Cam V3 Pro = Free Edge AI... but Cam V4 = Paid Edge AI... ?!

Cameras
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It’s reeeaaally not a good look when you have a product line, like the cameras, where you can see the obvious upgrades and improvements as the different models are released… except for when features are not technically taken away on the newest camera… no no, much worse… monetized instead. Furthermore there’s conflicting information from the support staff on whether the V4’s Edge AI is supposed to be included for free or not… oye vey…

It’s one thing to add a feature to a model in your product line and then remove it on the new model for [reasons]… but to realize that the feature could be a cash-cow, then silently putting the same feature behind a monthly paywall on the new model for no apparent reason other than greed… AND including support staff that contradict each other on this topic… is just… I mean… from a customer perspective, it seems pretty vile, greedy, and just anti-consumer…

If I’m wrong somehow, please then… make it make sense?

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V3 pro costs a lot more than the v4. The main difference spec wise is the onboard AI in the v3 Pro vs cloud AI of the v4.

You can choose your pricing model, pay up front or over time.

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This is a subject that @Crease and I have heavily criticized Wyze for. In our opinion (and many others) Edge AI [especially on the V4] should be free and this remains on my very short list of their failures, along with allowing Edge AI on the V3Pro, but not notifications for it, only labels, which I also think is absurd to restrict.

Having said that, I can still answer your questions from their perspective.

That is an individual rep’s fault for not knowing the policies. After hassling Wyze over this issue, the documentation is now pretty clear that Edge AI is not intended to be free for the V4.

Keep in mind I disagree with Wyze’s decision on this matter, but I can give you their rationales for doing this. First I will quote their support article and then I will quote their response to this question I posted in an Ask Me Anything Event they held:

There is a little more in this support article for the V4:

Then I asked them about this same topic in a recent AMA:

Note that I am not saying those responses make it “Make sense” to the desired standard, but I am simply trying to relay the rationales they have offered. I still think they should have made it free or not brought up the fact that it has Edge AI because it feels like a slap in the face to many users that they have it available, but paywalled it. They should’ve just pretended that their Cloud AI is faster on this device but not said why.

Anyway, don’t shoot the messenger. I have probably done more to bring this dissatisfaction to their attention than possibly anyone else and I will certainly continue to advocate for free Edge AI. There are plenty of other reasonable reasons to get their subscriptions for people who want them, but IMO with so many of their competitors offering free edge AI and doing okay with revenue still, they should be doing the same.

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I think what @carverofchoice wrote is fair: I’ve definitely been critical of Wyze about this for a while in multiple topics.[1] Wyze’s public messaging about what Cam v4 does and does not offer without a subscription has been muddled, at best, and they’ve done some clean-up to make it potentially less confusing, though there’s still information out there from Wyze that doesn’t really provide a clear answer.

I want to add a couple of points:

  1. My big complaint (especially when this feature is available without additional charge at a comparable base product price from competitors) is the lack of included (i.e., “free”) person detection, which Wyze really gave mixed messages about for a long time before cleaning up some (but not all) of their public-facing materials describing the product’s features and capabilities.
  2. Whether the person detection is included without a subscription or not, at least one Help Center article says that the Edge AI feature is “supporting Smart Focus.” If that’s an accurate statement (and often Help Center articles have inaccuracies), then it’s absolutely fair to say that Edge AI is not a pay-only feature for Cam v4. (I’m trying to give them a little credit here.)

I’m not apologizing for Wyze at all, because this still rubs me the wrong way. That same Help Center article still says this:

Edge AI Person Detection is included with Wyze Cam v4 and Wyze Cam v3 Pro, powered by the cameras’ on-board chip, rather than relying on the cloud.

Uh…sure…except that “rather than” should probably more accurately say “while still (in Cam v4’s case)”.

I share your frustration.

  1. This one has pretty extensive discussion, including pointing out where Wyze “corrected” messaging as that topic evolved, and it also links to other places where I’ve been critical of this particular feature absence. ↩︎

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I agree it was really confusing for a while after launch, but my point was that at this point support reps should generally be able to tell that it’s not included. I can see how there is still some potential ambiguity in the documentation now that you point it out though.

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Oh, yeah, for sure. This far out they should all be on the same page. :+1:

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One thing i come out with in these forums are that people want a thousand dollar camera for cheap and free monitoring. If wyze gave away free cameras and free monitoring there would still be people that would want more. If you want the thousand dollar systems and pay higher monitoring fees then no one is making you stay with wyze. For my needs wyze is the best in my price point. Are there problems yes, but on most things they are great.

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That’s the point I try to make here constantly. They are far from perfect, nor do they have every feature I could ever want. But at the price I wanted to pay and for my needs in a relatively safe area that doesn’t see much of anything camera worthy, they were perfectly for MY needs. Others needs may vary, and people shouldn’t come and complain because they didn’t do their research. At this point I’m still under $200 and I have 9 cams and most of them have 128G High Endurance SD cards in them. A v4 cam for $20 or an OG cam for $10 (black friday prices, probably will hit that again), I mean how can you argue with that or expect them not to have a “freemium” model?

