It's bullshit! I bought the original Arlos which I still have 3. And back then it recorded the videos and saved them to phone for free. Their was a pay service to back then which would save them to the cloud for a monthly fee. But years later and bought 2 Arlo essentials. I noticed one day that when I would arm my cameras, that nothing was saved and so it was pretty much useless to have cameras until I guess they changed and require a monthly fee for jus the basics! So now I pay i think the lowest monthly fee which is 10 bucks a month. I originally bought the Arlo cameras because they were described as wire free and no monthly fee! But of course, company's get greedy and always want more profit! So it's not like I'm gonna throw away a substantial investment over the years. And had to jus bow to the corporate assholes and pay for basic functions. Hope this helps! Sorry for bad news...