you have an alarm and force them to leave.+Secure Offsite Storage and Easy Downloads of Videos - if someone steals or disables your cameras, the recordings don't go with them. You have them stored online and easily accessible to upload or email to someone in the cloud.+Ability to record to USB - you can have a thumb drive plugged into the hub and it can record there for you also. Options if you don't like the cloud for your privacy.-=Things to be Improved=--Lack of Outdoor Mount - for the price of this system, you should include at least one outdoor mount instead of charging over $20 for one.-Video Quality - you get 1080p but it is still very graining in low light situations. I don't get clear pictures at night but it isn't a wired system so I guess that is to be expected.-Alexa Skill - it would be nice to be able to do other functions besides just showing the feed. Features like 2-way communication and maybe zooming in from the remote or voice commands would be great. Maybe asking battery levels/connection strength of the cameras as well would be useful too.-High Gloss White Exterior - I would like to see other options rather than having a bright white camera as the only one. White is not a great color to conceal a camera and will attract attention of someone who wanted to steal the camera.-=The Verdict=-If you are looking at this, you probably are or have already researched the other names in the game. In my opinion, this is THE BEST system out there. If provides the most options and you can scale it to grow with you. I can foresee this becoming a security system much like Nest is trying to do. I like where this is going, and Netgear is definitely on the right track with providing value not found with its competitors. MUST BUY if you are in the market for wireless cloud recording security systems.

Added this to my security system works good

Have had Arlo cams for a while, good pictures, good battery life, picked up this xtra one, connected with no issues, sold as refurbished but looks and works fine

So happy this model is still available! It’s hands down the best Arlo camera, especially since it’s one of the few that doesn’t require a subscription to access key features. Easy to use, reliable, and still going strong. Love it and highly recommend!