I purchased the original first version of Wyze cam Pan about 6 years ago (maybe more), and it is just perfect. I thought that some time had passed and I’m ready for some upgrade, so I ordered several new Wyze cam Pan v3.
It looks nice, looks like a faster motor, however the quality is AWFUL !!!
Attaching a screenshot comparing exactly the same place/room/time of the day, on the left is a NEW Wyze cam Pan v3 and or the right is my old Wyze cam Pan (first edition).
Yes, it is an HD stream :\
Please help if anyone is familiar. Does your quality is poor the same?
Over the holidays I bought a whole bunch of Pan V3s. On paper they were perfect. Theoretically I could cover a 40x20 area that was previously covered by two regular V2 cams with just one Pan V3 by placing it in the middle and setting it to pan/scan. I could put them in all the bedrooms because of the privacy mode where the camera would face straight down. So I bought about 5 or 6 of them.
Unfortunately, I found that the AI detection on these cams was absolutely horrible and could only detect Pets and People within 15 feet and general motion only to about 18 feet away. That left big sections of the rooms uncovered. So instead of being able to replace two V2s with one Pan V3, I found that I now needed two Pan V3s. The only thing I gained was privacy mode.
I placed another one in a wide covered patio to pan/scan 24/7. After a couple of weeks the panning motor started making a mechanical clicking/grinding noise every time the camera panned. And then it started losing the waypoints and ended up facing the wall all the time. Had to redo the waypoints just yesterday.
I never had an issue with the image quality but that may be because it wasn’t a priority for me so I never really paid much attention to it.
I’ve been with Wyze for about 4 years and have close to 25 of their cams but after the horrible quality of the Pan V3s and several other issues which Wyze support has refused to remedy under their (useless) warranty, I’ve decided to dump them.
If you’re looking for alternatives to the Cam Pan V3, check out the Tapo C220 and C225. Great image quality, SD Card recording and full AI detections without requiring a subscription, full support for RTSP, audio that doesn’t sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher, etc… The jury is still out but I’ve been gradually replacing my Wyze cams with them and so far I’m very happy.
Be sure of that. I may have noticed a bug where HD is not HD until you re-select it. Happens less now, but I am not using a Pan V3 ATM. Try re-selecting HD, and let us know if that helps. If so, a bug fix may be in order.
So did some more testing and it looks like a very short focal distance for the lens, everything that is far ~40 cm from the camera will be blurred, Such a shame you cannot change the focal length
The Tapo C120 is the comparable model to the V3/V4. It has Starlight Sensor technology and the night vision is mostly the same as the V3. So far I’m very happy with it.
The C220 is comparable to the Cam Pan V2 and V3 and does not have Starlight Sensor but it does have IR and its night vision is comparable to the Cam Pan V3. It’s not weatherproof though so strictly for indoor use.
The C225 is its own animal. It’s a pan/tilt cam like the C220 but has a physical privacy mode like the Wyze Cam Pan V3 and also has Starlight Sensor. I ordered one yesterday as I continue replacing my Wyze cams and will know by tomorrow whether it’s a good replacement for my Cam Pan V3s. I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be since it’s basically a C220 on steroids.
I already have a C220 in my living room which has replaced two Cam Pan V3s. Unlike the Cam Pan V3s that wouldn’t detect anything past 18 feet, the C220 is reliable at 25 feet and can identify Person and Pet at that distance, although it sometimes misses my small dogs.
That’s OK though, even when my Wyze V3s had working pet detection they would often miss smaller animals.
I don’t think the Tapo app is as user-friendly as the Wyze app but the cameras themselves are solid. Just keep in mind that you will need to get SD cards for them unless you want to subscribe to their cloud service. IMO their biggest weakness is the wifi signal strength. It’s a little weak compared to the Wyze cams. But the image is sharp, you get full AI detection and full clip length (SD Card needed) without having to pay for a subscription.
In general - yes, but it will be too much hassle for me since there’s no pickup service and for drop off I need to register in advance and drive to the post office (and wait there), it isn’t worth it.
You may also want to check out Ring cameras. I have several of those too and although you do need a subscription for anything other than live view, they have excellent image quality. The only one I don’t recommend is the Stick Up Cam. Motion detection and Person detection kind of suck on the Stick Up Cam but I have one of their Indoor cams pointed out a window and it is pretty awesome. Although it doesn’t have Pet detection, it will tag a small rabbit as Motion at 20+ feet out and coyotes at 30+ feet, through a window, at night. I also have a couple of their Floodlight cams and those are great too. They can detect and identify people at 40+ feet.
They are lacking AI detection for things like Pets, Vehicles, etc, but Person detection is great and their detection algorithms produce a lot fewer false event notifications like leaves, branches, shadows, etc, than the Wyze cams which trigger an event for pretty much anything.
The Tapo cams also don’t have any kind of built-in WebView ability but you can use software to enable it. What I did is installed Bluestacks Android emulator (free, took 2 minutes to install and get up and running) on my PC and installed the Tapo app through there and now I can view them live on my PC at work.
I don’t know much about that one. I’m thinking about getting one of those for my garage though.
I don’t think it has the Starlight sensor, but it does say it has night vision so I’m guessing it’s just regular IR night vision.
For its current price of $19.99 it’s probably worth a try.
BTW, one other thing to keep in mind that I forget to mention, with the Tapo cameras, unless you subscribe to their cloud services, when you view recorded events you are pulling them directly from the camera’s SD card so it will help if your internet speed is decent. I have about 300mb down and between 20mb and 80mb up depending on the time of day. Your upload speed is the most important for this. I haven’t had any issues at all.
I don’t know if the C110 datasheets are up-to-date, but it says it only has Motion, Person and Baby Crying as part of their AI detection. Maybe that’s how they differentiate their product stack. It does support RTSP and ONVIF.
You can check out C125 if you can find it, but it is rated only indoor use. It does have more AI detection options, but I don’t know how well they work and it doesn’t have Starlight sensor. It does support RTSP and ONVIF. It supports WiFi 6 802.11ax protocol and WPA3, but it has 2.4GHz band only. I wonder if it will have better wireless performance than the C120.
The C125 seems to be a Best Buy only model. That’s the only place I could find it. It doesn’t have a lot of the features of the C120. I am very impressed with the C120. I currently have three of them up and running that replaced my broken Wyze V3s and so far I don’t have a single complaint. They do what they’re supposed to do and do it very well.
One of them even correctly identified a rabbit as “Pet” from about 15 feet away.
Their AI is interesting. I think it’s based partly on the contrast between moving objects and the background. The times it hasn’t identified an animal accurately is with light-colored dogs on a sidewalk of the same color and a grayish coyote at night against a background of pretty much the same color. It did identify them as Motion though. The coyote was about 35 feet away.
