Arlo Essential 3 2K Pan-Tilt Security Camera Review

Introduction

As good as the Arlo system is, the company has stuck with fixed cameras until recently, with the launch of the Arlo Essential 3 2K Pan-Tilt Security Camera. A wired camera that can go indoors or out, it has the same core features as the other models, but can also track subjects to capture more of what’s going on.

It’s good value for the features and adds an extra dimension to an existing Arlo setup, but the subscription costs are high.

Design and installation

• Indoor and outdoor versions available
• Permanently wired

To slightly confuse things, as well as the Arlo Essential 3 2K Pan-Tilt Security Camera, there’s also the Arlo Essential 3 2K Pan-Tilt Indoor Security Camera. As the name gives away, the Indoor model can only be installed inside, and it’s £40 cheaper. 

Features are otherwise very similar, but the Indoor camera has a privacy mode where it tilts its camera all the way down, blocking its view.

With the Arlo Essential 3 2K Pan-Tilt Security Camera, you can install it indoors or out. Unlike the majority of the rest of Arlo’s range, this camera needs power, rather than running from a battery.

Although there’s a long cable in the box, you will need to put the mounting bracket somewhere close enough to a wall socket.

The cable runs up the back of the wall bracket, keeping it neat and out of the way, and then the camera clips into the bracket.

As with Arlo’s recent security cameras, such as the Arlo Pro 6, the 2K Pan-Tilt has Bluetooth onboard for easy discovery. It can connect directly to Wi-Fi, but you can also connect it to a Smart Hub if you have one.

Features

• Lots of detection options via Arlo subscription
• Can automatically track motion

Working through the Arlo home app, the Arlo Essential 3 2K Pan-Tilt Security Camera integrates with any cameras you might already have. I’m a big fan of the app and all the options it offers, but you do need a subscription to get the most out of this camera, and that’s where things can get expensive.

A basic Arlo Secure subscription costs £7.99 for a single camera and gives only seven days of recording history, which is very stingy. You also get Basic Person, Animal, Package & Vehicle Detection.

Arlo also has a multi-cam version of this plan for £11.99 a month (up to four cameras). It’s not clearly listed on the website, but you can find it in the app when you go to the subscription option.

If you want the more advanced AI features, you need Arlo Secure Plus, which is £19.99 a month for as many cameras as you want, with 14 days of video history and support for up to 4K resolution.

With the higher-tier subscriptions in particular, Arlo Secure is expensive compared to the competition, such as Ring, which starts at just £4.99 for one camera, while higher-priced tiers include additional features for the Ring Alarm.

I’d stick with the standard plan, particularly with a 2K camera, but I’ll explain the new AI features, too.

So, why pay more for Arlo? The simple answer is because the system is so good, and so flexible.

With a subscription, you can reduce motion alerts with activity zones and smart object detection, with your choice of motion detection for people, vehicles, packages, and animals.

Quickly ticking the options that you want dramatically reduces the number of alerts that you get, focusing on just the important ones. That level of flexibility is hard to find anywhere else.

Pay for a more expensive package and you also get facial recognition, with the camera able to learn names automatically as it spots people, but you can also feed in your own images to give the system a head start.

Oddly, only a single camera can be set to spot and recognise people, which seems oddly restrictive, particularly at this price.

Vehicle recognition is also available. Think of it as facial recognition but for cars – handy if you want to know if an unknown vehicle has turned up on your drive or your car’s being driven away.

Custom detection is a first-of-its-kind feature. Get the camera to record two frames with a difference in them, say a gate open, and the camera will alert you when it spots this in future. For this to work, I found that I needed a big enough difference for the camera to spot. Put outside in my garden pointing at my kitchen doors, I found that the camera struggled to spot when just the small glass door was open.

That’s all very clever, and under the right circumstances, Arlo cameras can spot and warn you of a lot more than the competition.

With the higher-tier subscription, you also get fire detection, where the camera can spot flames and warn you.

As this is a pan-and-tilt camera, there are some additional controls. In the live view, you get an on-screen joystick to move the camera around so you can take a wider look at what’s going on.

You can set multiple positions for the camera to jump to, for speedy looking, plus a home location that the camera returns to by default, which should be the area that you’re most interested in. 

When motion is detected, the Arlo Essential 3 2K Pan-Tilt Security Camera will move and track the subject automatically, keeping it in focus. I find that this lets me see more of what’s going on, capturing footage that would otherwise be lost on a fixed camera.

Performance

• Detailed 2K footage
• Spotlight helps with nighttime shooting
• Excellent motion tracking

Motion tracking on the Arlo Essential 3 2K Pan-Tilt Security Camera is very smooth. Some pan-and-tilt cameras can introduce jerkiness into the video or add tearing, but this camera avoids both problems.

Walking quickly past the camera during the day, the Arlo Essential 3 2K Pan-Tilt Security Camera caught me in full detail, and it was easy to find a frame with my face in sharp detail, with a nice amount of detail right to the back of the frame.

At night, the Arlo Essential 3 2K Pan-Tilt Security Camera defaults to black-and-white, using its IR LEDs to light the scene. However, when motion is detected, the camera can turn on its spotlight and switch to full colour video. 

This does black out the video for a couple of frames, but the full-colour image soon returns.

Depending on where the camera’s pointing, it’s possible to lose some detail in the background, but I easily found a frame where I was in full detail, despite walking fast and the camera having to move to track me.

Should you buy it?

FAQs