If you didn’t know, you would think this was taking video of this intruder at dusk instead of the dead of night. Follow the simple in-app instructions to pair the camera with the base station, and you’re ready to record. Once connected, the app will tell you to go where you’d like to install the camera and it will test the connectivity in that location. I installed mine over my garage which was about 30 feet from the base station in my office, and the connectivity was excellent. Wyze Cam Pan had all the features I enjoyed in Wyze Cam V2, including night vision, adjustable motion detection, and two-way audio. This is somewhat unusual in the industry – likely because some folks consider it antiquated or unnecessary.
That feature’s available on Wyze Cam v3 now, and it’s coming to the company’s other cameras as part of their next firmware update. By the middle of February, Wyze will roll out 30-second rewind and skp forward buttons to help users zip through footage stored on a microSD card faster. The company believes this approach will improve the overall experience, though it said it will incur significant cloud costs as a result. As such, while it won’t make users pay for those features, it’s hoping they’ll contribute what they can to help cover the costs for everyone. Until now, Wyze cameras have captured 12-second clips as often as every five minutes when they detect an event, and those recordings are stored for up to 14 days. Wyze is moving that feature to its subscriptions, though, you’ll need to opt in to the Cam Plus or Cam Plus Lite plan to keep using cloud recordings.
You’re just going to need to find your home’s router and plug the station in using the provided ethernet cable. Plug it into a wall outlet, follow your in-app instructions, and you’re ready to set the camera up. For the low price of $19.99, this one was pretty hard to beat in its heyday. But as I just mentioned above, its successor, Wyze Cam V3 and now V3 Pro, come with more features than V2, like person detection, and they even work outdoors.
However, with a microSD card, you get continuous recording and event recording, both of which are stored on your card. This latest version of Wyze Labs’ highly affordable outdoor security camera offers a significant bump in video resolution and impressively effective smart detection features (provided you spring for a subscription). During our testing, this compact camera recorded sharp 2K images to a microSD card during the day as well as at night, thanks to its array of eight night-vision infrared LEDs. It also has an 8X digital zoom, which allows you to pinch to expand live and recorded images on the app for a closer look. We also found its motion alerts to be accurate, with the ability to distinguish between people, pets, and general motion.
Ultimately, deciding which camera is best for you may depend on how conspicuous you want it to be and what you want it to record. Daytime color quality is excellent, and 1080p video appears sharp and distortion-free. The color night vision feature also works well, but as we’ve seen with other cameras, colors aren’t quite as vibrant as what you get during the daylight hours or when a room is brightly illuminated. Here you can also enable settings that will have the camera begin recording and send a push alert when it detects the sound of a smoke or CO alarm. Use the Schedules and Automations settings to create rules to have the camera interact with other Wyze devices and to create notification schedules.
Download the firmware for the model of camera you want to use from Wyze’s site, insert a MicroSD card onto your computer, and drag the firmware file onto it. Eject the MicroSD card from your computer, insert it into the camera, then plug the camera into your computer. This may sound complicated if you’re unfamiliar with the word firmware, but don’t worry, it’s almost as easy as installing an app on your computer. If your computer doesn’t have an SD card reader, you can get an adapter that plugs into either a USB A or USB-C port. A 32 GB card isn’t huge compared to the 128 GB cards you can buy for less than $20, but Wyze says it’s enough to hold up to two days of continuous HD video or eight days of SD video.
Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology. The front of the camera holds the lens, a microphone, and an LED indicator. The LED glows solid blue when everything is connected and working properly, and flashes red and blue during the setup process. There’s a speaker located at back of the camera, along with a hardwired USB power cable, and the bottom holds a micro SD card slot and a reset button, both of which are protected by rubber covers. I’m PCMag’s expert on fitness and smart home technology, and I’ve written more than 6,000 articles and reviews in the 10-plus years I’ve been here.
The Speak button initiates two-way talk, while the Photo button takes a still image of the current view. Wyze finally issued patches for the SD card vulnerability in a January 29th update, the likes of which fixed the issue for its V2 and V3 cameras. However, Wyze stopped supporting its V1 camera in February, meaning that no more security updates are possible for those cameras and they will always be vulnerable to this uniquely intrusive security risk. Indeed, it appears that the company actually retired the V1 because “hardware limitations” prevented it from effectively issuing a security update to patch these vulnerabilities. If you want to use the Wyze Cam or Wyze Cam Pan as a webcam, the process is actually pretty simple.
The previous version only had a 93-degree vertical range, but otherwise, the two cameras feature comparable specs. Since it’s a bit more flexible, the new version is also easier to mount inverted on a wall or ceiling. One nifty feature — though not new — is that you can set the camera to continuously monitor a room in a constant pattern by setting four waypoints. Unless you have the Abode Smart Security Kit, you can skip the Abode Cam 2. It looks a lot like the Wyze Cam v3 (and has a similar price tag), but it lacks motion-sensitivity settings and has no free storage.
The panel itself attaches using a plastic collar, and from there it can be angled in any direction to catch the most rays. There’s quite a bit of lag, depending on how far away you are from the camera, and the onboard speaker is pretty quiet. Unless someone wyze home security is standing very close to the camera, they may not be able to make out what you’re trying to say, and the latency will make having a conversation with that person all but impossible. The AI features on the Wyze Cam v3 pro are also really impressive.