Wyze cams are fun. They are small, they are pretty good. Relative size to quality, they are very good. Easy to hide, generally require little to keep them working. Once in a while a problem. If so, if it fails, pitch it and get another.
But, and there’s always a but. But as we get Wyzer (get it?) we learn more and want more. I don’t want to pay for a subscription. More so, I want control of my video. I want it locally. Years ago, Wyze was working on a NAS for their cams. They stopped, and I lost faith in this. I have grown to want it more, so now, I have to look elsewhere.
I don’t want some company with access to it, because I don’t believe anything they say that they will not do with my video. Heck, my mommy lied to be growing up. If mommy lied, the every company will tell you something then do the opposite.
So, I started looking. I found Eufy cams. Can locally store the video. Has some small cams, but so far not as cools as Wyze. But I have been buying Eufy and replaced half my Wyze with Eufy and local storage. Been very please. Worth it. Still have some Wyze for the time being. But problems like the buzzing make it less and less attractive.
Now, Eufy has introduced a dedicated 8" screen. Ships in July $199 retail. Can put up 4 cameras at same time. Holds the screen. Sits in a stand that also charges. One on order. Something that Wyze is not offering, sounds like no interested either. I don’t think Eufy is perfect. No NVR, so also looked at Reolink and tried a couple. Their “best” won’t stay network connected, goes into Standby. Spent 3 days playing with $900 worth and took them back, while I could.
Yes. I am happy with no subscription but only use event recording. I only care about events and don’t care to watch non-events. Micro SD cards last a long time. Had some SDs since 2019.
I’d much rather pay more than cam unlimited, to have rtsp and some Home Assistant integrations in addition to cloud if that keeps Wyze operating, pay options.
I won’t pay almost double or more, for the LLM silly notifications alone. Pro something or other.
I do self monitoring, don’t need that with HAOS Alarmo integration. Is available if I want though.
I like my Wyze cams, V4’s much more than OGs, of which I have too many OGs and too few V4’s.
Maybe the next camera will exceed or equal the V4 and I can retire/sell or relocate the OGs.
I have 7 other expensive models which frankly suck and fell for a companies BS propaganda, and that absolutely only cares about monitoring fees. As they fail, I have to replace doorbells etc with something.
I’m ok with Wi-Fi models, but can run ethernet cables if I must for Home Assistant compatibly. As in Reolink.
Mr ssummerlin, can you watch those SD card saved videos from the app or must you remove the card and stick it in a computer? Or have out still another way?
I watch them in the app. I have never removed a µSD after first insertion.
If I record the event during playback, it automatically saves a copy to my OneDrive through my phone. After it syncs, I can see it on my PC and Laptops.
I’ve only pulled the card a couple times when I needed the highest possible quality to give as evidence.
The difference in quality isn’t huge, so normally I just use the record feature in the app. I have a google photos album I’ll add it to if I want it to upload to the cloud and be shareable (I don’t like having all my stuff auto synched so I just do it for things I want to send to others).
I’ll say the one disadvantage of using the record feature in the app is the files are much bigger that way than they are on the SD card, but generally not an issue.
It would be nice to have the SD card accessible via the network (which apparently used to be possible with the wyze mini hacks but not anymore). But honestly if I needed to retrieve footage that frequently, I’d be looking at a true system with NVR.
Long story short, @Sam_Bam I also use only SD card with no subscription and have pulled videos from them probably a dozen times without issues. Lots of still frames too. The odd thing is when you do this, the resulting file on your phone actually has much better clarity and detail than what you see in the app while recording it, especially the still frames. A license plate becomes readable, a face becomes much more recognizable, etc. I chalk it up to differences in the ways the Wyze app and your phone scale the resolution down to fit your screen, which may or may not be a correct assessment. Toss it on a PC that supports at least the native resolution of the video (1080P, 2.5K, etc) and it gets even more clear.
As for the title of the thread, I’ve said this before and probably sound like a broken record, but for me Wyze is perfectly good for the use case I needed - being able to monitor my house and neighborhood, see if there are packages at the front door, deter potential theft, and have video of any incidents, criminal or accidental, that may happen. If I was in a high crime area or was monitoring a business, Wyze would not fit that use case very well. So I think it is a matter of people needing to determine their needs, then look for something that fits those needs well (or as well as possible within their budget).
It definitely is not a big difference but on a couple of occasions when I’ve wanted a license plate or face I’ve pulled the image both ways and directly from the cam is a bit clearer. For most use cases, the difference isn’t going to be terribly noticeable.
It may depend on the phone/OS too, best I can tell when you “record” it basically just uses your phone to record the streaming video as if you were recording a video with the phone’s camera, so the phone re-compresses the MP4 again which would explain the bit of additional quality loss (and the larger file size).
