Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight Review: One bright light around an excellent camera

I’m deep in the Arlo ecosystem, we’ve got cameras all around the house – but in terms of lighting the way, the Arlo Spotlight devices have been good, but they’re not quite the front of house floodlight of old.

Enter the Pro 3 Floodlight. This is essentially an Arlo Pro 3 camera with a big thumping battery in it surrounded by a decent sized LED light on either side.

And when I say LED light, don’t think about the little white thing that turns on to help with night vision colour on the Arlo Ultra and Pro 3 Cameras, think about the LED lights at your local sports oval. This thing is bright.

Fortunately there are serious brightness settings built into the app, so you can choose just how much light you’re flooding the yard with.

The Pro 3 Floodlight can operate as a standalone device, connecting directly to WiFi without the need for an Arlo Base station – for my review, I’ve connected the Floodlight to my existing Arlo system.

Installation is easy – a small mounting plate with just three screws into the point of installation, with the whole thing uses a single mounting system that is all in the box. It does not connect to any standard or existing mounting system – thus, I couldn’t put it onto the mount I had used for the Arlo Spotlight.

Perhaps because of the sheer size and weight of the Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight you also can’t orient the base to be on a horizontal surface, like the underside of an eve. It needs to be on a vertical surface, like the facia.

Once installed, adding to your Arlo system is easy.

However, my experience was that getting it all to integrate and work as intended wasn’t as simple as I would have liked. For the life of me the floodlight wasn’t coming on no matter what sensitivity I used for the light trigger (Bright through to Dark).

I was however getting motion alerts.

Turns out, I needed to create a new Mode setting – I called this “Floodlight motion” – the Floodlight wasn’t on or working if the whole Arlo system wasn’t armed, the floodlight wasn’t active.

I might have overlooked something here, but personally, I think the process of setting a schedule, and getting a camera to work how you want it should be a little more “what you see is what you get” in terms of the user interface. It took a real deep dive into the Arlo Mode and Scheduling system to get it going.

Now it’s working, it’s a treat. Camera quality is exceptional, and the light is proving to be fantastic for our front porch and entryway.

I’ve got it set to follow any subjects, so the video looks like it’s a pan and tilt camera, following someone as they walk – it works a charm, but given you can zoom in using a pinch, I’m not sure you need to activate that frankly.

The Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight is $449, just $30 more than the standard Pro 3 – for those with an existing Arlo system this is a fantastic addition.

If you’re just looking for a floodlight for the front of your house – this is easy to setup, and it comes with an outstanding fully wireless camera too.

I can’t comment on battery life at this early stage, only to say that Arlo have come a very long way over the years, and while right now the thing is recording motion all day while in “floodlight motion” mode that I created, I can tweak that over time to find the right mix of alerts, motion recordings and light coming on. That’s the fun of the system.

Other than the issues I had getting it to activate at the right times, there’s only one issue. It stands out. The look of the unit is very unique – unlike no floodlight you’ve seen before. It’s taking my wife some time to get used to it.

The Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight is another sign of Arlo’s continual improvement, design and innovation, well worth adding to your system, or being the gateway drug for you into a world of home security.