Best value home security camera: A low-cost smart camera to monitor your home.

The Peace of Mind When Not Home With Wyze Cameras

Being able to check on your home when you are away from home provides invaluable peace of mind that everything is okay. The main catalyst for my need to have eyes on the inside of my home was when I got pets. Between the cat and the dog, it was nice to be able to check up on them when I was at work.

It started with a single Wyze Camera V2, that I purchased to keep an eye on our new puppy while crate training, but quickly turned into wanting a camera in every main room of the house and even a few mounted outside. Not only do these cameras provide a visual portal to your rooms when away, but they also provide CO2 and smoke detecting capabilities. That is, if the camera detects CO2 or smoke, it will alert you via the app and start recording. The additional safety notifications were a welcome benefit.

I have since added 3 Wyze Cam V2s to the exterior of my home. They are mounted with a cute little bird house that acts as an exterior cover and mount. I also have 3 Wyze Pan Cams inside. The Pan Cams, as the name suggests, allow you to move the camera to get different views. They also feature a motion tracking system, that works fairly well, but I do not have much need for that feature.

The cameras all offer 1080p resolution and night vision. The quality is acceptable for the low price of these cameras. The quality is good enough to just make sure everything is okay. Depending on the lighting, it would be difficult to make out a license plate number on a car, but the make and model of a car could be identified easily.

Wyze Cameras can also be automated via the Wyze app. An example of this would be turning off interior cameras when I get home and turning them back on when I leave for work, as I do not need the interior cameras to be on while home. To achieve this, the cameras are also able to be grouped. I have them grouped by inside cameras and outside cameras. This also allows for unified live viewing of camera groups on one screen.

As you would expect, Wyze cameras will record when they detect motion. This adjustable feature will record 10 seconds to Wyze cloud security platform. Wyze offers a subscription to increase that 10 seconds, though. I did not want a subscription-based security system. Fortunately, all Wyze cameras have a MicroSD card slot that allows for continuous recording. This bypasses the need for a Wyze subscription. That being said, SD cards are known for failing. High-quality SD cards can fail, even if that is less likely. If increased video retention is needed, I would not recommend this setup. Something that records to an actual hard drive would be a better option.  

Verdict

Overall, the Wyze cameras provide an adequate experience at a low cost compared to some other smart home cameras. The ability to automate the cameras with the Wyze app makes them flexible and customizable to fit almost any home camera need. They are far from perfect, but the cost to features ratio is siding with favorability.

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