Arlo has long been one of the best home security camera brands, with its excellent video quality and a huge selection for every conceivable scenario a homeowner or renter might face. The company’s latest product, the Arlo Wired Floodlight Camera, continues this trend with two improvements over the company’s Wireless Floodlight: adjustable floodlights and hardwired power.
It’s even $100 cheaper than its battery-powered sibling, giving Arlo a stronger foothold in the increasingly crowded floodlight security camera field. As great as this security camera is, most of its features require an Arlo Secure subscription, including recording and saving security footage. This shines a light on Arlo’s increasingly absurd subscription plans, which have lost a lot of their appeal thanks to two hefty price increases in the last two years.
Arlo Wired Floodlight Camera
The Arlo Wired Floodlight Camera’s adjustable lights produce excellent nighttime video quality in addition to outstanding daytime performance. It’s a shame that this product requires one of the most expensive subscriptions among home security cameras to reach its full potential.
- Bright, adjustable floodlights
- No battery to charge
- Excellent video quality
- Requires Arlo’s overpriced subscription
- Installation may require an electrician
- Motion always triggers the floodlight after dark
Price, availability, and specs
You can buy the Arlo Wired Floodlight Camera for $150 on Home Depot and Arlo’s websites. It’s cheaper than Arlo’s Wireless Floodlight Camera and wired models from Google Nest and Ring. Eufy sells a few floodlight cameras for about the same price, while Wyze, Blink, and Tapo are typically available for around $100 or less. Arlo Wired Floodlight Camera comes in black and white colorways.
Arlo requires Arlo Secure cloud storage plans for all of its cameras, which are available through monthly or annual subscriptions. Monthly plans range from $10 to $30 ($8 to $25 for the first year), while annual plans cost between $100 and $300 ($80 and $250 for the first year). The cheapest plan covers only basic motion event recording on a single camera, with higher plan tiers progressively adding unlimited cameras, smart motion detection, and emergency response features.
Arlo Secure plan prices are the highest among the top home security camera brands, outpacing Ring, Wyze, Eufy, Tapo, Reolink, and Google Nest.
What’s good about the Arlo Wired Floodlight Camera?
Articulating floodlights make a big difference
The Arlo Wired Floodlight’s two articulating floodlights can point anywhere in your yard, which means it’s useful as a security camera and as general outdoor lighting. This addresses one of my biggest complaints about the solid light bar on the Arlo Wireless Floodlight — previously marketed as the Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight Camera. While a light bar reduces moving parts and weight, it’s locked in the direction of the camera lens and is not always helpful for backyard barbecues.
Read our review
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Cameras and floodlights are the new chocolate and peanut butter
Unsurprisingly, the Arlo Wired Floodlight’s other notable improvement over the Wireless Floodlight is that it wires directly into your home’s electrical grid for a constant power source. You don’t need to charge a battery or lower the brightness to keep the camera running longer. Still, the Wired Floodlight’s need for an electrical junction box limits the number of suitable installation spots compared to the Wireless Floodlight.
Arlo rarely disappoints with video quality, and the Arlo Wired Floodlight Camera is no exception. During nighttime testing, I was impressed by the spotlights’ brightness. They showed clear details when I stood close to the camera, though the image quality is predictably lower past 30 or 40 feet. The motion sensor triggers the camera around 30 feet and instantly turns on the floodlights.
While the camera supports infrared night vision, you’ll rarely see it in motion-activated recordings, which always use the floodlights. Still, the level of detail was good in this mode whenever I viewed a live feed or manually turned off the floodlights. Despite the powerful lighting and infrared night vision, video recordings and live feeds look sharpest during the day. I’ve yet to find a security camera where nighttime video looks better, so I won’t hold it against Arlo.
As for audio quality, I found the onboard speaker loud enough to speak with people within range of the motion sensor, but it won’t throw your voice across the yard. Audio in recordings yielded similar performance and was clear enough to understand voices.
