I also like the Travel Mode option, which records motion to a microSD card without the need for a hub or a Wi-Fi network. Because the camera is mounted on a magnetic base, you can easily swivel it to get the best view of your backyard or porch. The camera’s wider field of view ensures greater coverage of your backyard, and it’s simple to cover multiple sides of your house. The mounting base also has a good grip on wyze security camera the bottom, and the camera is held in place by a strong magnet. After watching the video a couple of times, complete with looking at the green box to indicate where the person or motion was detected, I realized that it was a false alarm. To put the 70 lumens of brightness into perspective, consider that the Ring Spotlight Cam offers a total output of 750 lumens, or over 10 times what the Wyze Cam V3 Pro has.
Even if the power goes out, Wyze’s sensors can still communicate with the base station and set off your siren in an emergency. In addition, Wyze works well with both Google Assistant and Alexa. You can call up live camera feeds on Nest and Echo smart displays and control your Wyze smart locks with a four-digit PIN. As of now, however, you can’t arm or disarm your security system with a voice command and PIN.
While many companies are improving these — particularly by adding more transparency and removing contracts altogether — prices are still fairly high, especially for professionally installed systems. Wyze also updated the two-way audio button in the app so you no longer have to press and hold the button to talk. The audio sounded clear when I spoke from the app to the camera, but not quite as good coming from the camera to the phone. Still, it was easy to understand what was being said on both ends. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so how many words is a video worth?
I did, however, find the battery draining faster under Travel Mode. It could be due to it broadcasting its own Wi-Fi network for local access, but it just seemed to eat up the battery faster. Though it’s constructed entirely out of plastic, it’s solidly built and sturdy. There is a bit of wyze home security articulation thanks to the plastic base, which is actually fastened on via magnets to the camera. Luckily, it’s not something that can be easily taken apart, and while it can be perched along a ledge or window, it comes with the necessary mounting screws to attach it to walls or ceilings.
This means you can start recording video after connecting the hub to your network and mounting the camera to the wall or ceiling. Using the two-week free trial of Cam Plus, I created motion alerts for pets, people, and packages. Things seemed to be working fine for the first few days of testing until one morning I woke up and saw a motion alert that a person was on my back porch at 2 am. My heart began to race, as my general area has recently had several break-ins during the night. More potentially serious is that an additional post claims it is possible to view live, unencrypted video streams of Eufy cameras without needing to authenticate with a password first. PCMag.com is a leading authority on technology, delivering lab-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services.
For more information on safeguarding your home security cameras, see our guide to preventing security cameras from getting hacked. Indirectly—you can use an adapter to connect the camera’s microSD card to your computer to watch videos. But you must use the Wyze mobile app to watch live video streams and video clips in the cloud. Overall, the Wyze Video Doorbell could benefit from a wider field of view, but the camera’s video quality is probably good enough for most folks. Still, don’t expect it to outperform pricier doorbell cameras like Arlo, Google Nest, and Ring. The Wyze Video Doorbell is one of few video doorbells under $100, so it’s in uncharted territory.
Fifteen feet out from the camera, it could register movement in a forty-foot stretch from left to right. Its design is deceptive, looking like it can only see directly ahead but monitoring a much wider arc. You can bet that would-be robbers will think (incorrectly) they’re out of view as well. The Wyze Cam v3 ships with a power adapter and a 6-foot / 1.8-meter USB-to-micro-USB cable, which plugs into a rubber sleeve that protects the connection from water seepage. The camera’s built-in speaker also does a poor job of recording audio, as it can’t seem to get clear audio beyond five meters, and it’s only able to pick up noise that’s hard to understand.