Roger Fingas
Arlo on Friday announced its latest iPhone-connected security camera, the Ultra, an upcoming wireless model distinguished by features like a 4K image sensor, HDR, and a 180-degree field of view.
The camera is designed to be used both indoors and outdoors, and comes with a magnetic mount as well as a weather-resistant magnetic charging cable. The outdoor focus also shows up in features such as an LED spotlight and a siren, the latter of which can be triggered manually or by rules for motion or sound detection.
Arlo is bundling the Ultra with a peripheral called the SmartHub, which serves as both a Wi-Fi extender for Arlo cameras and a way of recording footage to a microSD card. While locally-saved footage can be recorded at maxmium resolution, the Ultra will ship with a one-year Arlo Smart Premier cloud subscription, which normally only records 1080p highlight clips for up to 30 days — 4K will be a paid upgrade.
Smart Premier costs $9.99 per month after the free period, and additionally offers support for motion zones, person detection, more detailed notifications, and up to 10 cameras. In the U.S. the plan comes with "e911," which can be used to guide police to your home instead of your iPhone.
People can also downgrade to cheaper Arlo Smart plan which costs $2.99 per month, but covers just a single camera while dropping e911 and reducing cloud storage to 7 days. A default free plan also offers 7 days, sacrificing motion zones, person detection, and enhanced notifications.
The Ultra should ship sometime in the first quarter of 2019. Arlo has yet to announce pricing, or even smarthome platform compatibility — it's unlikely to support Apple's HomeKit however, since Apple currently doesn't allow on the technology on fully wireless cameras. The only Arlo with HomeKit is the Arlo Baby.
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6 Comments
Where do I sign?
Deal killer until HomeKit is added! :(
Canary promised but never delivered HomeKit, then also cut the cloud services promised when purchased. These companies are really not consumer friendly.
Regarding HomeKit, I believe the issue is that the cameras are battery operated. Not that they are witeless
Arlo has been aweful about communicating to its users status of HomeKit support. Their forums are flossed with requests to add HomeKit but they never respond or give updates
Is it just me or is the previous 7 day free cloud storage subscription service getting watered down? This seems a bit pointless unless you pay for all the subscription addons.
My biggest problem with these types of cameras is that they're so bloody obvious, and hiding them doesn't seem to be easy.