Tether-free security cameras by Arlo and Swann go anywhere
Wireless, battery-operated internet security cameras are the rage with Arlo and Swann bringing two more to market.
Home security cameras are becoming more flexible. They are battery operated and with Wi-Fi, you can put them anywhere. They are also increasingly affordable and feature-rich. They not only alert you to an intruder even when you are thousands of kilometres away, some also can recognise people and pets, squirrel away video of an intruder and even let you talk to them from another location on your smartphone.
Improvements in battery life mean they can operate for months without a recharge.
You do have to think carefully about which camera manufacturer to go with. Each supplies a companion app and it’s less complex to have all your cameras with one provider.
I look at new battery Wi-Fi cameras by two of the credible manufacturers in this space – Arlo and Swann.
Arlo Essential Spotlight Camera ($229 or $429 for two)
Arlo has been a trailblazer in Wi-Fi connected security cameras. Battery life and picture quality are excellent and there’s a variety of models. Some, like an Arlo Ultra 4K, stream crisp ultrahigh definition video. The premium models can cost more than $400 for a single camera.
But not all their cameras are that expensive.
Arlo has produced a versatile camera that compromises a little in video quality. It may have full HD video resolution (1080p) rather than 4K, but it does the job and has an in-built spotlight to highlight an intruder operating in the dark. You first charge the camera’s battery with a micro USB cable and then install it wherever you want to.
This camera will connect either directly to your home Wi-Fi, or to an Arlo Hub if you have one. I tried both ways, and while it’s nice to have a direct home Wi-Fi connection, the streaming of video worked more efficiently when connected to a hub.
I find in general that hubs are a good idea. They are an extra piece of hardware, but the cameras are tuned to work with that particular hub signal, and you usually get better streaming with less delay.
You need to set up your camera to be ON when you’re away from home, and OFF when you return.
Most cameras let you activate them using an app when you leave your dwelling. Arlo cameras have the additional option of geolocation, so that motion detection only operates when you are away a certain distance.
You can login remotely to the Arlo app and watch the action from your phone and the camera stores a video of what was seen in the cloud.
The app will notify you of motion at home when you are away.
Two-way audio lets you communicate with whoever is there. It could be an intruder, but there again it could be a courier service delivering a parcel If you install the camera outside your front door. You might want to chat to your cat or dog.
The spotlight can be motion activated or manually turned on, so you will see full colour vision at night. In addition, you can trigger an 80 dB speaker-based siren which should send an intruder into panic and scurrying away.
The camera offers a 130-degree diagonal field of view.
Arlo offers an optional subscription service. Without it, the camera’s maximum resolution is 1080p, and video of events is stored for a maximum of seven days.
Subscriptions start at $4.49 per month for a single camera, and you get 30 days cloud storage of video history. You get alerts from your phone’s lock screen, there’s person, vehicle and animal detection, and the detection of package deliveries.
You can define an area of the camera image where you want alerts (rather than all of the image). That’s particularly useful if an object in the background, for example a tree out a window, results in false alerts. You can additionally configure the camera system to connect with a friend.
As I said, you are also better off buying an Arlo base station and connecting your camera to it. The VMB4000 base station, for example, is compatible with Arlo Essential cameras. You can additionally store video on a USB device attached to the base station.
Swann Wire-Free 1080p security camera ($249.95 each)
Swann is a global company in security monitoring, and has Australian origins. Its founder is Melbourne’s David Swann who started by making modems in the family garage in 1987. The company was eventually taken over by US surveillance manufacturer Infinova group.
Swann’s children, meanwhile, have formed another technology manufacturer aptly called Cygnet, But that’s a story for another day.
Like the Arol Essential, this camera is battery operated, and again, you charge it using a micro USB cable. It’s hardy enough to be mounted outdoors as well as indoors.
The camera connects directly to your Wi-Fi network but there’s no hub option.
In my tests, the Swann was great at detecting motion. It didn’t miss a beat in that respect. Playback worked fine, although there was a slight delay in its starting.
With Swann, there’s no need to buy a monthly plan: footage is saved to the cloud for seven days, and backed up locally on the camera for two days. Swann points out that internal camera storage will occur even if an intruder shuts down the power.
There is an optional subscription service if you want to store vision in the cloud for 60 days rolling instead of seven, and the subscription activates AI recognition of pets and vehicles.
Images of any activity are included in alerts that appear over your phone’s lock screen.
The camera takes 1080p full HD vision, and although it doesn’t have a spotlight, infra-red kicks in at night and offers up to 8 metres of surveillance.
The camera offers a more fish-eyed view, recording ultra-wide 180-degrees. It’s distorted because of this, but you see much more vision on either side.
Like the Arlo, the Swann offers two-way audio over a five-metre range. The camera is protected by two-factor authentication, offers 128-bit video and data encryption and you have personalised username & password safeguards.
Like Arlo, it comes with a mount and screws and there’s the option of buying a solar panel extension. You don’t need to charge the camera when it’s mounted outdoors.
You switch on motion detection manually when you leave home as there is no automatic switching on based on your location.
However, Swann does include facial-recognition free for several people. You use the app to record the face of yourself and your family members and Swann seeks to recognise who is there when it detects a person.
In practice, it took a few goes to register my face, and to be sure, I registered it once without glasses, and once with glasses. It did recognise me a couple of times, but it’s not robust at this time to rely on.
In future, I imagine Swann will enable the camera not to notify you if it detects you at home and not a stranger. In my view, that feature is not there yet and Swann says its development team is actively working to improve this.
Nevertheless, this is a very good camera, and the fact that it stores vision on the camera as well in the cloud gives you a backup if you suffer a break-in.
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