TBH, I’m not following the faulty logic in that statement.
Given the countless testimonials from users in this thread as well as other threads who are using routers from other manufacturers without any issues, it disproves your premise.
The fact that Wyze offers a router that has been specifically programmed to optimize the 2.4GHz band and support their own IoT doesn’t mean that their IoT doesn’t work “well” on other networks. If anything it infers that some other network router manufactures are focusing their programming priorities on other interests.
I can see Wyze improving the connection logic between Wyze cameras and Wyze routers over time, as that is probably what they have setup in-house for testing etc. Hopefully most of the improvement would benefit all routers but sometimes they may be specific to the Wyze router. Wouldn’t blame them for investing on that.
As for making Wyze cameras perform worse on other routers, I think that requires quite a bit more effort and sophistication than they can afford. Plus, most customers would rather ditch their new underperforming cameras than their working routers.
For what it’s worth, I’m running two Nest Wifi units and a Google Wifi unit in a mesh network (no wired backhaul). I’ve had zero significant issues to report since I first became a Wyze customer in 2018 (besides that one big AWS outage awhile back). My current “fleet” is one battery cam pro, one v3 pro, two v3’s, one cam pan v2, one cam pan v1, and two ourdoor cams with a base station running on wifi. Three are on cam plus, the rest on cam plus lite. I’m pretty diligent about rebooting my router and all my cams once a week.
As a matter of fact, there are 2 industry terms for this:
Brand extension reluctance
= Hesitance or resistance to purchasing products/services outside of a brand’s core expertise or established product line out of skepticism they can maintain quality or expectations in other areas outside their original domain.
Brand dilution
= The idea of a brand’s reputation being weakened or diluted when it extends product offerings into areas that are unrelated to its core expertise. Extending too far from what they’re known for may cause some consumers to become confused or less trusting of the brand.
Many people will certainly say the above applies to Wyze. This is why Wyze has switched back to “the year of the camera” and moved toward blowing off anything else that is not directly a camera.
I personally wish Wyze would go back to building an entire smart home ecosystem and having “Smart Home” stuff be their expertise and primary domain, but I have doubts about the year of the camera ever ending, which, to me, would be a travesty and cause me to have to start expanding into other competing ecosystems instead. Maybe I’m in the minority here though…but I am really sad Wyze isn’t disrupting the entire smart home market with affordable tech anymore. Smart Home products are so expensive. I was excited to keep expanding my smart home with Wyze stuff that I could rely on to not be ripping me off with high prices/profit-margins. In fact, it wasn’t even cameras that brought me into the Wyze ecosystem, it was a Smart Scale that funneled me in here, and because of that, I THEN bought a bunch of other stuff including cameras, and eventually Cam Plus during a Black Friday sale, and then Cam Plus Unlimited the moment it launched. If Wyze was only a Camera Company I would’ve almost for sure gone with Nest instead. That’s what I was considering at the time until their non-camera products wrangled me in here first.
I think Brand extension reluctance and brand dilution exist in some cases for some companies, and I know some people are trying to throw that on Wyze, especially when they went out and did non-smart-home things like vacuums or the toy car or other non-smart home things, and I get that to some degree, but I also disagree with it when it comes to things like the Wyze Mesh Routers. The Wyze routers are incredible mesh routers at an awesome price. Their performance is among the best as they are right now. If Wyze was willing to devote more effort into expanding the features even more, they’d be unbeatable…but they haven’t touched them since they launched, so they’ve left the settings as extremely basic, which is a shame. There is no reason the Wyze routers have to be a good example of “Brand dilution” if Wyze would keep up on them like they do with cameras, but they are sort of fueling a self-fulfilling prophecy this year by seemingly almost ignoring anything that isn’t a camera I mean, they still have awesome performance, but we were hoping for some added features and settings over the months after the launched, and they seem to have not been touched.
Limited resources is always a struggle, and I don’t blame them for devoting the majority of resources to the things that bring in the main subscription income (cam plus), but I think it is mistake to ignore everything that funnels in a wider marketshare, like how I got brought in. Only time will tell though. They’re the ones with the metrics, so I can only speculate on what makes the most sense or not, while they may have better real data to demonstrate they are on the right track now.
A second vote for the eero 6 Pro. I have been using an eero mesh network since before Amazon bought them - long before Wyze came out with what appears to be basically the same thing - and have been very happy with it. Had two expensive high-end routers with extenders prior and eero was a game-changer. I have upgraded my eeros twice over the years since initial purchase and have no reason to look at anything else. They are great.
