Test: Arlo Ultra 2 surveillance camera – monitors your home in 4k

Tested product: Arlo Ultra 2
Award: SEK 10,133 at PriceSpy

Arlo Ultra 2 is Arlo’s latest flagship model for home surveillance. We have previously tested the predecessor Ultra, but also the company’s other current models such as the Pro 4 and the cheaper Essential series. The biggest difference from the company’s cheaper alternative is that Ultra 2 offers 4k resolution.

With Arlos Ultra 2 system, you can easily pick the raisins out of the cake to get a home monitoring system perfectly adapted to your home. Wireless, wired, inside, outside. Everything is possible. There are various mounts, solar cell charging and the possibility to use cloud or local storage.

Ultra 2 needs a hub and the system, unlike its predecessor Ultra, supports both 2.4 Ghz and 5 GHz wifi, which means that the cameras can be placed further away from the hub.

With a micro sd card, you can store up to 4k clips locally in the hub. You get three months of Arlo’s subscription service Secure Plus on the purchase, but if you then want to continue, it costs SEK 149 a month. If you can imagine skipping the 4k piece, you can get down to SEK 29 a month for a camera and SEK 99 if you have several.

An important detail regarding the subscription, when Arlo writes unlimited with cameras, they mean at the same address, that is, you can not have cameras in the summer cottage and at home on the same subscription. For that, two subscriptions are required.

The surveillance camera with everything

There is not much to say about the installation process. It’s rude to get started. The app used is entirely in Swedish, educational and easy to find around in. There are lots of functions, but most smart functions are locked to the subscription.

In the app, you can set the resolution on video, whether quality or battery life should be prioritized and create activity zones for motion detection and set the types of notices you want.

The built-in spotlight lights up in the dark. It can be activated during movement and then hopefully acts as a deterrent to unwelcome visitors. You can also activate a siren to further reinforce the message to intruders. It sounds loud, but not unbearably loud.

Arlo Ultra 2 has two-way sound with full duplex, you can use it to talk to who now happens to be near the cameras. A courier or the children who have come home from school, for example.

Really good image quality

Ultra 2 offers 4k video and a 180 degree diagonal viewing angle. It is really good image quality in daylight, lamplight and darkness. It can be a delay of up to a few seconds when you want to see live images from the camera, which can be annoying.

The camera has a built-in bright LED lamp that can be activated to give a color image in the dark, or at least act as a lamp for yourself when you are out in the evening.

There are some limitations with 4k video that are worth knowing. Streaming 4k video requires you to be connected to the same network as the camera and you can only stream from two cameras at the same time. If you have more than that, the resolution is limited.

To store 4k quality in the cloud, the Secure Plus subscription is required, which costs SEK 149 a month. Can you imagine sticking to up to 2k, it costs SEK 29 a month for a camera and SEK 99 for unlimited cameras.

You can store 4k video locally on a micro sd card in the base unit and thus do not have to have a subscription at all, which is a plus.

See clips from Arlo Ultra 2 below:

Expensive? Everything is relative

Arlo Ultra 2 is available in black or white and is sold in packages with 2, 3 or 4 cameras. You can also supplement with single cameras if needed. A package with four cameras costs at the time of writing from SEK 10,133, if you do not need more than two cameras, it costs from SEK 5,990.

Of course, whether this is expensive or not depends on what you are comparing. An alarm system from one of the big companies costs more in the long run, especially if you do not own the installed gadgets yourself. Cheaper solutions than this are certainly available, but Arlo is hard to beat in terms of simplicity to install and stability over time; this system just seems to work and is very adaptable with all the different mounts and charging options.

With Arlos subscriptions, you also get part of their ai functions that make life easier as you get smarter (and fewer) notices, among other things. Thankfully, they have made it easier to choose and understand them, compared to how it was when we tested previous devices.

Thanks to the superb overall experience and all the possibilities to adapt the system based on your needs, we set the rating 4.5.

Specifications

Tested: March 2022
Model: Arlo Ultra 2
Manufacturer / contact: Arlo, www.arlo.com
System requirements: Wireless network, smartphone with Android or iOS
App in Swedish: Yes
Resolution: 4k, 2k, 1080p, 720p
Picture angle: 180 degrees diagonally
Sound: Speaker and microphone
Motion sensor: Yes
Movement zones: Yes
Sound sensor: Yes
Network: Wifi
Storage: Cloud storage, locally on micro sd card
Free storage: Three-month subscription included, then paid subscription
Subscription cost per month: SEK 149 per month for 4k (from SEK 29 / month for up to 2k)
Color: White or black
Measure: 8.9 x 5.2 x 7.84 inches.
Weight: 328 grams.
Other: Works with Apple Homekit, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.
Rec. Award: SEK 11,990 for a package with 4 cameras
Award: SEK 10,133 at PriceSpy