Pro security.
If you find yourself
away from your home more and more these days, and so increasingly
worry about the safety of all your awesome kit, you either need to
become a God and achieve omnipresence, or you could just fork out for
a WiFi security camera. Checking in with the networking expert's
latest offering, we review the Netgear Arlo Pro.
By now we're pretty
sure you should know what the crack is here; a WiFi security camera
connects to your home wireless network and streams the live footage
to your phone, via the internet, no matter where in the world you
are. They are bloody useful, and offer great peace of mind when
you're away.
We've reviewed a
shed-load of them on The Test Pit over the years, and have seen them
come on leaps and bounds (and the prices, thankfully, fall). However,
the biggest improvement recently made in the world of WiFi security
cameras has been to make them truly wireless and remove the need to
plug the camera into a wall socket. Therefore you can stick one
pretty much anywhere in, around, and outside of your house, so long
as you are in range of the WiFi.
The Netgear Arlo Pro is
one such camera, being a small and compact unit that draws power from
an on-board rechargeable battery, rather than a fiddly and limiting
power cable. The Arlo Pro is also weather-proof, meaning it can be
placed outside to act as an external security camera, to keep an eye
on your garden.
However, this
versatility comes at something of a cost. Although marketed as a HD
camera, that “HD” merely refers to a resolution of 720p. That
isn't bad, but it isn't great either, and most WiFi cameras we've
reviewed lately have pushed Full HD 1080p. It tends not to make much
of a difference when viewing the live stream from the camera on your
phone (which may only have a screen resolution of 720p anyway), but
when viewing pre-recorded footage it can be a bit disappointing. If
you ever need to positively identify an intruder from your captured
footage, Full HD is essential.
Still, the free Arlo
app is nice and clean – like most Netgear apps – and it was a
breeze to set the likes of motion control alerts active, as well as
access your stored clips and use the two-way microphone. In term of
cloud storage, we were happy to see Netgear give you seven free days
of storage, which is more than enough if you're concerned about
security. Both day and night clips (the Arlo Pro has built-in night
vision) were easy to view and then download to your device.
On that note, if you'd
actually like to record the stream as it happens, and not have to
rely on Netgear's cloud, you can plug a USB flash drive into the port
on the base station (the chunky part that tethers to your WiFi router
so the camera can be free) and set it up to record via the app. The
base station also doubles as a siren, also available through the app,
meaning you blast some sound if you spy intruders on your screen.
So... although the
quality of image left us feeling a little wanting, the Netgear Arlo
Pro certainly makes up for it in other areas. We love the completely
wire-free design, giving you true freedom to mount it where you need
it, and also the free cloud storage offered by Netgear. Apart form
those... its really down to you. Although, that price!
£289.99