Recently set up 3 node Deco XE75 (AXE5400) mesh in router mode. I activated the separate IoT network feature and used the same SSID and password for an extender that I used for my Wyze cams connections. The transition was seamless. I only had to decide on my WCO’s for which the base module was connected via ethernet to my original gateway. I was having offline and lagging issues grouping cameras with my original setup, and eliminated them, Individual worked better but was not exactly perfect. Mush better with the XE75 mesh. A feature that I like about this mesh is you can assign a device to a specific node, although not necessary since the system will adjust and assign the devices automatically to the node with the best signal strength for the device.
The downside is I could not use my original gateway network SSID and password because Deco would not accept the password which had several characters and symbols. I got big a fat rejection when trying to enter. Next downside was all other wireless devices I wanted to transition to the XE75, I had to reset and set them up again to use XE75 wifi. On the other-hand, there is an upside, my wired ethernet switches moved with no issues to the main node. This was not a necessity and could have remained connected to my current gateway.
The IoT network gave me a chance re-learn all the wifi plugs, switches and lights I have dispersed around the house since they all voice controlled thru Alexa. I do have a redundant back-up with Google Home but use Alexa daily. Especially like the person detection and announcements to the echo. Both automatically recognize connected devices and changes made, but do not recognize each other since they do not offer the skill to each other.
I am still learning this mesh system and all that it has to offer. The controlling app is user-friendly with a simple design and streamlined user-interface. The Deco XE75 is expensive and recently experienced a price increase (at least on Amazon). With wifi 7 now being introduced, you would think prices would be going down not up. It also might be an over-kill system for most average users with limited wifi devices and use, especially wifi 5 and 6.
Eero Pro 6e are definitely great systems. Smart move to have teamed up with FIOS as those have replaced the Arris and Frontier routers that used to be provided.
Glad to hear you’re up and running smoothly. The only thing i did not like was the fact that you had to pay for certain features that should be standard which is why i have it in AP mode. While I love the simplicity of setup for the normal home user, we should have access to firewall features, QoS, etc. that one has with even the units provided by the ISP.
Tbh, all the systems are good, you have to take into account the gazillion of other homes around and/or devices in the home that could be causing interference in to 2.4ghz band. I also see a lot of people rebooting things. I only do that once in a while to the router by just releasing the WAN interface, reboot, and pull a new WAN IP. Mesh are self healing and self forming.
I have a Netgear Nighthawk RAX54v2 Took about 15 minutes to setup and connect with cameras. My prior router was a Netgear Nighthawk that lasted 8 years. Never a problem. It reaches outside cameras 40 feet away.
I wouldn’t buy a Wyze router. Too many of their products have issues, and they seem to use their customers as lab rat testers.
Never buy a Wyze product that hasn’t been in the market for at least three years. Too many people have experienced too many problems.
I have had no issues with either of Netgear, TP-Link or Verizon routers. In my experience, it comes down to signal strength - if drops beyond whatever threshold, connectivity becomes unreliable.
I wanted to update my above post from 4 months ago. Comcast jerked me around on their WiFi gateway rental discount, so I put my Linksys EA6350 WiFi router back into service. The EA6350 did a great job during the COVID lockdown as my wife, daughter and myself were all working remotely. My v3 cameras are all working great in my 2-story house. I have my Linksys paired with a Arris S33 cable modem, so I am happy to be back using my own equipment.
Nothing wrong with that! It’s a good router. Unless you have equipment (WiFi) that supports AX or AXE (6/6E), there’s no need to have the latest and greatest when you don’t have anything that can make use of it.
That was my thinking too on why I put the EA6350 back in service. All my devices (including Wyze v3 cameras) are all working great. I will keep watching this thread as I will eventually move to a newer router.
Stating the obvious. It should not matter as long as your router supports enough devices on 2.4 band.
I use professional Aruba AP that are old but great. I have 6 of them to cover my property and am very happy.
And, last but not least, remember that Eero or similar capture your data and mine it. Not sure about Wyze, I need to check.
I mean, they still have awesome performance, but we were hoping for some added features and settings over the months after the launched, and they seem to have not been touched.
Nothing wrong with that! It’s a good router. Unless you have equipment (WiFi) that supports AX or AXE (6/6E), there’s no need to have the latest and greatest when you don’t have anything that can make use of it.