The Arlo Secure app is generally easy to use, with a customizable home screen with widgets for various features. My favorite widget turns on the floodlights without viewing the camera’s live video feed. You can access the settings menu from the camera’s live feed or on the Devices tab to adjust recording options. However, the floodlight settings are more interesting: brightness, lighting duration, and how dark it gets outside before the lights turn on each night.
Depending on the plan you choose, you can use the Emergency tab to request an emergency response or customize smart motion detection features for vehicles, people, animals, and packages. Arlo also uses AI for people and vehicle recognition, which can help you quickly identify frequent visitors. While these features are helpful, they’re also partly responsible for Arlo’s recent subscription price increases, so I have mixed feelings about whether they are worth the money.
What’s bad about the Arlo Wired Floodlight Camera?
An electrician is optional, but a subscription isn’t
A subscription has always been par for the course for Arlo security cameras, but its latest prices are easily the highest in the industry. In recent years, it seems like Arlo Secure and Ring Protect have been competing for the most expensive subscription and the theoretical maximum price consumers are willing to pay for cloud video storage.
Locking smart detection behind a $20 tier is excessive for a feature that marginally improves notifications and makes it easier to sort through cloud video recordings. The high price likely stems from person and vehicle recognition, which requires more server resources than typical smart motion detection triggers that identify generic subjects instead of specific people. Unlike older Arlo cameras, the Wired Floodlight Camera doesn’t currently support Arlo’s base station, which is the only way to unlock local video storage. Arlo’s FAQ says compatibility is in development but doesn’t provide a timeline.
While you can turn off specific types of smart motion detection notifications in the app, you can’t do it directly from the settings menu for individual devices. Instead, the Emergency or Routines tabs must be accessed, which aren’t obvious places to look. This isn’t the first time I’ve struggled with roundabout user interfaces in the Arlo Secure app, but I wish Arlo would put some shortcuts in predictable locations.
Installing a hardwired floodlight camera is an intermediate DIY project, meaning most people can do it with the right tools and safety precautions. The Arlo Wired Floodlight Camera requires a 4-inch junction box on a wall or ceiling to function, as well as some basic electrical work. While you can swap it with an existing floodlight or porch light, you’ll need to turn off the breaker and use a ladder since most exterior junction boxes are high above the ground. I recommend hiring an electrician or installer if you lack the proper tools and know-how to work safely with home wiring.
Although I realize that the point of a floodlight camera is to have bright beams of glorious light, I question why this camera even has infrared night vision, since the floodlights illuminate whenever something triggers an event recording. The only practical reason for black-and-white night vision seems to be for looking at an empty yard in the dark or subjects beyond the range of motion detection. I’d like the option to deactivate the floodlights on a schedule or for motion triggers like animals, but I doubt this will bother most people.
Should you buy it?
It’s an excellent camera, but the subscription is hard to swallow
The Arlo Wired Floodlight is an excellent midrange alternative to pricier cameras from Google Nest, Ring, and Eufy. Its bright floodlights help it record detailed color video at night, though the daytime video quality is even better. While the installation process is a little more advanced than typical security cameras, the Arlo Wired Floodlight isn’t much more difficult to mount than a simple exterior light fixture. Still, some folks might prefer an electrician over a DIY installation. The Arlo Secure app is easy to use, though it needs to make notification settings for individual cameras easier to find.
Unfortunately, the Arlo Wired Floodlight Camera’s affordable hardware isn’t enough to offset the high cost of its unavoidable cloud subscription. If you’re really committed to saving money on floodlight cam hardware and video storage, a budget brand like Tapo is worth considering.
Arlo Wired Floodlight Camera
The Arlo Wired Floodlight Camera’s adjustable lights produce excellent nighttime video quality in addition to outstanding daytime performance. It’s a shame that this product requires one of the most expensive subscriptions among home security cameras to reach its full potential.
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