This smart doorbell does it all. It can be wired-in or set-up to work wirelessly, it’ll see in the dark and will work wells in most spots thanks to its fisheye lens that gives it a 180-degree field of view.
The sharp, square resolution (1,536 x 1,536) combined with a wide field of view produces a great picture. It’s good enough to help you spot packages left on the ground and identify who’s at the door. Plus, there’s a 12x digital zoom if you really need to see the whites of their eyes. The two-way sound is surprisingly clear and bright for such a diminutive device.
The Arlo’s design is smart, and set-up and installation is a breeze. Ideally you should position it to the side of your door but it’s slim enough to stick to your doorframe if needs be. Wiring it in might be a tricky job, however, as the doorbell’s narrow footprint might make it fiddly to get the wires to where you need them.
There are some powerful features to play with. The Arlo will record any movement it picks up on its motion-detection system even if whoever it is that’s doing the moving hasn’t rung the doorbell (hello, postie). It’ll also spot if someone’s left a package without ringing and send you a notification, but these features are locked behind a £3.49-a-month subscription.
All in all, it’s a great bit of tech that will leave you unlikely to ever go back to a “dumb” doorbell again.
Setup & design
Out of the box the Arlo doorbell has a minimal, glossy design that made my front door look decidedly old-fashioned. If you decide to go wireless with it, it’ll take about 20 minutes to set up – you just need good Wi-Fi that reaches your front door, a drill and a Philips screwdriver.
As ever, there’s a bit of faff getting set up with an account on the app, but it’s simple enough and it’s easy to add other people’s phones to the system.
Fully charged, the battery is said to last six months. When you need to recharge it, the whole device detaches from its mount with the help of a release pin, though a safety pin would do the trick. This makes it super simple to remove the bell from the door, take out the battery and remount it when the bell’s recharged. There’s no special key required (that you’ll need to store safely and not lose for the six months between recharges).
After installation, it struck me that it’d be easy to rip the Arlo off the doorframe if you really wanted to, but that’s probably true of any smart doorbell you don’t wire in.
Does it doorbell?
Yes! For such a simple device there are lots of ways a smart doorbell can go wrong. Blurry picture quality, slow response time and speakers that make you sound like a demonic leprechaun are all pitfalls of earlier models.
Mercifully, the Arlo Essential Wireless Doorbell spares you from all of these. It’s got a great lens and camera that captures most of what’s in front of your door clearly. Plus, it’s field of view is forgiving enough that, if you can’t follow the guidelines for positioning to the letter, it shouldn’t matter. Someone presses the big clear button and within a couple of seconds I get a call on my phone and… well, you can guess the rest from there.
Its night vision capability is spooky but useful for those long winter nights. And I particularly like the fish-eye lens paired with a square resolution – it means you get everything in shot, particularly packages that are left on the ground.
The sound quality is strikingly impressive. In some recordings I can hear the starlings singing outside and when someone actually rings the doorbell, we can have a pretty natural conversation. There’s some delay, which means you can find you and your visitor speaking over each other at times, but this is the fastest responding device I’ve tested.
Features
Without a subscription, the doorbell essentially works as a way to call your phone from your door. Plus, you’ll also get notifications if there’s movement near your doorbell and if you see the notification in time, you can access a live view from the camera to see who’s there.
As with most smart doorbells, extra smart features are accessed via subscription (that you get a free three-month trial for), which costs £3.49 a month.
The most tempting reason to subscribe is the recording feature. When the doorbell’s motion detector sees someone near your door, it’ll record footage of them until they leave its field of view. If you’re buying the doorbell for a touch of added security, this feature is essential, so it’s a bit of a shame it’s paywalled.
So far, it’s mostly recorded me coming and going, but you can set up its camera to arm and disarm when you come and go. This feature works by geofencing your property and detecting when your phone is in or out of proximity in order to switch this feature on and off.
