Arlo’s $99.99 Essential Indoor Security Camera offers intelligent alerts, voice control, and works with a wide assortment of third-party smart home devices for a lot less money than the company’s $199.99 Pro 4 model. In addition, it provides sharp, colorful 1080p video, accurate motion alerts, and is very easy to install. That said, some features require a paid subscription, including the ability to view recorded event video. The Arlo Pro 4 offers an indoor/outdoor design with sharper 2K video and an integrated spotlight, or you can save quite a bit with our Editors’ Choice winner for affordable security cameras, the Eufy Indoor Cam 2K Pan & Tilt P24, which offers local and cloud video storage, mechanical pan and tilt, 2K video, and lots of interoperability with other devices for just $51.99. If you’re simply looking to add an affordable camera to your existing Arlo setup, however, the Arlo Essential Indoor is a solid choice.
Plenty of Features for the Price
Available with either a black or white finish, the Arlo Essential Indoor Camera stands 4.5 inches high and is 1.9 inches wide and 2.0 inches deep. The camera enclosure is supported by a thin mounting arm and a round base that can be placed on a desktop surface or mounted on a wall or ceiling. The mounting arm lets you swivel the camera forward, backward, or sideways.
The face of the camera is glossy black and holds the camera assembly, an ambient light sensor, a status LED, a microphone, and a privacy shield that you can activate from the app. There’s a speaker and a micro USB power jack around back, and a Sync button under the front edge of the enclosure. Under the hood is a siren for scaring away intruders and a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi radio for connecting to your home network. The camera comes with a 6.5-foot USB power cable, an AC adapter, mounting hardware, and a setup guide.
The Essential Indoor camera captures video at 1080p and has a 130-degree field of view and a 12X digital zoom. It uses a single infrared LED for black-and-white night vision and will send push alerts and record video when it detects motion or sound. The camera comes with a three-month Arlo Smart trial plan that gives you access to 30 days of recorded video history, but after that you’ll have to pay for a subscription to view video and to access other features.
For $2.99 per month for a single camera or $9.99 per month for an unlimited number of cameras, the Arlo Secure Plan gets you 30 days of video history as well as intelligent motion alerts (person, package, animal, vehicle), activity zones, interactive notifications, and access to priority support. You also get access to Arlo’s Call a Friend feature that lets you call someone in your contacts list with the touch of a button. The $14.99 per month Secure Plus plan covers all of your cameras and gives you everything that you get with the Secure plan, as well as access to a 24/7 emergency response center that will dispatch first responders to your camera location with the touch of a button.
As with most Arlo cameras, you can control the Essential Indoor camera with your voice using Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant voice commands. It also supports IFTTT applets that allow it to work with scores of third-party devices, and if you connect the camera to an Arlo base station, you can control it using Apple’s HomeKit platform.
The Essential Indoor Camera uses the same mobile app (for Android and iOS) as every other Arlo product and appears on the Devices screen with a still image of the last captured event. Tap the Play arrow to view a live stream. To view the stream in full-screen mode, tap the two arrows in the upper right corner and turn your phone sideways. Along the bottom edge of the video panel are speaker mute, two-way talk, manual video record, and photo (snapshot) buttons, and below that is the name of the camera, the number of unseen recorded events, and a gear icon that takes you to a Device Settings screen. In the upper right corner is a red shield button that opens a screen where you can activate the siren, use one of three emergency response buttons (Fire, Police, Medical), and use the Call a Friend button.
Device settings include a camera on/off button, utilities for testing motion detection and the privacy shield, video brightness and quality options, activity zone settings, and audio settings. At the very bottom of the Devices screen are Devices, Library, Mode, and Settings buttons. The Devices button takes you back to the Devices screen from wherever you are in the app, and the Library button opens a screen with thumbnails for all recorded events with the time, date, and reason for the event. Tap any thumbnail to view, download, share, or delete the video.
Use the Modes button to arm or disarm the camera, create an arming schedule, or activate geofencing to arm and disarm the camera. When the camera is armed, motion and sound detection are enabled, and when it’s disarmed, they are disabled, as are notifications. Disarming the camera also enables the privacy shield. The Settings button takes you to a screen where you can mute notifications, enable or disable smart notifications and package detection, check your subscription status, and configure emergency response and Call a Friend settings.
Installing and Using the Arlo Essential Indoor Camera
Installing the Essential camera was easy in testing. I already had the Arlo app from previous reviews, but if this is your first Arlo device, you’ll have to download the app and create an account. I opened the app, tapped Add New Device at the bottom of the Devices screen, and selected Essential from the Camera list. I then selected the Essential Indoor Camera, read through a couple of screens with mounting instructions, and tapped Connect Without SmartHub (you can choose to add the camera to a hub if you have one installed). I confirmed my Wi-Fi SSID, entered my Wi-Fi password, and powered up the camera. Once the privacy shield opened up I tapped continue, pressed the Sync button, and tapped Continue again when the LED began flashing blue. The app quickly found the camera, prompted me to give it a name, and updated the firmware. Once the update was finished, the installation was complete.
The Arlo Essential Indoor Camera delivered sharp 1080p video in testing. Color quality was excellent, and there was no noticeable pincushion or barrel distortion. Black-and-white night vision showed good contrast and appeared sharp out to around 10 feet.
The camera’s motion detection features worked as intended. There were no false alerts, and the camera did a great job of identifying alerts caused by people, vehicles, and pets. Sound detection also worked well. I used Alexa voice commands to view video on an Amazon Echo show and they worked perfectly every time.
An Affordable Addition to Your Arlo Setup
Intelligent alerts, voice control, the ability to work with lots of third-party devices, and a lower price than the company’s Pro models makes the Arlo Essential Indoor Camera a smart addition to your existing setup. The camera provided crisp video and accurate alerts in testing and was a snap to install. You get a three-month trial subscription to an Arlo Smart plan that gives you access to recorded video, intelligent alerts, and a handful of other features, but once the trial period is up, you’ll have to pay a monthly fee to utilize these features. If you’d rather avoid paying a monthly fee to view recorded video and you’re not already committed to the Arlo ecosystem, check out our Editors’ Choice for affordable security cameras, the Eufy Indoor Cam 2K Pan & Tilt P24, which offers local video storage, mechanical pan and tilt, motion tracking, and 2K video, all for around $50.
