The Arlo Pro 3 home security camera system impresses with 2K video and smart features, but you'll pay dearly for them and the cloud storage subscription

• The Arlo Pro 3 wireless home security camera system is versatile and feature-packed with a thoughtful design.
• Camera footage quality is excellent, at 2K in full color, with a black and white night mode, or a spotlight option.
• Each Arlo Pro 3 camera also offers crystal clear two-way audio and up to six-month battery life.
• At $399.99 for the two-camera kit, and a monthly subscription required for cloud storage, the Arlo Pro 3 system is a sizeable investment.

Home security cameras have been improving rapidly, and growing ever more affordable, which makes them a tempting purchase for any homeowner with security concerns. The Arlo Pro 3 wireless security cameras are simple to use, suitable for indoors or outdoors, and packed with a good range of features.

These cameras produce some of the best quality footage we've seen at 2K resolution with support for HDR. There are lots of features on offer, from activity zones to smart detection to configurable modes. The mobile app is well-designed, and the cameras are easy to fit, reposition, and charge as required.

However, at $399.99 for the two-camera kit, which comes with a base unit that connects to your Wi-Fi router, this is not the cheapest system around. Especially when you consider that you'll need to add local storage via USB, or subscribe to a monthly cloud storage solution, starting from $2.99 per month, per camera.

I tested the two-camera system in my home to see how it measures up, and it mostly exceeded my expectations, but it wasn't all plain sailing. The Arlo Pro 3 wireless home security system is probably more than most people need, and with no free cloud storage option it can get expensive, especially if you require more than two cameras.

Specifications

• 2K resolution with HDR
• 160-degree field of view
• 3-6 months battery life from a single charge
• Night vision with infrared
• Built-in spotlight
• Two-way audio
• USB storage (not included)
• 30-day cloud storage $2.99 per month per camera
• AES-128 data encryption
• IP65 weatherproof
• Human detection
• Smart detection zones

Design

The Arlo Pro 3 comes in a two-camera kit for $499.99, or a three-camera kit at $649.99. You get a SmartHub with each one that connects wirelessly to your cameras and plugs directly into your router using the supplied Ethernet cable. There's also a power adapter, camera mounts with screws and fixings for each camera, and a magnetic charging cable. Additional cameras cost $199.99 each.

The cameras come in a solid white enclosure with a black face that houses the camera lens, spotlight, microphone, speaker, and sensors. They measure 3.5 x 2 x 3 inches and weigh 331 grams. Stick the removable battery inside and they slide securely closed with a satisfying click. You can recharge them by sticking the magnetic charger to the bottom.

Durability should not be an issue and the Arlo Pro 3 cameras feel well-made. They are described as UV and weather resistant and my review units have had no issues with sunshine or rain. The SmartHub, which must be connected to your Wi-Fi router with an Ethernet cable, is quite big at 6.9 x 5 x 2.3 inches.

Setup is straightforward

It's always pleasing when smart home products are easy to set up, and the Arlo Pro 3 cameras are among the easiest devices we've ever installed.

Start by charging up the cameras fully. They come partially charged, but when they do run down you can fully charge them again in less than three hours.

Plug the SmartHub into the wall, slot the Ethernet cable into your router, and then download and install the mobile app for Android or iOS on your phone. You'll need to create an Arlo account, but then you can simply tap "Add New Device" and choose your camera type. If your smartphone is connected to the same router, your Arlo Pro 3 cameras should appear in the list; ours popped up immediately.

Once connected, the app checks bandwidth and you can test out the spots where you want to place your cameras. The range seems very good, which is perhaps partly why the SmartHub is so big. I was able to place one out in the backyard and one at the front door, and both have had a consistently strong connection.

You get two kinds of mounts in the box with all the screws and fixings you need to fit them indoors or out. There's one standard mount with a screw in section on a ball socket, and a magnetic mount that allows for precise placement and feels very secure.

After fully charging them, it didn't take me more than a few minutes to fit the cameras.

