I’m curious what others have experienced with the quality of their Wyze products. I purchased several Wyze products (Wyze Cam v3 (x6), Battery Cam Pro (x3), Doorbell v2, and garage door opener) just over a year ago. For the most part, I haven’t had any trouble with the Cam v3 and the garage door opener. I did have to replace a couple of the power blocks for the Cam v3 and read that it’s a common problem. Two out of three Battery Cam Pros are no longer working. One stopped working months ago. The battery seems loose and it won’t power on. Recently the second one started dropping its wifi connection constantly and has to be manually restarted in order for it to reconnect, which makes it essentially useless. The doorbell started making a loud intermittent static-like noise that lasts several minutes after any motion is detected. I’ve had to remove it completely as I’m sure it’s annoying my neighbors. I truly love the functionality of the Wyze products, but I’m not sure it’s worth having to replace so many of them after one year and don’t want to have to continue replacing them annually. Is this the experience of most people? Or have you had more positive experiences? I can’t decide if I should switch to another product or maybe give it another shot and hope I have better luck next time.
So far only one failure for me and I know the reason:
4x OG - about 2 years so far
1x OG-T - Same
1x Panv3 - Same
1x Panv3 - Died under 1 year, it was mounted upside down and got water in it. Replaced under warranty. After drying it in rice for a day, it does work, a bit noisy movement but not bad. I keep it as a spare and set it up when I travel to monitor inside the house.
Replacement Panv3 - about 1.5 years in the same spot, but right side up
v4 - About 6 months so far.
All of the above except 2 of the OGs and that spare pan are outdoors and all receive direct rain (protected to a certain extent but they still get soaked). Most are on the front of my house in direct afternoon sun too.
Those are the only models I’ve tried.
I’m used to doing data wiring and the like so I’m very conscious of looking at how water and weather can affect things, putting drip loops in wires, protecting things as much as possible, etc. And I’m in New England so while we do have hot summers and cold winters, there are parts of the country with worse extremes. Often when people have such drastically different experiences I wonder if it is climate related or possibly related to install methods.
For the doorbell static, are you using it with an Echo Show? That’s a known issue that they’re working on, there are several other threads about that, in the meantime you can unlink it from Echo Shows as a temporary fix (seems to not be an issue if you use it with the Wyze app or the Alexa app on your phone).
If that’s the issue with the doorbell, it sounds like your issues are mostly with the BCPs? If the batteries seem looser than they originally did maybe sun/heat, or maybe they’re just not standing up to the removal/insertion of the batteries, maybe yours have more motion and need more frequent charging than most? Haven’t seen that particular complaint here yet (though doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened).
I have been using Wyze v3 cameras for 3.5 years. I have Not had a v3, power brick, cord or SD card fail yet.
I have experienced some buggy firmware over the years. What works for me is to be late on updating camera firmware or app versions.
Thank you, Dave. This is great information! I am, indeed, using an Echo Show. I have been using it the entire time without any trouble until recently. But, I will unlink it and see if that corrects the doorbell issue.
As far as the BCPs, I have them connected to the Wyze solar panels so I haven’t had to remove or recharge the batteries. They are placed up under the eaves of the house, so they don’t get direct sun, but it does get hot here, so heat is definitely a possibility.
Thanks, Steven. I’ll keep this in mind and maybe won’t be so quick to update in the future!
Yeah I don’t have an echo show but based on the threads here it started a week or so ago so it sounds like the same issue. At least you know the doorbell isn’t dead or broken.
Have you tried to take a battery out of a BCP and charge it up fully inside? Maybe the batteries just need a good full charge to reset/recalibrate the controller? Especially if the battery has drained to 0%, the protection built in to the Battery Management System / little chip inside the battery may have kicked in. Sometimes you can bring it out of that state by charging it several times, as it will accept a little bit of charge before it cuts it off, so multiple plug and unplug can get it above the threshold. Perhaps test the battery in the one that has a wifi issue in the others, since you know at least the battery works in that one.
That wouldn’t explain the wifi issue, that one could be heat related (wifi chipsets run hot anyway, and sealed in a container in the sun is a bad spot for them, so a certain percentage will fail early). But it might explain the one(s) that aren’t working at all? The solar panel + battery cam is a great setup, problem is it is basically worst case scenario for a lithium ion battery. They don’t like to be charged little bits here and there at different rates, etc. So the batteries typically won’t have a great lifespan, and from time to time may need a full charge off a regular charger.
Worth mentioning that none of my cams have had a power brick go bad in those 2 years either. I do not own any v3s so can’t say whether their power bricks are worse or not, but I’m using the stock Wyze ones (which you can feel are just cheap ones), a couple of them are in spots that get very hot, and no issues thus far. But if you need to replace them, get some decent branded ones, even Amazon Basics ones seem to hold up pretty well in heat (I mounted one inside a sealed plastic case outside for a family member’s video bird feeder and its been running nonstop for about 2 years). Anker makes decent ones too in my experience.
Obviously mine are all protected from rain (cords run in through windows and in one case the top corner of my garage door) but they do get exposed to high temps as those windows lead to unconditioned areas where the outlets are.
If that’s a relatively new phenomenon, then it’s also been described in this topic:
Wyze is tracking that one in this topic, as it now seems to be affecting a variety of camera models:
If you’ve submitted logs or if you want to reconnect your Video Doorbell v2 to reproduce the problem and submit a log, then there’s been a request for those in that topic so that the engineers can look into this.
I’ve generally had positive experiences, and the Video Doorbell v2 is one of my favorite Wyze cameras. I also use Bulb Cam, Cam v4, Cam Pan v3, Cam OG, and Cam OG Telephoto. I haven’t experienced the recent “static-like noise”, but I also don’t have any Echo Show devices.
I haven’t had to replace any cameras’ power adapters but did have a power issue that I isolated to one Cam’s male Micro-B connector in the OEM cable. I found a third-party cable that’s a good fit and gives some extra length, and that solved that problem for me.
Welcome to the Forum, @traumathecat! 