Researching outside home security cameras. What do you recommend? Two of my friends are using Arlo's.

Get something with some good resolution some of those things you can hardly tell if its a human or a dog.

Good point. Do you have any recommendations?

Arlo Pro 2 HD is good and easy to use. You may want to pay $99/year for the fantastic recording service.

The Lorex 4K wired offerings from Costco are quite good.

Arlo batteries last quite a while, in my case at least 6 months. It comes with a charger and they also can be wired. I just rotate my cameras around to the wired position from time to time. Super easy as they are magnetic mount.

While a little expensive, look at Deep Sentinel. Requires subscription.

They are cameras that have AI to determine if there is a situation needing attention, the monitoring company will then review the video and then call the police if needed.

Are you open to wired setups? I'd suggest going with POE cameras, I've used Dahua and Hikvision cameras with good results.

Gotta be wireless

I have three dahua starlight cameras around my house and they have been 100% reliable in all weather conditions. Have you thought of having a custom camera solution with poe cameras and a dedicated recording computer with a program such as blue iris?

I have no idea what you’re talking about. But it sounds interesting.

I have D-Link cameras. You have to pay the extra to get the HD cameras but they are worth the extra $. I found free D-Link monitoring software on their UK website and have that installed on an old PC that I use as a dedicated recorder. Took a while get that working but it's been working great for a few years. Night vision is a problem. Had some flowers go missing on a new plant in the front of my yard and there wasn't enough resolution at night to see the culprit.

We have the basic Ring; we got it a a Christmas present.
Really simple install; works with doorbell or alone.

It is a good start.

I looked at dozens of cams. didn't like ones that had storage servers in china, charged you $$ per camera per month, etc

I chose Sens8. cheaper for a set of cams than a single one with the "BRAND" names. storage on Google drive or Dropbox - not proprietary
servers and certainly no charge. Remote phone access to stored videos and live views and best of all, they
have an auto-alarm option that turns on the cams (all of them if needed) when you drive a distance away.

no clicking, forgetting, automatic like they all should be.

then there's a side benefit to DropBox/GoogleDrive. Keep all your data/phone/surveillance backup under one site
with one password and one click of your phone/tablet/laptop.

A friend of mine with the Wisconsin State Police has a Swann system in his house.

I figured that if it is good enough for him, it's good enough for me, too. I got mine on Amazon.

Definitely get good resolution cameras - fuzzy images are worthless!!

I just setup a Lorex 4K digital NVR for my store and the field of view and resolution is astonishing. One camera doing the work of 3.

My wife's parents have a couple of Arlo Pro cameras, and seem to like them. I like that they can turn notifications for a given camera on or off as needed.