The mobile app

At first glance, the mobile app seems simple. It opens to the Devices tab and you can see a still of the last captured event and tap on a camera to jump into the live feed. There are controls to mute, speak, record video, capture a snapshot, or turn on the spotlight.

There's also an alarm icon at the top right which enables you to activate the siren or call a friend, and you can set up three contacts in there. While you can go full screen on a single camera, we also appreciate the option to hit play on both cameras at once see the live feeds on screen together.

Back on the main screen, there's a Library tab at the bottom which takes you to a list of recorded videos organized by day. Tap the filter icon at the top and you can filter for videos from a specific camera, choose different smart notifications for videos with people, animals, package, or vehicles, and find favorited videos or videos recorded manually. There's a lot of flexibility in here.

The last tab is for mode and this is where things get more interesting. You can simply arm or disarm the system in here, but you can also set up a schedule or employ geofencing, so the cameras turn on when you leave home, or at least when your phone leaves home.

The final option is to create your own mode, where you can choose a name, select which camera it should apply to, choose from motion or audio triggers, set up the sensitivity level, and then decide what it should trigger. You can choose to record until the activity stops, or for a specific length of time, and have an event activate the siren or simply do nothing. To finish, you decide if it should trigger push notifications or email alerts.

You will also want to delve into the settings, which are accessed via the top right whatever tab you are on. This is where you can see more info on your devices, including battery level, video settings, activity zones, and motion detection testing. There's also the option to go with spotlight for night recording or night vision, and tweak brightness, HDR, power management, and the field of view you prefer, from 110 degrees up to 160 degrees.

To round things out, you can mute notifications for a while, check on your subscription status, and configure smart notifications. The smart notifications allow you to choose whether you want people, vehicles, animals, or all motion to trigger a video alert. There's also the option to have smoke or carbon monoxide alarms, or other audio trigger a smart alert. It's important to note that this only determines whether you are alerted to these things, the events for things you toggle off are still recorded.

There's no onboard storage with the SmartHub, but there is a USB 2.0 port that you can plug external storage into, from 16GB up to 2TB. The problem with this is that there's no way to view the recorded videos without removing the storage and plugging it in elsewhere. If you want any access to cloud storage, you must subscribe.

You do get a three-month trial of Arlo Smart with the Arlo Pro 3 cameras. This gives you access to 30 days of recordings, the smart detection alerts, the custom activity zones, package detection, and the option to trigger emergency 911 calls if you're in the U.S. After the trial ends, you're looking at $2.99 per month per camera or $9.99 per month for up to five cameras on the Premier Plan, which supports up to 2K video quality.

You should factor in the cost of the subscription if you're considering the Arlo Pro 3 cameras system. Without it, you have no cloud storage and you can't access recorded video on your USB storage through the app, so you'd only have the live feed.

The smart notifications are also useful and activity zones are vital to avoid false positives, especially if you have a camera that overlooks a road.

Performance

The 2560 x 1440-pixel resolution footage you get from the Arlo Pro 3 cameras is great quality and full color. The HDR really helps keep things clear, preventing overexposed areas when you have mixed lighting. Most of the home security cameras we've tested have maxed out at 1080p and you can see the difference, with significantly more detail captured at 2K by the Arlo Pro 3. I also like the fact you can double tap to zoom in 2x and pinch to zoom in all the way to 12x, though things are very blocky at that level.

You do still have the option to record at 1080p or 720p with these cameras, though it would make more sense to buy a cheaper system. It's worth considering that 2K video is going to eat up more bandwidth, more on that in a moment.

The smart notification system, which is capable of distinguishing between people, animals, vehicles, and other movement, works well. I found it rarely miscategorized these things. The alerts are also great. They pop up on your smartphone or smartwatch and highlight the person in the frame, which really helps you identify them. I was impressed that, even on a tiny smartwatch screen, I could clearly see which family member had triggered the camera.

Low light performance isn't as good. There's inevitably a bit of grain with the night vision mode that makes details harder to perceive. The spotlight works well if you have a confined area, like a porch, but isn't powerful enough to illuminate a backyard.

