Arlo VMC5040-200AUS Ultra 2 Spotlight 4K Add-On Camera

The camera was easy to activate and pair with a hub which also had to be purchased. The rechargeable battery (supplied) takes only a few hours to reach full charge but has to be mounted in the camera house ro charge with the magnetic charging attachment cable. Detection is excellent, the camera can use geofencing to limit the area surveilled it can follow people (even animals) around and the phone app allows customisation of detection through levels of sensitivity and you can filter out pets, straying animals. It even has a parcel recognition! Storage it either in the cloud through a subscription or on the hub which I bought using a USB thumb drive You cannot attach an external HDD the system doesn't seem to be able to format it for its purpose. Alerts are sent to ... MoreThe camera was easy to activate and pair with a hub which also had to be purchased. The rechargeable battery (supplied) takes only a few hours to reach full charge but has to be mounted in the camera house ro charge with the magnetic charging attachment cable. Detection is excellent, the camera can use geofencing to limit the area surveilled it can follow people (even animals) around and the phone app allows customisation of detection through levels of sensitivity and you can filter out pets, straying animals. It even has a parcel recognition! Storage it either in the cloud through a subscription or on the hub which I bought using a USB thumb drive You cannot attach an external HDD the system doesn't seem to be able to format it for its purpose. Alerts are sent to the phone app. There is also facility to use the onboard speaker to talk with say a delivery person or friend. Also an alarm cam be linked to the device if necessary. Works well with Apple HomeKit too. 4K resolution but normal operation can use lower res to conserve battery and storage. The battery should last 6 months with normal use on a full charge then needs to be recharged. Very happy with he purchase.

4K at a price

Beware that you will need to pay extra subscription charges to have these 4K premium priced cameras record at 4K to the cloud, the free one year premium service included is only at 1080p very poor from Arlo here, and penny pinching. Also there is no official outdoor power cable or official skins available yet in UK, and these were initially launched in UK in January so why at the middle of June are these still not available? Price is again alot higher in UK than across the pond, and they still wont give you native 4k cloud recording without further expense. You record locally in 4K but extra cost involved for a micro SDcard, I guess paying this sort of price isint enough to include one. At present the only way to view the recording is to remove card and stick in PC, ... MoreBeware that you will need to pay extra subscription charges to have these 4K premium priced cameras record at 4K to the cloud, the free one year premium service included is only at 1080p very poor from Arlo here, and penny pinching. Also there is no official outdoor power cable or official skins available yet in UK, and these were initially launched in UK in January so why at the middle of June are these still not available? Price is again alot higher in UK than across the pond, and they still wont give you native 4k cloud recording without further expense. You record locally in 4K but extra cost involved for a micro SDcard, I guess paying this sort of price isint enough to include one. At present the only way to view the recording is to remove card and stick in PC, although Arlo promise app view is coming 2nd half of the year. Built in siren is rubbish, only one small charge lead included. On a positive note, easy to set up, and light works well for colour night version.

Almost good

I purchased this product at Best Buy in Toronto. I read rely great reviews about it and decided to give it a try. The problems started immediately. At first, I couldn't detect the base station and had to power cycle and try a different phone before it detected the base station. Before I set it up I had charged both cameras for a day. When I checked the app, one battery was nearly dead and the other one was at half power. I assume the batteries were just duds. Nevertheless, I set up the cameras with the semi okay battery, which took some time to find despite standing right next to the base station. After setting it up, I found out that it didn't automatically give me the year of cloud based storage. After reading online I learned that this happens sometimes and that ... MoreI purchased this product at Best Buy in Toronto. I read rely great reviews about it and decided to give it a try. The problems started immediately. At first, I couldn't detect the base station and had to power cycle and try a different phone before it detected the base station. Before I set it up I had charged both cameras for a day. When I checked the app, one battery was nearly dead and the other one was at half power. I assume the batteries were just duds. Nevertheless, I set up the cameras with the semi okay battery, which took some time to find despite standing right next to the base station. After setting it up, I found out that it didn't automatically give me the year of cloud based storage. After reading online I learned that this happens sometimes and that you have to contact customer service to address it. That's garbage. For $1,000 with tax, this should work out of the box. To put salt in the wound, the 50% battery died after 36 hours. Granted, it snowed today, but still, I would expect a couple of weeks at least from this thing.Overall, this product feels like a beta version at best. I do like the color video at night, but the cons are too many to offset this one benefit. Oh yeah, I tried zooming in to read a license plate like they show in their ads, but at no more than 3 meters away, the letters were blurry. I'm annoyed that I have to do even more work to return it. Most likely I'll stick with my nest cameras, even though the viewing angle isn't great and there's no color at night because at least it works.

Good but....

