Arlo has continuously delivered most of the greatest home security cameras on the market since its inception in 2014, despite the fact that they are also some of the most costly versions available. Arlo’s Essentials line, which began with the Arlo Essential Spotlight camera in 2020, is intended to provide Arlo’s home security camera expertise to more inexpensive products.
The Arlo Essential Indoor Camera is indeed the newest addition to the Arlo lineup. It’s a small, connected security camera that sends an alert to your smartphone when it detects motion, allowing you to log in and see what’s going on in real-time. It can also preserve footage of an event for up to 30 days, letting you watch it at any time using the Arlo Smart plan. This cam includes a three-month trial version of the plan, but to keep using it, you’ll need to pay once it ends.
Price
The Arlo Essential Indoor Camera is available globally for $99.99 / £119.99 / AU$159.99 through Arlo’s website or online retailers such as Amazon.
This device includes a three-month free trial of Arlo Smart, which allows you to securely save footage taken by the camera online and use tools to decrease annoying alarms, as we’ve already noted. Arlo Smart costs $2.99 / £2.49 / AU$4.49 for each month once the trial period ends.
Design
- HD Video allows you to zoom in on objects and see clearer, full HD details.
- Watch live streams or recorded video from your smartphone or tablet with the Arlo app.
- Color night vision: integrated spotlight lets you see color night vision, listen and talk to visitors with 2-way audio.
The Essential Camera has the same look and feels as most other Arlo outdoor cameras and all Arlo Pro cameras. It can be obtained with white or black housing, it tolerates the outdoor environment (rain, weather changes, etc).
Measures 3.0 x 2.0 x 3.5 inches. Night vision works thanks to a spotlight that allows color vision (if the spotlight is not enabled, the night mode will be black and white). The camera range is 130° and the quality is 1080p.
The Essential camera is powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery with a battery life of up to six months between charges. The back of the camera has a threaded hole for mounting on the included swivel mount, and there is also the environmentally friendly alternative of being used with solar power panels.
The Arlo Essential Indoor Camera resembles Arlo’s rechargeable batteries home security cameras in appearance. Which has the same white modern plastic case and is rounded in design. The standalone device has a ball and socket connection and rests on a 1.8-inch/4.5-cm-high base with a round bottom plate, making it simple to install in your house at the ideal angle. If you want to place the security camera on a wall or ceiling, a mounting kit is also provided.
- Compact design
- HD Lenses
- Alexa and Google Assistant compatibility
- Expensive
- Accessories no include
Perfomance
After you’ve set up the Essential Indoor Camera, you may leave it to monitor your house; if movement is detected, an alarm will be sent out immediately. Throughout our testing, we discovered that the Full HD footage it shot throughout the day and night remained clear, with fine details easily discernible. However, because the camera employs infrared rather than a spotlight to highlight the film, any video was taken in the darkness is in black and white instead of color.
The Essential Indoor Camera’s peripheral vision is 130 degrees, far less than the Arlo Pro 3’s 160 degrees. Nonetheless, this should do in most instances; but, if you require a camera to cover a large area, that may not be appropriate.
To employ the privacy shield, go to the app’s Mode tab and pick Arm to open the privacy shield and begin camera surveillance, or Disarm to close the privacy shield. We found the shield to be really sensitive, and it would move up or down within seconds of selecting arm or disarm in the app. There’s also a geofence feature that automatically raises the privacy shutter and starts recording once you leave your home.
The camera uses the same Arlo mobile app for Android and iOS devices as any other Arlo camera. The app opens to a Devices screen with tabs for all installed Arlo cameras. Each tab displays the camera name and a still image of the last captured motion activity and has a playback arrow that opens a live stream. In the upper right corner of the live stream are two arrows that rotate the image horizontally for full-screen viewing, and at the bottom edge of the screen are buttons for the speaker mute, tap-to-talk, manual video recording, and image snapshots.
- Easy to install with step-by-step instructions in the Arlo app; use the built-in siren to deter unwanted guests.
- Easy to install with step-by-step instructions in the Arlo app; uses the built-in siren to deter unwanted guests; wire-free, weatherproof design that includes 3 months of Arlo Smart Service with 30 days of cloud recording.
