Let me preface this by saying I’ve used Ring, Ring Pro, and eventually settled on using Nest Hello and Outdoor camera (pre-Google buyout) for several years and had no issues with it. So my frame of reference is based on developments and UX that is over six years old.
Probably going to send these back and suck it up and pay Google the $120/year for what I need.
Hardware:
I ordered 4 cameras. One of the AC adapters made an awful buzzing noise as soon as I plugged it in. One of the cameras has a line of distortion down the middle of the viewing area.
App (iOS):
-Timeline/playback feature is just bad. There is no event tagging on it, just a long green bar showing it recorded it. Not useful whatsoever. Apparently the V3 “PRO” has event tagging in the timeline, but not any of the others. Why? This is just a software feature, and has nothing to do with hardware.
-Scrubbing through the timeline is clunky and doesn’t show actual footage as you scroll through, so you must instead find a spot and wait for the video to load. Wyze could simply aggregate screenshots every 60 seconds to 5 mins and load those as you scroll through, but no. Buttons disappear and reappear when trying to press them (30 seconds forward and backwards when in fullscreen). Horizontal scroll bar is bad implementation, needs to be vertical.
-When viewing recorded events, the pause button is useless and does not pause where I want it to. When scrubbing the video in the event clip, it resumes playing for some reason and does not allow me to review each frame. Why is the scrubbing bar there at all, then?
Desktop version… so many problems too.
-When using the app I am able to view LIVE STREAM on all cameras regardless of subscription. However I am NOT able to to do this on the desktop browser even if I am on the same network as the cameras, saying I need “Cam Plus” for the cameras not subbed.
-I am also able to view events on the app that the desktop version says has an error, which makes no sense. I also cannot pull up live feed on desktop reliably compared to phone app.
-Again, scrub bar is almost as useless when viewing events here as it is in the mobile app.
-There is also no timeline or playback feature on the desktop app at all.
-When using fullscreen on desktop, it doesn’t resize the viewing area properly and cuts off the upper and lower parts of the video.
-I have to sign into the browser login every 24 hours… super annoying. Half the time, 2fa doesn’t even work right and says it’s invalid. I refresh the page though and viola, I’m in now.
Detection:
-Detection will mark an event as “vehicle” if any movement happens on camera when a stationary vehicle is in it. Erroneous “package” tagging occurs with vehicles and people as well.
-This is honestly my chief complaint. There are no options to add more than one detection zone. Only a single zone. Anything outside of it won’t be noted at all. This is not useful for prioritization of movement recording and notifications if you live in a busy area. At least record movements “inside” and “outside” of a zone, and have independent notification handling for each. Again, I am referencing six year old pre-Google Nest UX here, why Wyze doesn’t have this is beyond me.
There are three good things about this system, but they are far outweighed by the bad, I’m afraid to say. SD card recording is cool, as is the embedded timestamp. The night vision is also great.
However, with all of the above issues I’ve noted, I cannot sit around waiting for Wyze to fix them, and will be returning the cameras I purchased. I realize the issues I mentioned are 99% software related, so Wyze devs should really step up and focus more on this and stop worrying about smart bulbs and robot vacuums, but that’s just my opinion.
For now I will continue using my ancient Nest products as they seem to have a better UI/UX than Wyze does. That said, Wyze seems to listen and hopefully they will listen to my complaints. I am not a smart camera noobie, take my advice and you’ll have leading market share in no time.
My two suggestions: Fix your timeline to show event tags, and add more than a single detection zone. If that’s all you fixed, I’d reconsider my loyalty. But as it stands, I need those features more than anything and will go back to using my ancient Nest cameras to get them.
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