WyzeCam v2 Design
Founded by a group of ex-Amazon executives from Seattle, it’s no surprise that the company has been built on a platform of delivering killer value. The cube-shaped WyzeCam v2 camera is light, but molded around four sides, so it feels quite solid. Soft touch plastics and rounded corners finish it off. Lift the device from its base and WyzeCam reveals an integrated, posable stand that raises the camera’s height and supports angled views.
Twist the camera body, and you’ll find it rotates almost 360 degrees on a desktop. Or, you can mount the camera on the wall with an included magnetic wall-plate. There’s no battery support, but the included 1.8m mini-USB power cable helps with high mounting. All in all the WyzeCam v2 is versatile, compact and super cute.
Setup and Performance
WyzeCam v2 is a breeze to install. You simply download the Wyze app, power on, enter Wi-Fi details, scan a QR code, and you’re done. There was even a succinct guided tour of the app, which is friendly and super easy to use.
WyzeCam’s 1080p imaging is incredibly impressive, given its price point. It suffers a tad from daylight overexposure, but static images are very sharp and clear. Night vision and low light performance were equally strong, with the camera providing good infrared illumination and delivering sharp, well-balanced images.
The camera also does an excellent job of detecting and tracking motion in the room. You’ll see a green rectangle placed around any object, person moving within the camera’s view, although the processing speed has some getting used to and could be improved. Still though, clips are still reasonably clear and watchable, certainly sufficient quality for security purposes.
The camera also gives you motion and sound alerts via a notification on your phone, and those same alerts or events are recorded to the cloud. You’re able to view clips a couple of hours later after they are uploaded. WyzeCam v2 supports on-event and continuous recording to a local SD card as well, and WyzeCam’s microphone and speaker work fine, detecting smoke alarms, CO2 alarms and regular sounds.
Bottom Line
Your $20 investment in WyzeCam v2 is protected by a one-year limited warranty, covering you from defects in materials and workmanship. While there’s a little work to do on supporting cloud services, from a hardware standpoint, the WyzeCam v2 is a complete package, setting a new standard for budget smart cams on both price and performance. There are faster, better, smarter, more attractive Wi-Fi cameras in the market for sure, but none of them stack up to WyzeCam on value for money. It looks and performs far better than anyone should expect for $20.
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