So I just got the Wyze Cam V4 and I would have thought that it was an upgrade in every way compared to the V3. I was very disappointed to see the image at night without the use of IR lights or spotlight. The image on the V3 is superior than the V4 when used in the dark without any added assistance.…
Disappointing.
I assume the V3 camera is at the top and V4 is at the bottom?
It looks the cameras are behind a window (at an angle) with interior lighting that is causing significant glare. If you have to place the cameras behind the window it is best to mount it flush to the window and some drapes covering it to minimize the glare. Reducing the interior lighting will help too.
The light by the front door will cause the V4 to darken, they don’t like bright lights. 
Sorry I should have clarified. No V3 is at the bottom and the V4 is at the top. Yeah there’s a few ways to optimize the actual image itself but all I’m saying is if you compare the V3 with the V4 at night, you see a better in the V3 under the same conditions!!
I updated the photo with labeling
Right. I realize there’s multiple ways to get a better image but the point I’m trying to make is that under the same conditions the V3 seems to provide a clearer image than the V4 in the dark without using IR lights or spotlight.
This is to be expected, higher resolution needs more light, thus the v4 will be darker in the same amount of light as the v3.
Was one of the things that steered me away from upgrading my OGs to v4s, when I watched the comparison videos the night mode was darker, and honestly the day mode didn’t look all that much better due to the higher compression.
If you turn off your house light on the right (or get it out of the field of view) and get the window frame on the left out of the image, it will probably adjust the exposure and light up the stuff in the driveway better. Those are both throwing it off and the v3 appears to be dealing a bit better with it (though the window frame isn’t as visible in that picture either).
Just reinforcing what @dave27 and @grapefruityoda said, trying to create equivalent conditions for the cameras is going to give you a better basis for comparison. In the upper-left corner of the Cam v4 image, there appears to be a reflection of a lamp base off the interior of the window, and that isn’t present in the Cam v3 image, so it’s not a true apples-to-apples comparison with the lighting conditions.
Maybe I’ll do further testing but I have a feeling that it’ll be the same regardless. It appears that the V3 lets in more light versus the V4. But as somebody else has said, maybe that’s to be expected due to the higher resolution sensor.
The side light goes off at a certain time so it’s not usually there. It just happened to be on when I took that picture.
I was just putting feelers out there to see if anybody else had the same experience. Thanks guys
Light reaction on a V4. The V3 that I had in the same place did not darken as much when the lights hit it. The cams are different animals.
Yep, I tell people this all the time. The reason for this is that lower resolution cameras have larger pixels which allows them to capture more light per pixel. This also reduces the amount of dark artifacts and visual noise compared to higher resolution cameras. The higher the resolution, the smaller each pixel is, and the less light per pixel. It is one downside of better resolution.
Now, there are ways to offset this. Part of the struggle comes with how to balance brightness and contrast because if you optimize it to see someone’s face when they’re close, then the background will be dark not visible, but if you optimize it to be able to see the background, then a person’s face will be totally white-washed when they are close and you can’t make out any details. So it’s tough thing to balance that is impossible to please everyone for every single use case.
Yeah people need to remember that these starlight sensors are essentially just overly sensitive sensors and then they’re overexposing the image on top of that.
I believe the Starvis2 4k Sensor that sony makes has addressed that by having fairly fast dynamic adjustments in real time. The 4k sensors obviously have even more issues with low light than 2.5 and 1080, so they had to come up with something to counteract that. From what I’ve seen, they are quite nice, but definitely would drive the price up on the Wyze cams.
In the case of the OP’s image, I think the light on the right and the window frame on the left, along with the reflection in the window, would probably still cause issues even for the Sony sensors though. It needs to optimize for near or far, both at once is going to force it to optimize for whichever is brighter, in this case “near”.
only in wyze world
outside they figured to make pixels slightly larger
interestingly bcp has no problem, perhaps it came from outside
Huh? The pixel size is based on the resolution. More pixels in the same amount of area means the available light is spread across them and less of it is available to each one. This is physics, not Wyze. While BCP may have different settings for exposure/brightness/contrast, if you were to compare it to an identically configured 1080P camera it would be darker.
I don’t notice a difference. It could be due to ambient light.
My V3 PRO was in the same location as the V4 and it also did the same amount off darkening. I went from V3>V3 PRO>V4 in the same location. I still like the V4 quality.
Using the spot light on the V3 Pro and the V4 made conditions worse.
I am not moving the V4 from that location, I like the quality.