For the first couple of days, the Arlo Pro 3 cameras worked well, triggering video footage of my fluffy cat and kids running around, alongside the odd delivery to the front door. But then something weird happened. I first got a hint that things might have gone wrong when our internet slowed to a halt one Saturday afternoon, causing Netflix to pixelate our movie, but it took me a while to track down the cause.

Upon opening the Arlo app, I discovered with mild horror that there were 700 videos of our clothes on the washing line blowing in the wind in the backyard. I had assumed that turning off smart notifications for motion events, and just leaving animals and people, would prevent those videos being recorded, but it only turns off the alerts.

I've since turned down the sensitivity on motion for the backyard camera, and it hasn't been a recurring problem. This isn't an issue I've had with other security cameras, though, so I think the Arlo Pro 3 has high sensitivity by default. It also meant I had to recharge the camera, as the battery was almost dead, which leads me to believe that the battery life will be nearer the lower end of the three to six month estimate that Arlo suggests.

The two-way audio works just fine, and you can adjust the volume in the app if you need to, as well as mute the microphone or speaker. I found it was easy to carry on a conversation, although I placed the backyard camera in quite an exposed spot, so there's a distorted sound when it's windy out. The siren can hit 100 decibels and is guaranteed to scare away intruders.

Support for Google Assistant and Alexa means you can have them pull up footage on your TV via Chromecast or on an Echo Show screen with a simple voice command. This works well and is easy to set up.

Cons to consider

For the most part, I've found the Arlo app connects quite quickly, and I can pull up a live feed within five seconds, but there have been occasions when I've lost the connection altogether momentarily or it has taken a few seconds longer to connect. I suspect this is down to my Wi-Fi being overworked.

While the option to turn off some alerts is welcome, I would like the option to turn off certain recordings altogether. It would also be great if the Arlo system could go a step beyond recognizing people or animals and tag familiar faces. The package detection rarely seemed to work for me.

As with many security cameras, there's nothing preventing someone just unscrewing or grabbing the camera and walking off with it. There's no theft proofing and the built-in siren must be triggered manually through the app or automatically by motion detection. You would have a video of the thief, but you likely want to install the Arlo Pro 3 cameras out of reach if you can.

The complete lack of any cloud storage for videos without a subscription is another minus, especially when you consider that the Arlo Pro 2 came with seven days' worth for free.

The bottom line

The Arlo Pro 3 is a versatile home security camera system that captures great quality footage. The two-camera kit is likely enough to cover small homes, but you can add extra cameras as required.

With a lot of features in the mobile app, you can configure the Arlo Pro 3 system for different environments and it's flexible enough to satisfy most security needs, but you have to be willing to shell out for the monthly subscription to make it worthwhile.

Should you buy it?

Yes, if you want high quality footage, then the Arlo Pro 3 is one of the best systems around. The $499.99 price for a two-camera kit is reasonable for what you're getting here, just be aware that you'll have to pay another $2.99 per month per camera on top for the cloud storage.

Which model should you get?

The Arlo Pro 3 has plenty to recommend it, provided you don't mind subscribing for the cloud storage. If you want higher resolution video you might look at the Arlo Ultra 4K, which is around $600 for a two-camera kit. If you can make do with 1080p, then the Arlo Pro 2 is very similar and comes with free 7-day activity-based cloud storage.

What are your alternatives?

The Google Nest Cam IQ Outdoor is a popular alternative. It costs $399 per camera, and installation is a bit trickier. Video is 1080p, but it also boasts a 4K sensor for zooming in on faces and it can recognize familiar people. You may also consider the Ring Spotlight Cam at $199 per camera.

If this is more than you'd like to spend, then check out the EufyCam 2C, which costs just $219.99 for a two-camera system, has built-in storage, and doesn't require a monthly subscription.

Pros: Great quality 2K video, two-way audio, smart motion and sound detection, activity zones, easy to use, solid mobile app, Alexa and Google Assistant support

Cons: Expensive, some features require subscription, no free cloud storage, no theft protection, no face recognition