Equally, if you don’t want a notification every time someone innocently comes up to your door – such as your postie – you can customise what the security camera messages you about. This might be useful for those who live on busy streets, close to the road. You can, for example, set it up so that that it only notifies you if someone leaves a parcel in its view – pretty smart.
All these recordings are sent to Arlo’s cloud, which does make you wonder whether there could have been a basic recording setting that could be stored locally on the device or your phone.
Also, there’s an answer phone-type message if you don’t respond when the doorbell is rung: “to leave a message, please press the doorbell again”, which is handy if your couriers have a habit of slinging packages over your fence (like the ones who deliver to me do).
There’s plenty of automation features at hand too. You can potentially pair the Arlo with a speaker in the home (if you absolutely love a good door chime) or twin it with a porch light.
The App
The interface is clean, intuitive and simple. Answering the doorbell is just like answering a phone call.
If someone’s at your door but hasn’t pressed the bell, you’ll get a notification. Press it and you’ll be quickly shown to the app where you can watch the doorbell’s live stream. If you’re a subscriber you’ll be shown some recorded footage of what’s going on, which will be stored and sorted on to a calendar in case you need to go Sherlock on someone’s ass.
Extra smart features could do with a bit more hand-holding: I had to visit Arlo’s site to make sense of the geofencing feature and why I’d want it.
The doorbell works with Google and Alexa if you’ve got smart home systems already set up, but you’ll need the Arlo SmartHub to get it to play nice with Apple’s homekit system.
All things considered this is a very user-friendly experience for anyone fearful of overcomplicated tech.
Fingers-on-buzzers, what’s it like to use?
Two things happen when you set up the Arlo. First, it bombards you with video footage of you setting up the camera. This isn’t a problem, but it will make you wonder if there’s a more flattering camera out there. By the time you realise this is a stupid thought to entertain, someone else will have actually arrived to use your doorbell and the cam is so clear and crisp, it’s initially a little creepy. You almost feel like you’re spying on someone.
Aside from those two early hurdles, the Arlo has been brilliant. It’s never more complicated than someone pressing the bell, my phone ringing and then me telling whoever’s at the door that I’ll be there in a minute. Sure, you can say this about most smart doorbells but not all of them manage it as quickly and as hassle-free. For me, this has been huge, as getting rid of the door chime means that the dog stays calm and I can get her out of the way, if needed.
The only problem I’ve had so far is that one particularly trigger-happy courier double pressed the doorbell, which fired off two calls. I answered the first but then quickly had to get the second. It took me a hot minute to figure out what was going on, by which time the courier had slung the box at the door and moved on.
Verdict
The Arlo doorbell has everything. The only downside is that to get everything you need to pay a little more.
I love the picture and sound quality it offers, and the simple no-nonsense way the software works. If you just need a doorbell that rings your phone, then this is one of the best out there. If you want to use it to provide your home with a little extra security, then just bear in mind you’ll be factoring an extra £3.49 a month, which, as far subscriptions go for this kind of tech, is middle of the road.
If you do subscribe, the smart features are industry-leading, and will marry up well with Arlo’s other security cam products and any other smart home tech you might want to link up.
Overall, the Arlo doorbell is smart home tech at its best: it makes life easier, not more complicated. It’s the perfect gateway-drug to home automation. So, if you want a better way to deal with couriers and posties, while adding a little extra security to your home, look no further.
Additional Arlo devices
Arlo Go 2 outdoor camera
If you want to stick to being wireless and would like to add some more security to your home then Arlo’s outdoor security cam might be an option. You’ll need to get a data plan and a SIM card to go with it, but it’s a useful option if you need a little versatility. This is the sort of camera that would be useful for watching a garage full of expensive bikes, or a side alley that accesses your home. It has all of Arlo’s smart features mentioned above plus a spotlight, in case you need to get a clearer picture at night.
Arlo Add-on Smart Hub
If you get the smart home bug then you’ll need to pick up a Smart Hub to create a true security system. It’ll provide local storage for your footage, and hook your cameras up to each other to create your own security perimeter.
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