Hell I’d be pissed if I paid $50 to $80 for a Blink cam and then found out you need to pay a (much higher than Wyze) monthly subscription just to be able to delete multiple clips at once, and on top of that need a separate module to record to USB drive and there is no continuous recording option, even when you hardwire them. It won’t even auto-overwrite the USB, you have to take it out and format it (or sit there and delete the clips one by one which would take hours). Image quality is ok during the day but garbage at night.

That is not aimed at OP, looks like they have done their research and their complaint that Wyze makes it confusing is valid, I was also confused about v3 vs OG when I first was shopping for them. Then v3 Pro vs v4, the v4 has less features, but I guess they figured the “Pro” would denote that.

Maybe this is something they teach in marketing school. I mean look at Google’s phones where they release a regular, a pro, and then an “A” last. With the A being the least featured (but often best value) version. They even took it one step further years ago and did a regular, XL, A, and “A 5G” on the version 4 phone.

But it does give a sense of disorganization at Wyze and make you question if they’re spread too thin.

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Do something? Anything? Not be wrong about literally every answer they give?

But then, hard finding a company where that isn’t the case. I deal with these 3rd party offshore support companies every day. The people brought in have no training or skills, and they often get rotated around to different companies regularly.

But it saves some money and gets someone a nice bonus so that’s what we get. Though I’d argue in the long run it costs much more than it saves. Dell seems to be one of the few that realized that many years ago. Though I think even they’ve switched to the “free support is offshore, premium/paid support is onshore” model, which I also hate.

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To clarify any potential misunderstandings, I totally agree with this, so don’t get me wrong, I am a HUGE Wyze fan. I have over 50 Wyze cams. I have every model besides the V1, and I have over 300 total Wyze products, nearly everything they’ve ever made. I have all their subscriptions too. I love Wyze and love their adopted core values. I volunteer a lot of my time to help them out. I was even invited to their 5-year anniversary employee party and met all the founders, leaders and many of the employees. There are few non-employees who love Wyze more than me. There is a VERY good reason Wyze is my primary camera company.

My point to Wyze has simply been that when something doesn’t really cost them more money or have an ongoing cost and that thing is also becoming pretty standard in the industry from many other competitors to offer local edge AI detection for free, Wyze should do something to be in line with that standard, particularly when that thing coincides with many of their own chosen core values. For one example, the TP-Link C120 cam has local AI detections for free and they are also still able to keep their prices on it competitive. I bought one to try out for under $20 on sale (and I use it for redundancy in case there is an AWS outage affecting Wyze). To explain why edge AI doesn’t cost a ton of money to offer, right now those are still selling for $24 after the $5 coupon. They haven’t been above $30 all year long.

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2K, starlight sensor, SD card, Spotlights, nearly everything the V4 has…but also proving they can do Free local AI with an affordable cost. The cost argument is not a realistic excuse. Everyone can offer Edge AI for very little cost now.

So including local/edge AI definitely isn’t that costly as many companies have already proven. I am not abandoning Wyze over it by any means, far from it. Still, I tell them the truth when I think they are making a mistake. I don’t think they make many blunders to be honest (I can only think of 3-4 decisions they’ve stuck with that I think were bad decisions…that’s a huge compliment to be honest), and I think they do better than basically all the other smart home companies out there (besides maybe Nabu-Casa). I am just used to Wyze LEADING the way on innovation and making technology affordable to everyone as they chose as one of their values, and they have fallen a little behind on this one thing. Since the device already has Local AI on it and it doesn’t cost them ongoing server costs since it’s local, it seems absurd to paywall it and against nearly all 5 of their chosen core values. The incongruency of their own chosen principles is where I disagree with their stance.

As I mentioned, I’m pretty good friends with many Wyze employees, and the founders and most of the leadership know me and know I LOVE Wyze. It’s okay and even good for me to let them know the few times I have a minor difference of opinion with them about something like paywalling a feature that I would argue doesn’t really have to have any ongoing costs and their competition includes and proved is becoming industry standard. I want Wyze to keep being the disrupter and influencer as they have been for 7 years. In Fact Wyze is the most popular company that actually started the free local AI movement when they put the Xnor AI code into the V2 cams for everyone to have it free until Apple bought it out and banned it being used. But then started the race for everyone to else to develop and offer free edge AI, and despite being the ones to start the market disruption, they have fallen behind on it.

Anyway, it doesn’t actually affect me either way since I DO have the Cam Unlimited subscription and I will almost definitely get the new Cam Unlimited Pro when it comes out, so I get Edge AI either way…I am just saying that from a ideological standpoint, the code is already in the device, it doesn’t cost them anything to allow people to use it, so it shoudn’t be paywalled when a lot of their competitors are now offering local AI free at similar or cheaper prices. I’m just trying to help them stay competitive and live up to their core values they chose. That’s all. I’m absolutely far from being a hater. :wink:

Anyway, I loved your response because I relate to it a lot, especially the last couple sentences your wrote. :+1: I LOVE having people like you in here so much, so thank you for speaking up.

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