I bought this camera for home security. Was on sale at a good price. Setup was a pain as the camera did not link to the base. Called customer service and they walked me through steps to manually setup.Picture quality is great! Sound is clear, there is a 3-5 second delay before you get live feed footage. The only thing wrong with this camera is the Battery life. It lasted ONE week on best performance. I dialed down the settings to maximze battery life but at the cost of video quality. Gonna hate charging this thing in the winter.Other than that, after 3 weeks I am still happy with the purchase. A big plus is the 1 yr free subscription to arlo cloud storage

Not a good security camera

There is too much of a delay when you are viewing live view. I had experienced a 5 to 15 second lag in live view. There is also a delay when notifying you that there is motion, it took about 10 to 30 seconds. Video quality is pretty good especially since there is a spot light. For what you are paying it's probably more reliable to get a nest cam because notifications are way better as well as live view delay. There might only be a 1 or 2 second delay in live view. You have to eventually pay a subscription fee anyways, because you won't be able to view your recorded footages to your microSD from your Arlo app once the subscription expires.

Numerous things could be much better!!!

Very poor instructions (in fact, none at all). I had to figure it out on my own or watch you-tube.For what I paid for these things, THAT'S RIDUCULOUS!!! I still can't get them working they way I think they should. Haven't had it long enough to judge it's quality. Give it some time; having a problem with the cameras being "over sensitive". No matter what, even turning the sensitivity down to "0" and shutting the notifications off, it still gets set off for no reason. I should have looked or tried other systems. Not what I thought they would be.

Review after 15 months

I had the Arlo pro 2 and it was working pretty well. I decided to purchase the Ultra and pass on the pro 2 to a family member. For almost a year they had to fix issues/firmware on these camera. And after dealing with all those restrictions, one of the cameras died after 14 months. Arlo does not repair cameras even if you want to pay. So that was $400 down the drain. Additionally videos take a while to load and view on the cell. Even showing live feed takes a while, by the time it loads whoever rings the bell is long gone. The quality of the video is very good when it works.This purchase was expensive and came with many headaches. I would not recommend it.

So So Product & Service

Bought this Arlo Ultra as a replacement of Arlo Pro 2 who’s base station failed after just 4 years. Although I was disappointed in the failure just after 4 years but had cameras that could only work on Arlo system so decided to cut my loses and give Arlo one more chance.The new package arrived without the magnetic mount (2 cameras but just one screw-in mount). Phoned Best Buy but was told to contact Arlo. Arlo said they would send a new magnetic mount but 3 weeks later still nothing from Arlo...When they work they are OK but low battery life and many of the features are only available if you buy other Arlo accessories and/or services that cost much more than the original sticker price.Best Buy in-store staff knew nothing about this product - no help ... MoreBought this Arlo Ultra as a replacement of Arlo Pro 2 who’s base station failed after just 4 years. Although I was disappointed in the failure just after 4 years but had cameras that could only work on Arlo system so decided to cut my loses and give Arlo one more chance.The new package arrived without the magnetic mount (2 cameras but just one screw-in mount). Phoned Best Buy but was told to contact Arlo. Arlo said they would send a new magnetic mount but 3 weeks later still nothing from Arlo...When they work they are OK but low battery life and many of the features are only available if you buy other Arlo accessories and/or services that cost much more than the original sticker price.Best Buy in-store staff knew nothing about this product - no help whatsoever!Bottom line = Expensive for mediocre product/service. BB needs better trained staff.

Some bad things, but mostly good. 3.75 Stars

The first system I purchased actually had a faulty camera that wouldn't connect to the Basestation, so that had to be returned which isn't a problem, so much as a minor inconvenience. The ad up above distinctively says there is USB plug on the back for adding usb storage (flash drive hard drive enclosed ETC) but that is NOT the case [BestBuy, please fix this. Your advertising is wrong]. The basestation does have a microSD slot for adding up to a 32Gb card (that's the maximum capacity supported). This isn't great as I was hoping to add a 500gig hard drive, however I suppose 32 Gig is still alright. I will say the user interface of the App is fairly good, things are fairly self explanatory and the notifications are quite accurate. I would still suggest this camera, as ... MoreThe first system I purchased actually had a faulty camera that wouldn't connect to the Basestation, so that had to be returned which isn't a problem, so much as a minor inconvenience. The ad up above distinctively says there is USB plug on the back for adding usb storage (flash drive hard drive enclosed ETC) but that is NOT the case [BestBuy, please fix this. Your advertising is wrong]. The basestation does have a microSD slot for adding up to a 32Gb card (that's the maximum capacity supported). This isn't great as I was hoping to add a 500gig hard drive, however I suppose 32 Gig is still alright. I will say the user interface of the App is fairly good, things are fairly self explanatory and the notifications are quite accurate. I would still suggest this camera, as it is definitely better than other systems however I think Arlo needs to implement more services to the consumer without their "premium subscription" since the camera system is so darn expensive.

Terrible product 1 year out

If you are not planning on paying for a monthly subscription the cameras are terrible. First off the alarm on them is useless very quiet and more of an annoying sound rather than an alarm. Lots of basic functionality stops if not paying for the monthly subscription, being able to record locally is slow and doesn’t offer thumbnails of the recordings making it difficult to find the recording you want to see, recordings often freeze after 10 seconds making the cameras pretty useless. Also had one of my 10 cameras stop working altogether luckily within the 1 year warranty time frame, but wouldn’t be surprised to see more go down. I’d avoid this product. Lots of confirmation on their own site’s Arlo community help blogs.