Arlo just announced a new, $100 smart home security camera with an integrated solar panel. It’s called the Essential Solar Security Camera, and, according to Arlo, it can run year-round without needing you to charge it.
The Essential Solar camera sounds impressive, at least hardware-wise. It outputs up to 2K video at 24 frames per second, features a fairly wide, 130-degree field of view, and has both 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi radios, so you’ve got connectivity options. It has an LED spotlight built in, as well as a microphone and speaker for two-way audio and an alarm siren. It’s IP65-rated, which means dust should stay out and it should resist direct water jets. And its solar panel is built-in, making it a tidy, all-in-one device. It comes in black or white.
Arlo says the Essential Solar camera needs as little as two hours of sunlight to enable year-round power. But I wouldn’t bank on never ever having to charge it (and Arlo doesn’t make that claim). The company says the camera can run on its 14,790mAh battery alone for up to six months—factor in its 1.2-watt solar panel to slow down battery drain, and that could easily stretch out to several more months. That all depends on your settings and how busy the area the camera is monitoring is. And if it’s anything like other Arlo cameras I’ve tested, it should have excellent build quality.
The catch is what you don’t get with this camera. It has no local storage, nor does it have features like person or package detection out of the box. For those, you’d need to subscribe to an Arlo Secure plan, which starts at $10 per month for a single camera. Those plans also let your camera detect, using AI, breaking glass, dog barks, gunshots, fire, and more. You can get local storage via one of the company’s SmartHubs, though. An Arlo representative confirmed to me via email that the Arlo Solar will work with either the $150 Arlo Ultra 2 SmartHub or the $100 Arlo Pro SmartHub, both of which let you add storage via MicroSD or USB, respectively. Of course, that costs extra, and you still won’t get object detection. 
© ArloYou can get a nearly identical experience from other smart home camera makers. Reolink, for instance, also sells the $100 Argus Solar camera, which has nearly identical specs (differences include that it only records at 15fps and has a battery rated at just 6,500mAh), but it needs no subscription for features like person, vehicle, and animal detection. It also supports an up-to-512GB microSD card for local storage. Anker sub-brand Eufy also has a $100 integrated solar camera, the SoloCam S220, which has 8GB of built-in storage and the same object recognition capabilities as Reolink’s option. Neither has package detection, though, according to listed specs. It’s all give and take.
For those already in the Arlo ecosystem or who just don’t mind the subscription-required approach of the Essential Solar Security Camera, it’s available for preorder now on Arlo’s website. The camera ships in mid-October.
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