Arlo Ultra 2 - The Latest Security Tech Comes at a Cost

When considering a security camera system for your home, there are many choices.

It's obviously important to have cameras that provide clear footage, day and night. Ideally, you need accurate and prompt notifications. And I'd also argue it's not enough just to have a camera - you also need to be able to record and save the footage. It's no use having a live feed of a porch pirate stealing your prized packages if you can't pass the video on to the proper authorities.

Those should be your minimum requirements.

But Arlo can offer you more. Much, much more.

The Ultra 2 is Arlo's latest wireless security camera and in combination with an Arlo Secure Plus subscription, you'll get just about every feature you can think of... and a couple you may not have even imagined.

To begin with, the Ultra 2 camera itself is a very tidy piece of design. It's compact, weather resistant and appears to be very durable. The two-camera kit I was sent for review also included magnetic and screw mounts which meant plenty of flexibility around exactly where I could install it. In fact, because the Ultra 2 has a magnetic back panel at both top and bottom, you'll get the right angle whether you choose to wall mount or attach to a ceiling or overhang.

This isn't just a camera either. There's also a powerful, built-in LED spotlight and a 2-way audio system that boasts noise reduction tech to battle any ambient wind noise.

The simplicity of the design makes setting up the Ultra 2 very easy; by pushing the release button underneath, you simply slide the cover back to insert the large, rechargeable battery cell. These can last for an impressive six months, depending on usage. This is hard for me to verify as I've only been using the cameras for a week or so and not only have I put both of them in high-traffic areas but I've been pushing most of the features pretty hard.

Using battery-powered cameras can be a bit limiting because they need to be somewhere you can easily take them down for charging. However, Arlo sells additional batteries and a dual charger, so you don't have to have any cameras out of action for the several hours it takes to charge.

Alternatively, you could add Arlo's Solar Panel Charger or leave the camera connected to the optional (and rather expensive) 7.6-metre magnetic charging cable.

Perhaps the most important thing to note is the Ultra 2 cameras connect via a Smart Hub, not directly to your home Wi-Fi network. This is important because it ensures a solid connection and a leaves you with less crowded Wi-Fi. It does mean connecting the Smart Hub to your router via an ethernet cable though, so you'll need to make room for that and hopefully you'll have a spare LAN port on your router to plug it into.

The other advantage of a hub-based system like this - and for me it's a biggie - is there's a slot for a microSD card on the Smart Hub. This means you can store your video footage locally, without risking it being nicked if it was slotted into your camera instead.

Of course, cloud storage is even more secure... but we'll come to that.

Once up and running - which is a very straightforward process, guided clearly, step by step in the Arlo Secure app - I was immediately impressed by the picture quality. There aren't many 4K cameras on the home security market and the Ultra 2 provides a stunningly clear, detailed feed, day or night. 

It also offers a wide, 180° view, with very little fish-eye distortion at the edges. In fact, as you'll see from my video below, the view is so wide, it's somewhat wasted on the camera I set up in my entranceway, a pretty enclosed space; half the shot is taken up by blank walls!

You even have the option to toggle HDR on and you can set the Ultra 2 to automatically track and zoom any objects/people it detects.

As you would expect, you can send notifications to your phone - or anyone else's for that matter. 

But to really get the most out of an Ultra 2 camera, you'll need to subscribe to an Arlo Secure Plan - ideally Arlo Secure Plus. This gets you thirty days of cloud storage, easily accessible and shareable from anywhere.

It also unlocks the ability to distinguish between people, packages, animals and vehicles. This is a feature I've used with other cameras before but Arlo's version is even smarter. Thanks to Arlo Intelligence (Get it? A.I.?) you can use other photos stored on your phone to train the Ultra 2 to recognise people or vehicles - they don't have to have appeared on camera beforehand.

Aural notifications can be activated too - either smoke alarms or just any sound at all.

Or... and this is pretty cool - you can create your own Custom Detection. Have you ever arrived home to discover you left the garage door open the whole time you were out? With an Arlo Secure Plus subscription, you can use a picture of what that looks like to get the camera to send you a notification before you get too far down the street.

You can have rich notifications sent to your phone or smart watch - this means a preview shot of what's been detected - and you can start streaming on your phone or tablet right from the notification window.

These are the kind of specialised features that are often only available on a subscription plan and Arlo certainly has quite a list of them - which is maybe why Secure Plus so expensive - starting at NZ$16.67 a month, if you pay for a year at a time. Ouch.

Oh, and one other little quirk. Just like most other cameras, when you set up the Ultra 2 you can create Smart Activity Zones, effectively monitoring some areas but not others. This is essential if you want to be notified of movement on the path to your mailbox but not on the busy street beyond it. Trouble is, you'll need an Arlo Subscription to do this too. I've never had to pay extra for this feature before.

Now, if can push my grumpy old man prejudices aside, I have to concede that as a grumpy old man, I can still remember a time when people used to pay private security companies to monitor their alarms for them. I'm pretty sure it cost a lot more than twenty bucks a month. 

And it wouldn't sting so much except these are not cheap cameras we're talking about here; the 2 Camera Kit I'm reviewing goes for NZ$899, with a single add on camera setting you back NZ$429. Yes, there's a Basic plan and yes, if you're only monitoring one camera it would cost you as little as NZ$6.67 a month - but wouldn't it annoy you not having access to all those fancy "AI" features?

At least if you buy one before the end of the year you can enter Arlo's competition to win an MG 3 Excite or another Arlo camera. A free car would certainly help dull the pain of a monthly subscription.

I'm not disputing these are perhaps the most well-designed home security cameras I've trialled to date and as such, you'd expect to pay a premium. But to have to keep paying a premium for all the features (some of which you get for free elsewhere) seems just a tad over the top.

    

Click here for more information and pricing on the Arlo Ultra 2 two camera kit.