Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2018
I have to say I was skeptical about a camera in this price range... but I am happy to say that this is one time where the quality and functionality of a product excels far beyond its price point. I have both the Wyze Cam and the Wyze Cam Pan. In fact, I have several now and plan to purchase several more. These cameras are incredible! If you read nothing more than this, I recommend them 100%, love their function and quality, and absolutely will buy more of these Wyze Cams! Worth every dime... and then some!
I have used other more expensive cameras and have honestly NOT achieved the same quality of results on many fronts... The Wyze Cam has, thus far, beat them all and is my current favorite! I have the $230 Nest Cam that I use to watch the interior living area of my home... While the Nest cam has a great picture, the Wyze Cam is arguably BETTER! When compared side-by-side, the Wyze Cam is not only clearer and sharper (admittedly by a slim margin), it's more reliable and provides faster frame-rates. My Nest Cam is a great camera, don't get me wrong, but it disconnects often and the video is very often choppy. When I compare the two, I have to honestly say that my Wyze Cam has far les lag, better frame-rates, and remains connected far more consistently. It was also easier to setup than the Nest Cam.
The Wyze Cam's audio is fair. The positive is that it is clear and crisp... Compared to my Nest Cam, I would say the Wyze Cam is slightly louder and more clear; Both when transmitting audio and receiving it. It's not perfect. It does drop out a bit at times when communicating, but I've found it easier to use with less issues than my more-expensive Nest camera. Wyze Cam for the win here, but just barely.
Night vision quality is surprisingly beautiful! Clear, crisp and bright! No exaggeration. Excellent quality video! Compared to my Nest Cam, they both are about the same... but I think I have to give the edge to Wyze Cam (for sharpness of image and better contrast).
I also love that Wyze Cam is compatible to IFTTT, Tiny Cam PRO, and Alexa. My Echo Show, Spot and FireTV devices all pull up the Wyze Cam images quickly.
We had been looking at upgrading our fire alarms to smart alarms, but that is an expensive option... Wyze Cam saves the day a bit here because it can listen for both fire alarm and carbon monoxide alarms and then send a push notification to your phone when they go off! Too cool! Yeah, it's not as robust as the full solutions a smart alarm provides but it's completely unexpected from a camera like this and an awesome bonus benefit! Now, even though we don't have smart fire alarms, Wyze Cam is picking up the slack here and giving us a free smart option as a bonus. LOVE IT! It works too!
The motion tracking and push notify alerts work well also. Currently, I use the cams for security solutions and to make sure my 85 year old mom with Dementia stays safe at night and during the day. I have the motion tracking set to send me an alert when she's up at night, so that I can make sure she safely gets to the bathroom and back to bed. The sound tracking is also a great feature and has alerted me when mom needed help in her room and I would not have otherwise heard her. My wife and I also use the app in a "baby monitor" function that works perfectly.
Using the Tiny Cam PRO app, we can easily pull up ALL of our cameras on the bedroom or living room TV to see what's happening around the house and yard, and even add a little picture-in-picture view on the screen, if we need to watch the front door for the pizza guy while we watch our movie. This is exactly the kind of cool stuff I was hoping a camera solution would provide for us and this one does it and doesn't break the bank.
I am so pleased with the options and functionality of this camera. It's hard to believe it costs no more than $30.
Are there any negatives? Well, I can't say there's much of anything to complain about at this price point. I have a couple of Zmodo cameras that have decent image quality, but they only work with their proprietary app, they are NOT compatible with Alexa or Tiny Cam PRO and they can't be detected on my router which make it difficult to find work arounds to make them work with other programs, and they have no sound! They also require purchase of a cloud subscription if you want to use them as legitimate security cameras. They also disconnect a lot... I also paid double for them what I paid for the Wyze Cam, so it's a no-brainer... Wyze Cam beats just about every camera I've tried thus far.
I do wish they had an outdoor cam, BUT... I've actually been using these outside WITH ZERO ISSUES! I went on Amazon and purchased weatherproof encasements for the cameras, added a dab of silicon to the plugin port on the back to keep the water out, and mounted the cams. They work AWESOME! Super clear images and fantastic night vision quality! I've used both the Wyze Cam and the Wyze Cam Pan OUTSIDE with virtually no problems...
