Wyze Cam Outdoor Review

Services & Integrations
1

Just received my WCO and it looks like I will not be replacing my Arlo 2 Pro anytime soon. Initial impression is that the camera to the base station does not work well 75 feet away, at lease for my house. They say it should work as far as 300 feet, but I think that is probably a test done in a warehouse without any walls around. The app keeps trying to get video data, but it times out after a few tries. I finally moved my base station to the middle of the house and it works now, but that has used up 2% of my power already.

Camera impressions: Nice little camera, but had to charge it up for about 4 hours before I could install it. Can use between 1-2% battery power just setting it up. Another 1% with about 10 video recordings. So I will see exactly how long one charge will last.

I like the stiffness of the moving bracket. That is much better than the indoor WCv2.

Recordings: It’s very disappointing that CAM Plus is not available for the WCO. If you use this as a security camera, 12 seconds goes by just like that. Also, you don’t capture everything like what Complete Motion Capture offered.

Detection Setting: Unless I am missing something, you cannot adjust the green box from your phone like the indoor WCs. But you have to move the WCO manually to get the camera to capture the zone you want to trigger a recording.

Base Station: The station gets warm quickly. It’s too bad that it is only for the WCO and not for bridging any of the other Wyze products like the sensors. Since the distance from the WCO to the station does not work well at 75 feet +, it would have been nice to have a base station that works on WiFi.

Overall, I was hoping to convert completely to using Wyze, However because of the lack of functionality (solar charging/CMC/Cam Plus) and not knowing how long one battery charge will last, I will not be investing on adding WCO expansion units anytime soon. My recommendation would be to use the indoor WCv2 outdoors if you can connect it to an outlet and can protect it from the rain, extreme cold or hot weather. You get more bang for the buck and wouldn’t have to rely on a base station that only works with the WCO.

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2

Just to let you know CamPlus will work with the WCO at some point. They are working on it but I do not have an ETA. The Detection setting area, you aren’t missing anything, you have to move the camera to get the green area where you want the detection to be. This is due to using the PIR sensor (and placement of it) instead of using pixel based sensing. PIR (passive infrared) is an actual hardware sensor in the cam and cant be moved where the V2 uses software based pixel change motion. That is why there are so many trees and bugs setting off the V2.

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3

Pretty much sums up all of the issues I really to add well, I did post in here too just did not go that deep into details.

4

I have my WCO mounted upside down under my house eave and realize that the detection area being fixed at the top of the frame now really limits my capture area.

5

It looks like this will be the second time I’ve purchased a battery operated camera that’s basically not ready for prime time!

Instead of promising features at a later date Wyze should have waited to put out these cameras once the features are incorporated in the damn camera!

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6

The top of the cam has a metal plate inside of it if you are using the mount that comes with the cam you can attach it to the top of the cam.

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7

Thanks, SuperStorm. That helps! Didn’t realize the top of the camera has a metal plate as well.

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No problem, glad to be of assistance.