Arlo impressed with its Video Doorbell: the high resolution and quality video made this a great alternative to the big names in smart doorbells. However, the product needed to be wired into place, making it a little more complicated to install. The Arlo Essential Doorbell Wire-Free, as the name eloquently states, is far easier to install.
Battery-powered, this doorbell can be installed in a matter of minutes, and can connect to your Wi-Fi network directly or an existing Arlo base station if you have one already.
If you pay for the Arlo Smart video subscription cloud service, you’ll get all of the same features as on the existing doorbell, including package detection and smart notifications that can warn you when your choice of people, animals and vehicles are detected. You also get activity zones to only monitor the part of the image that you’re interested in, which is rare on battery-powered products.
This isn’t a direct like-for-like replacement for the existing video doorbell, and resolution drops from 2K to 1080p, putting the Wire-Free model up against existing battery-powered models, such as the Ring Video Doorbell 3 Plus. Arlo has a wide-angle 180-degree viewing angle, which is designed to capture people head-to-toe, rather than cropping off their legs, as most doorbells do.
If the wire-free model is like the wired one, you’ll get a cool feature: your phone actually rings as though there’s an incoming call. This makes doorbell presses easier to spot than with models that simple send a basic notification to your phone.
Arlo says that the battery can last for up to six months, although you can have the doorbell wired in if you prefer not to have to charge it. You can pre-order the Arlo Essential Doorbell Wire-Free for £179 and it will go on sale at Amazon on 2 February. We’ll have a full review up before then for you.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