Yep, I said virtually no problems... Actually, it's not fair to call them "problems" considering these cameras aren't technically intended for outdoors at all, but I did notice a few things...
One, the motion tracking on the Wyze Cam Pan is a bit too sensitive, even when dialed down on the app. It wants to follow everything (i.e. grass moving in the wind, a bug flying by, or when inside it picks up the ceiling fan moving and the dog running around, etc.). You can setup zones for the camera to rotate and auto pan to, which is very cool, but with motion tracking on, it tends to screw up the routine a bit, sometimes leaving the cam to stair at a wall for a bit. These are slight annoyances. On the positive side, the sensitivity of motion tracking is also a plus! It most certainly will catch the slightest movement.... and, when using IFTTT the camera doubles as a motion sensor. Wait... I'm supposed to be talking about negatives.
The second negative (slight negative) is the sound of the rotation motor on the Wyze Cam Pan. It's not annoyingly loud in the room, but it can be heard rather loudly when remotely viewing the camera feed or playing back a recording. Not a deal-breaker at all for me... just something that I noticed.
Thus far I haven't really noticed any clouding up of the lens or anything like that (when using outdoors), but winter isn't quite yet upon us, so we'll see how it fairs... We have had a couple of rain pours and wind storms and the camera is doing just fine.
The night vision LED's are not too noticeable when looking at the camera, but they are very bright towards their intended function; to light up the room or area. They work splendidly! But, I have noticed that if the camera is fixed next to objects that are close in range (especially outside like the overhand of a roof), there tends to be reflection of the light emitting from the IR LEDs in the dark and can tend to wash out the image a bit when night vision is engaged. The picture quality without the night vision is actually very good on its own as long as there are some decent external light sources around, such as porch lights and such. I actually run the Pan camera in the back yard at night without night-vision because the image is usually more visible without the night-vision reflection issues. In the house, however, there are no issues with night vision that I've noticed.
We use a Wyze Cam mounted a couple of feet above our front door and that way can watch anyone walking up to the door AND can two-way chat with them!!! Considering alternative options like The Ring cost upwards of $200 and $300, this is just crazy to achieve basically the same thing for $25 bucks!
TOTALLY HAPPY with this product and highly recommend it. Yes, there are other cameras that have even better quality image and, yes, you pay for that too. Yes, there are other camera systems that provide a more stable, reliable connection and, again, you're gonna pay for those benefits as well. But, my goodness, when a camera costs only about $25 to $35 bucks with all the amazing features these cameras offer, it's nearly impossible to complain about anything.
They enabled me to setup a virtually complete security camera solution for my entire house (as well as a great monitor solution for my elderly parent) and a communication device that enables me to drop-in and chat with anyone in any room of the house (including my pets) while away from home. So cool and I did it all without having to shell out hundreds of dollars, complicated setup and laying cables everywhere.
If you're on the fence about whether or not to try one of these cams, just get it! You can't lose for the price! You will be happy... And the quality is nothing to sniff at. These are so surprisingly fantastic that they give my $230 Nest security cam a run for it's money! They work with popular devices like Alexa, IFTTT, TinyCam Pro and the IP addresses are easily view-able from your home network solution so you may be able to get them to work with other apps not mentioned here. These are easy to work with all the way... and the company keeps the firmware updated and running perfectly. I also think they are probably far more secure than a lot of the other Chinese cheapo cams out there that virtually require you to stay connected to a Chinese cloud server somewhere. With the Wyze cam, you can put in an SD card and use it the same as a cloud system, but it's local and secure. They're also based out of Seattle, WA, and the free cloud service option that includes 14 days of limited recording uses Amazon's AWS servers.
The app could do with some upgrades. I wish it had different mult-view, maybe some widgets, and I wish it had a better TV-formatted solution, but apps like TinyCam PRO ans Amazon's Alexa and FireTV fills in where the Wyze app lacks a bit for now. It would also be great to select multiple motion detection areas, rather than just one per camera, but it's not a big deal. Like I said, hard to complain when the cost is this affordable. It does a LOT for the money!
Thanks Wyze Cam for an awesome product!!!!!!
