Arlo Essential 3 2K Indoor Security Camera review

Product name: Introduction

• Type: Indoor
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi
• Ecosystems: Arlo

Arlo’s weatherproof, battery-powered cameras are great outdoors, but they’re generally quite expensive, particularly for indoor use. The Arlo Essential 3 2K Indoor Security Camera is the more sensible option for many.

It packs the same core experience into a smaller, cheaper, mains-powered body, while adding a physical privacy shield, so you can see the camera’s state at a quick glance

Image quality is excellent and the feature set is strong. But with a subscription required to unlock the camera’s best features, the ongoing cost may put some off.

Design and installation

• Wall or desk mounting
• USB-C power
• Physical privacy shield

With no battery inside, the Arlo Essential 3 2K Indoor Security Camera is considerably smaller than the battery-powered models, such as the Arlo Pro 6 2K.

Installation is simple. Put it on a desk, shelf or bookcase, connect the USB-C cable and you’re ready to go. Well, provided there’s a power socket nearby.

If you’d prefer the camera to sit out of the way from accidental knocks, the stand can be repositioned and used as a wall mount.

The standout feature is the integrated privacy shield. When recording is disabled, a plastic cover flips up and physically blocks the lens.

It’s a simple idea, but an important one for an indoor camera. The shield provides genuine privacy and makes it immediately clear whether the camera is on or off.

Features

• Subscription required for the best features
• Custom AI detection available
• Powerful object detection

The camera connects quickly to 2.4GHz or 5GHz Wi-Fi and works via the Arlo app, home to the company’s other cameras. As I’ve said before, the app remains one of Arlo’s biggest strengths. It’s polished, easy to navigate and packed with useful controls, while recorded footage is quick to find.

The big downside is that you need an Arlo Secure subscription if you want anything other than basic notifications and a live view option. Subscriptions are not cheap, either, and vary by country.

The basic plan costs £7.99 per month for one camera. It includes person, animal, package and vehicle detection, but only seven days of video history in the UK. Compared with rival services, that feels stingy.

A £11.99-per-month plan covers up to four cameras in the UK. It isn’t prominently advertised on Arlo’s website, but it can be found in the app’s subscription section.

Arlo Secure Plus costs $29.99 / £19.99 per month and supports unlimited cameras, resolutions up to 4K and 14 days of video history. It also unlocks the more advanced AI features.

In the US, Arlo Smart Aware is $9.99 a month for one camera ($19.99 a month for unlimited), and you get full resolution video, and AI Custom Detection). Smart Secure is $29.99 a month for unlimited cameras and adds 24/7 Professional Monitoring. Ultra Secure ($49.99 a month) adds 24/7 recording for up to three cameras.

The US version is better value, but Arlo subscriptions are still quite expensive.

For this 2K model, the standard Arlo Secure plan makes the most sense in the UK, as the premium AI features are clever, but they don’t feel essential.

Object detection is excellent on the basic plan. During testing, it dramatically reduced the number of unwanted motion alerts. Activity zones can cut them further, although they’re likely to prove more useful outside than indoors.

Facial recognition is available with the some subscriptions, but it can only run on one camera in an Arlo system. Realistically, it makes more sense on an outdoor camera covering an entrance.

Vehicle recognition is also included, though its usefulness indoors is limited unless something has gone very wrong.

Custom detection is the most interesting premium feature. It lets you train the camera with before-and-after images so it can identify events specific to your home, such as a door being left open.

The difference between the images needs to be fairly obvious for the feature to work reliably, but it opens up some genuinely useful possibilities.

Still, the premium additions are nice rather than necessary. The cheaper cloud plan offers the better balance.

The app provides three modes: Arm Away, Arm Home and Standby. Each can activate a different selection of cameras, which is particularly useful indoors, where you won’t want every room monitored all the time.

Modes can be selected manually, scheduled or triggered by your location. Set them up properly and the system largely looks after itself.

When recording is disabled, the privacy shield quickly snaps into place.

Recordings are easy to browse, with filters for date, camera and motion type. Events appear in a thumbnail timeline and can be watched or downloaded to your phone.

Performance

• Excellent 2K video
• Sharp footage day and night

The camera records at 2304 x 1296, which is a 2K resolution That’s a meaningful step up from Full HD, adding extra sharpness and detail without the storage and bandwidth demands of 4K.

The 130-degree field of view is wide enough to cover most of a room, provided the camera is positioned carefully.

Daytime footage is excellent. Detail remains strong across the frame, even in a busy test environment, and faces look sharp and clear.

At night, the camera switches to monochrome footage and uses infrared lighting to illuminate the room.

The main image remains sharp. Moving subjects become slightly softer, but it’s still easy to find a clear frame in which a person can be identified.

For an indoor security camera, there’s little to complain about here.

Final thoughts

The Arlo Essential 3 2K Indoor Security Camera gets the important things right.

It’s compact, easy to install and capable of recording excellent video during the day and at night. The app is superb, object detection is highly effective and the physical privacy shield adds that extra layer of comfort.

Arlo subscriptions are quite expensive (particularly in the UK), but the quality of the app and detection features may well be worth it if you want the best.

How we test

When we publish our reviews, you can rest assured that they are the result of “living with” long term tests.

Smart security cameras usually live within an ecosystem, or a range of products that – supposedly – all work in harmony. Therefore, it’s impossible to use a security camera for a week and deliver a verdict.

Because we’re testing smart home kit all day, everyday, we know what matters and how a particular camera compares to alternatives that you might also be considering.

Our reviews are comprehensive, objective and fair and, of course, we are never paid directly to review a device.

Read our guide on our review process for smart security cameras to learn more.

FAQs

Full product name: Specifications