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    March 29, 2016
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Doug's Reviews
 
Safeguard your home or business with this 4-pack of motion-activated NETGEAR Arlo Smart Home VMS3430-100NAS security cameras, which enables you to capture 720p video footage both during the day and at night.
 
Customer Rating
1 out of 5
1
Nanny/Pet Cam at best, zero value as Security Cam
on March 29, 2016
Posted by: Doug
Initially this seems like a great product, none of my issues are with physical build quality of the product.
I purchased the 4 camera system and took it home and installed it that evening, setup is fairly simple and straightforward, the interface on the mobile app and web client are both good in my opinion. The issues began to present themselves when I started reviewing footage the next day to see how the system performs. I had 3 cameras mounted on the front of my house, 2 approximately 10-12 feet above the ground, mounted outside of a window, aimed at my driveway and the sidewalk in front of my townhouse, and one 8-10 feet, above the front door.
Problem #1-Motion detection is terrible, I made sure the cameras were aimed properly when setting them up, utilizing the mobile app to look at the camera view as i adjusted them, making sure I was covering the desired field of view, etc. When reviewing footage intermittently over the next day and a half, I found that the motion detection was rather spontaneous, sometimes the cameras would turn on for someone walking a certain path, other times a car could go by and they wouldn't turn on. I had an extra camera that I placed in my living room just out of curiosity and found the same thing, sometimes it would turn on when I walked in the front door and up the steps, sometimes it would not. Sometimes it would capture my dog walking around, other times, no. I ended up with an abundance of 10 second video clips of people or cars leaving the frame, which leads to problem #2...
Latency. When the motion detection does work, it seems that there is an excessive amount of time between the camera detecting the motion and starting recording, again, the majority of clips captured were things leaving the camera view, so you have 1-2 seconds of someone walking away and 8-9 seconds of nothing but empty frame.
Problem #3-Record Time/Battery life. So out of the box, the cameras are set up to record in 10 second intervals. Honestly with a security camera, if I'm going to rely on motion capture, I'd like to have at least a 30 second clip from when motion is detected. Now this is possible, at a price. You can set the record time up to 2 minutes. The factory 4-6 month stated battery life is a 4 minutes per day of those 10 second clips, 4 minutes=240 seconds/10= 24 events per day on average for 4-6 month battery life, or 4 minutes per day x 120-180 days= between 480-720 minutes of recording. So if we wanted 30 seconds and still averaged that 24 events per day we'd end up with 12 minutes per day which would translate to 40-60 days of battery life. These cameras take 4 CR123 batteries each. So $20-25 every 6 weeks for batteries is going to add up, call it $150 per year. So cost is going up...and here comes problem #4...
Cost- So in addition to the battery cost, the 4 camera system comes with 4 silly magnetic mounts, OK if you're using this indoors, maybe they'd be alright, they hold the camera sturdy and there's nothing wrong with them per se, they just don't make sense for outdoor use as someone could throw something at the camera and knock it off then steal your camera. The system does however come with one single adjustable outdoor mount, this one attaches to the camera via a screw post and is rather nice. So here's why this is included in the cost section, the nice mounts cost $20/each (maybe $15 online somewhere), seems to me that they include one in hopes that you'll prefer it to the magnetic half sphere mounts and go spend $60 more. Also included in cost is the subscription based web-DVR setup. 7 days worth of DVR/Archive is included but if you want more, it'll cost you. So lets look at the real cost of this system over 6 months, I paid $510.69 with tax for the 4 camera system, plus $75 ($150/year) for 60 day DVR, plus $60 for 3 more of the secure mounts, plus estimated $100 for batteries over that timeframe...$750 so far for 6 months. And after the initial investment, if you want more than the 7 day DVR, I'd estimate its going to cost most people at least $250 per year to have this system.
Final thoughts, for $599.99+ tax, I went out 2 days later and bought a 4 camera wireless (powered cameras, wireless signal to DVR) system with a 1TB hard drive and free web based viewing and reviewing. I really wanted to like the Arlo system, I think its built well and super easy to install and user friendly. It just doesn't work well or financially make sense for me.
My Best Buy number: 2794882190
No, I would not recommend this to a friend.
+395points
433of 471voted this as helpful.
 
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Doug's Answers
 
Safeguard your home or business with this 4-pack of motion-activated NETGEAR Arlo Smart Home VMS3430-100NAS security cameras, which enables you to capture 720p video footage both during the day and at night.
 

Can you set a schedule with the app?

The wired version shows scheduling. Can you do this with the wireless version too? (Set cameras to detect motion on certain days/times only.)
Yes
7 years, 11 months ago
by
Doug
 
Safeguard your home or business with this 4-pack of motion-activated NETGEAR Arlo Smart Home VMS3430-100NAS security cameras, which enables you to capture 720p video footage both during the day and at night.
 

Do you have to use their cloud or can you use your own?

I have a large NAS I wouldlike to use to store video instead of their service.
I am not aware of any way you could do this besides writing a script to download the video from their "cloud" to your NAS. The base station itself does not store the video, it just communicates with the server where they store it via your wired ethernet connection.
7 years, 11 months ago
by
Doug