I know you've seen a ton of information out there about the Wyze Cam V2 but what I
want to do today is make sure that through my review you understand who
should and shouldn't buy the Wyze cam V2. Hello Automators thanks for tuning in
again let's take some of that frustration out of automation and make
sure that if you're buying one of these number one you're ready and you know
what it can do and you're also one of the people that I think should buy one
of these because there is a bit of a differential between the type of person
who's going to love the Wyze Cam and someone who's going to love something
like a nest cam first off what is the Wyze cam V - well it's a smart home
camera that does just about everything you would expect it to do but it does
free 12 second recordings it has a local storage option for recordings that are
longer as well and it even has an an RTSP streaming option that you can go
ahead and put on to this device it's also capable of sending out all kinds of
notifications and we'll talk about what it can do right now it can see in the
day it can see in the night it can record locally and it can record into to
the cloud as well it is capable of sensing people it is capable of sensing
sounds and it is capable of sensing other motion as well you can trigger
notifications off of all of those different things and you can stream to
now the Google assistant and Amazon's voice assistant here so it is fully
integrated at this point although you cannot drive automation in a native way
out to these devices so you can't have this see something in the drive
automation through Google or Amazon and again not natively and not just yet it
is capable of time-lapse videos and you can download those time-lapse videos it
is also capable of recording locally indefinitely onto the storage card so it
can act like a true security camera indefinitely in your home or even on the
road Wyze has also made it entirely possible to drive automation out of the
cameras and also into the cameras here through if this than that
they've given you both trigger events through maybe you see an event you hear
an event and you want to trigger some other kind of automation in your home or
you can also trigger these to start cloud recordings you can also trigger
them to turn on and off and change notifications and things like that
through if this than that and with the new capability of pairing
their Wyze sense system which you see over here which is another $20 add-on
here this system you know you're able to trigger a lot of different events as
well what do I like about the Wyze Cam well let's start with the price it's $20
us and we'll talk internationally in a bit here but the why cents is also very
aggressively priced the different sensors if you ever want to add those on
they are five and six dollars respectively after you have a twenty
dollar starter kit here you're getting a lot for forty dollars us when you
consider that the new Wyze bulbs are priced aggressively as well and with all
of that you're getting quite the package when you consider everything that this
camera can do probably my favorite feature on the whole device is actually
local recording that option in that capability is so important to this
camera and really the smart home industry in general there are so few
options out there for local recording you put a microSD card in here you have
to be careful with which kind you do don't cheap out as what I'll kind of
tell you and you know you have to format it a certain way but this isn't a hard
thing to do and once you have that on there you're getting longer recording so
it's not just that 12 second cloud recording which could trigger too early
to catch the part of the event you want but you also have that local storage
here from Wyze the last thing that I really love about these Wyze Cams is you
know Wyze's approach to the whole smart home market it it aligns very
closely to me and I think it's really important to talk about that they are
trying to make these devices accessible and so you know when I look at devices
like this and and Isis priced at five and six dollars u.s.
you know they are clearly trying to make this accessible for everyone and that is
a really important thing to me now there's drawbacks to that and on that
note let's talk about some of the drawbacks of this device you know really
what I'm gonna boil this down to for you is that this is a bit of a project
camera this is not something that you are going to set and forget at least not
yet and again with the development cycle and
let Wyze is trying to do their putting new features in all the time we've kind
of already talked about person detection but you know you get a new feature like
that how does it work is it really hitting all the notes that
you need it to so a couple examples of this the event triggers you know motion
triggering here on these devices you're going to have to play with those
settings for yourself this is not a PIR sensor so it senses light changes and
you're really going to have to dial down your motion sensing triggers off of this
and that's one of the reasons person detection is so important but even as
Wyze released that personal detection it's not a perfect situation it's not a
perfect feature and they are struggling getting it to work it's going to take
them time so again you have to play with these settings now that also it goes
into the sound settings or the sound triggers you know they have the seal and
the smoke detection capabilities but you have to have the standard kind of smoke
and co sound the scheduling system for turning on and off these cameras are
turning on and off the notifications it's not very good but what is very good
is the shortcut system and if this than that capabilities you can now schedule
much better using that but again that's a little bit of a project for you
without a local SD card which again is my favorite feature on the camera but
without that you will miss a lot of the events it starts when it sees someone
drive up to your home if it's sitting outside and unfortunately by the time
they get out of the car that twelve second recording is done and there's a
five minute cooldown the RTSP option that we talked about it
works for some but for the most part and just
everyone I've talked to it essentially breaks your camera and finally if you're
in the international markets the pricing is not anywhere near the same I mean
I've heard Australia at $80 here in Canada were 40 to 50 to get a Wyze Cam
v2 so you have to keep that in mind as you look at these products they're not
being sold directly by Wyze either so the support system is a little bit
different although I have always gotten support from Wyze as best they could
now clearly Wyze is sitting on pins and needles as to whether or not they have
our seal of approval here from automate your life the honest truth is of course
they do this is a fantastic product at that $20 u.s. price point and even here
in Canada when I spend the 40 to 50 to go get one of these I'm not feeling bad
about this what you do have to keep in mind all the time is that this is a
little bit of a project and it is not going to be as set-and-forget so if
you're looking for something to set and forget go look at a Nest Cam that's my
honest opinion or an Arlo, or a Ring Cam, go look at those cameras and go
buy one you're going to pay extra but you won't have the setup and the
tweaking and the configuration and all the playing that you will with a Wyze
Cam because you will have those things with this of course here on automate
your life we have a playlist that you're seeing on screen that will help you set
up configure and really make this the best piece of automation in your smart
home so go ahead start watching those and you'll really narrow down on how you
want to use one of these Wyze Cams in your smart home until next time everyone
don't hate, automate.