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Arlo has added another member to its family of home security cameras. The Arlo Baby ($249.99) is a cute-looking baby monitor that provides crisp HD video and is packed with parent-friendly features including a multi-colored night light, the ability to play lullabies, sound and motion detection, and free cloud storage for event-triggered video. However, if you require a wider view of your baby’s room, the iBaby Monitor M6S may be a better option, and remains our Editors’ Choice.
Design and Features
One look at the Arlo Baby tells you it was designed with kids in mind. As with the iBaby Monitor M6S, the white housing has a snowman-like shape, but it stands upright instead of tilted. It comes with a cute rubberized character outfit that makes it look like a bunny with green ears and feet, and there are kitten and puppy outfits available for $19.99 each. A bundle consisting of the camera and a 7-inch touch-screen display will be available soon for $329.99.
The unit measures 4.3 by 2.6 by 2.5 inches (HWD), weighs 11 ounces, and has a nice sturdy feel. The “head” contains a camera that delivers 1080p video at 30fps, has an 8X digital zoom, and a 130-degree field of view. Two infrared LEDs provide up to 15 feet of night vision. There’s a sync button on the left side of the head, and night light and music buttons on the right. The back holds a large night light that can be programmed to display one or multiple colors.
The Arlo Baby is equipped with a dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) Wi-Fi radio, a speaker and microphone array for two-way audio, and motion and sound sensors. It also has sensors that measure the temperature, humidity, and the level of VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) in your baby’s room. There’s a mini USB power port on the lower base for power, and a rechargeable internal battery that allows you to easily move the camera from room to room without having to be near an outlet.
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The camera uses the same app as the Arlo, Arlo Pro, and Arlo Q cameras and can be accessed from a PC via a web portal. As with other Arlo cameras, the Arlo Baby is idle until you activate it. Simply select it from the list of installed cameras on the home screen in the app (available for Android and iOS) and tap the Live button to launch a live stream. In addition to the live video window, there are four buttons at the top of the camera screen, including a Speaker button for turning the speaker on and off, a Nightlight button that allows you to choose a color, set a timer, and tune the light on and off, a Music button for playing a lullaby, and an Environmental button that displays the room temperature, humidity level, and VOC air quality.
The night light can be set to a single color or programmed to change colors randomly, and the lullaby feature lets you choose from dozens of songs stored in the cloud. You can also record your own voice and play it back, but you can’t play songs from your phone’s music library like you can with the iBaby M6S. Double tapping the Environmental button brings up a screen with historical readings for each sensor presented in an easy-to-understand graph.
At the bottom of the camera screen are buttons for recording video, taking a snapshot, adjusting brightness, muting audio, and enabling full-screen viewing. The Arlo Baby comes with a Basic storage plan that gives you seven days of free cloud storage for recorded video and snapshots, but you can upgrade to a 30-day plan for $9.99 per month ($99.99 per year), or a 60-day plan for $14.99 per month ($149.99 per year).
Camera settings are accessed by tapping the three dots in the top right corner of the home screen. In the Motion and Audio Settings menu you can enable alerts triggered by motion and audio, determine what happens when they are activated (do nothing, record video, take snapshot), and enable push and email notifications. At the bottom of the home screen are buttons for accessing recorded clips, a Main Settings button, and a Mode button.
The Settings button offers basic system information such as subscription type and the number of connected devices. The Mode button lets you enable/disable monitoring (motion and audio detection), set up a monitoring schedule, or enable geofencing, which uses your phone’s location service to automatically enable motion and audio monitoring when you leave the house and disable monitoring when you arrive home. The Arlo Baby supports If This Then That (IFTTT) applets, which allows it to interact with other IFTTT-enabled smart home devices such as lighting and thermostats.
Installation and Performance
Installing the Arlo Baby is easy and can be done using the mobile app or with the web-based console. Once you’ve created an account, launch the app, tap Add Device, and choose Arlo Baby from the list. Plug the camera in, and when the LED begins blinking amber, hit Continue. Select your home Wi-Fi SSID, enter its password, and press and hold the sync button on the camera for two seconds (the LED will flash blue). Hit Continue to have the app display a QR code and hold your phone a few from the camera until you hear a chime (around three seconds). After confirming that the chime has sounded, the app will need a few more seconds to connect and will prompt you to name the camera. Once named, the camera is ready to go.
As with other Arlo cameras, the Arlo Baby is a solid performer. It delivers a sharp 1080p video stream with rich colors and no obvious distortion. Black-and-white night vision is also sharp out to 15 feet, and two-way audio is clean and adequately loud, as is lullaby playback.
I received instant notifications whenever the motion and sound detectors were triggered in testing, along with video clips that looked every bit as good as the live feed. I also received several low-battery notifications after leaving the camera unplugged for a period of time. The camera’s temperature and humidity readings were in line with readings from my Nest Learning Thermostat. I created an IFTTT applet to have a lamp connected to a D-Link DSP-W110 smart switch turn on when the Arlo Baby detected motion and it worked wonderfully.
Conclusions
There’s a lot to like about the Arlo Baby 1080p HD Monitoring Camera. It’s an excellent performer that allows you to monitor your child in crisp 1080p streaming video from anywhere using a smartphone or PC, and it has a kid-friendly design. It offers all the extras you’d expect from a top-tier baby monitor, including two-way audio, lullaby playback, motion and audio detection, triggered recording, and push and email alerts. If you already use one or more of Arlo cameras for home surveillance, the Arlo Baby makes perfect sense and will not disappoint. If you’d rather fill your baby’s room with your own choice of music and want to be able to monitor the entire room, our Editors’ Choice, the iBaby Monitor M6S, remains your best bet. It too offers 1080p video, free cloud storage, and environmental sensors. It’s also less expensive and has motorized pan and tilt capabilities that let you zero in on more than just one area.
4.0
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The Arlo Baby is a feature-rich baby monitor that delivers sharp video and uses motion and sound detection to help keep an eye on your child from your phone or PC.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/arlo-baby