Surveillance is getting more expensive: Arlo is turning the price of its subscriptions up a notch

The Arlo subscriptions under the name "Secure Plus" will have new prices from 17 April 2023 in Switzerland. Arlo informed its customers about this on Friday and went live with a specific page for questions and answers about the price increase - Arlo calls them price changes. The prices for single-camera subscriptions are "changing" particularly sharply. Here's an overview of the monthly prices:

• Secure Multi-Camera: 11.49 CHF => 12.90 CHF; plus 12 per cent .- Secure Plus multi-camera: 16.99 CHF => 17.90 CHF; plus 5 per cent
• Secure single camera: 3.49 CHF => 4.90 CHF; plus 40 percent
• Smart Premier multi-camera: 10.99 CHF => 12.90 CHF; plus 17 percent
• Smart Premier single camera: 2.99 CHF => 4.90 CHF; plus 64 per cent

The increase for the single camera is particularly striking. Arlo seems to want to encourage its users to take out a subscription for several cameras at once. Previously, the multi-camera option was only worthwhile for the equivalent of 3.3 cameras, but now the value has dropped to 2.6. However, anyone who only uses two cameras will still not switch to the multi-camera option. In future, this person will simply pay just under ten francs for two cameras instead of the previous six or seven.

You can avoid some of the price increases by opting for one of the newly introduced subscriptions - or a "membership", as Arlo calls it - with a term of one year. These are available at the price of ten months, so Arlo is "giving" you two months for free.

Who needs a subscription anyway?

With Arlo raising its subscription prices, some users are probably wondering whether the subscription is even worth it for them. I also addressed this question in a recent test report.

Basically, the most convenient thing is to know that Arlo will take care of storing the 2K recordings for 30 days (in the Secure subscription) or the 4K recordings for 60 days (with Secure Plus) and you can retrieve them from the cloud at any time. Alternatively, it is also possible to set up local storage, but this means hardware costs and installation effort. In the case of Arlo, you need a smart hub at least once, which is not even part of the set scope for the latest generation of systems.

Smart home hubs

115.–

Arlo SmartHub

26

One of the cheapest ways to record video without having to take out a subscription is to use a camera system with local SD cards as storage media. Below you will find two of the cameras that work in this way.

Network camera

160.–

Reolink Argus 3 Pro

2560 x 1440 Pixels

60

Network camera

263.–

Netatmo Presence

1920 x 1080 Pixels

252

You can also use the filter functions for network cameras and surveillance cameras in the product range to find the product that best meets your needs.

These articles might also interest you