Wyze Cam Outdoor review

Our Verdict

You can't beat the toll of the Wyze Cam Outdoor, but it's worth spending a little more to get a better outdoor home security camera such every bit the Blink XT2.

For

Inexpensive
Travel mode lets you bring photographic camera with you
Local storage

Against

Bulkier than other budget security cameras
Depression quality nighttime video
Few customization options

Tom's Guide Verdict

Y'all can't beat out the price of the Wyze Cam Outdoor, but information technology's worth spending a little more to go a better outdoor dwelling security camera such as the Glimmer XT2.

Pros

+
Inexpensive
+
Travel way lets yous bring photographic camera with yous
+
Local storage

Cons

-
Bulkier than other budget security cameras
-
Low quality nighttime video
-
Few customization options

Wyze Cam Outdoor: Specs

Photographic camera resolution: 1080p/twenty fps (24-hour interval), 10 fps (nighttime)
Field of view: 110 degrees
Dark vision LEDs: 8 ten 850nm
Night vision altitude: 25 feet
Storage: 32GB (photographic camera), 32GB (base station)
Water resistance: IP65
Size: 2.eight ten 2.3 x ii.iii inches

The Wyze Cam is on our list of the best home security cameras because it's inexpensive and information technology works. No, you're not going to get the aforementioned video quality or features as you would from an Arlo photographic camera, but then again, you're paying just $25 for this device. Merely, the Wyze Cam has one large problem: It's not weatherproof.

Enter the Wyze Cam Outdoor. This $fifty, battery-powered camera can withstand the elements and runs on battery power alone, and so you lot can mount it well-nigh anywhere you lot similar, inside and out.

In our Wyze Cam Outdoor review, we'll take a expect at its video quality, video storage, and ease of employ to see how it compares to the best outdoor security cameras.

Wyze Cam Outdoor: Price and availability

The Wyze Cam Outdoor bundle, which includes the camera and the base station, costs $50. Additional cameras cost $40 each.

Wyze Cam Outdoor: Design

The Wyze Cam Outdoor measures 2.eight 10 2.three 10 2.3 inches and looks like a small white cube — just like the company'southward indoor camera, but a bit larger and heavier. The front end of the photographic camera has a black circumvolve, with the camera's lens in the top one-half. Considering this department bulges out slightly, it makes the front of the camera wait similar a mini Decease Star—a resemblance the company freely admits.

Wyze Cam Outdoor review — (Prototype credit: Tom's Guide)

The Wyze Cam Outdoor telescopes out from its base, which also allows it to rotate. This manner, you can attach the base to a wall or ceiling (there are two holes for mounting screws), and adjust the camera to your liking.

The base is connected to the camera via a very strong magnet; remove the base, and you uncover a small tripod screw mountain on the underside of the camera. Like the indoor camera, the Wyze Cam Outdoor has a microSD card slot (practiced for up to 32GB of storage). Nevertheless, y'all tin can only employ this card for scheduled recordings as well equally time-lapse video. Past comparing, if you insert a microSD card into the indoor Wyze Cam, you lot can record videos up to 1 minute in length, equally well as continuously record video.

The cube-shaped Wyze Cam Outdoor is much larger than the Blink XT2, another excellent upkeep outdoor security photographic camera. The XT2 (ii.8 x 2.8 x 1.4 inches) is equally wide and tall as the Wyze Cam Outdoor, simply much slimmer. When mounted to the side of your business firm, the all-blackness XT2 is less likely to attract attending than the mostly white Wyze Cam.

Where the indoor Wyze Cam connects directly to your Wi-Fi network, the Wyze Cam Outdoor has to link to a base of operations station, which is connected to your home network. It's a similar setup to what the Blink XT2 uses, then that the cameras don't accept to expend excess energy. You can connect up to four Wyze cameras to a single base station. By comparison, y'all can connect up to 10 cameras to the Blink base station. Wyze says that information technology's technically possible to connect more cameras to its base station, only is being cautious during the rollout of its device.

The Wyze Cam Outdoor'southward base station is significantly larger than that of the competition. The Glimmer XT2's base station is a modest square puck, more or less the same size as the camera. The Wyze base station, on the other mitt, is a footling white cube with two antennas protruding about 3 inches up from the top. The size of the base station isn't as large a concern, because it'll probably go stuffed somewhere out of sight.

The Wyze Cam Outdoor's base station tin connect to your abode network via Wi-Fi, or past using its Ethernet port. It also has a microSD bill of fare slot, and so you can relieve backups of the 12-second clips from the camera locally. A USB port on the base station can be used to recharge the photographic camera.

Wyze Cam Outdoor: Setup and installation

Wyze sent us a final production version of the Wyze Cam Outdoor, and gave the states beta admission to the updated Wyze app so that we could examination the camera ahead of its launch.

The commencement footstep is to set the Wyze Cam base station. Annoyingly, y'all have to connect the base station via Ethernet to your router, which limits where yous can place it. Again, Wyze says it's possible for a base station to connect via Wi-Fi to your router, but is being cautious during the initial rollout of the camera. Wyze's app walks y'all through each step.

After the base of operations station is set up, you so use the Wyze app to connect the Wyze Cam Outdoor to the base station, which is as simple as pressing a button on the camera itself.

Wyze Cam Outdoor: Audio and Video Functioning

To exam the Wyze Cam Outdoor, I mounted it almost the front of my house, right side by side to the Blink XT two. Both were the same distance from their respective base stations, about thirty feet, with a few walls betwixt the photographic camera and the base station. Through the Wyze app, it sometimes took several seconds for the camera to connect; the Blink camera continued almost instantaneously.

For a $50 security camera, the Wyze Cam Outdoor'due south daytime video was pretty expert, if pixelated. The Wyze Cam Outdoor records videos shot during the day at a resolution of 1080p/20 fps. I could easily brand out the features of a person'southward face up, and there was trivial blurring when I waved my arms in front end of the photographic camera.

Nighttime video is captured at a much lower 1080p/10 fps. As long as at that place'due south little to no motion, you lot get a pretty clear picture, but any sort of motility will cause video quality to degrade pretty fast.

I mounted the Wyze and the Blink cameras near my front door, where there are two evergreen bushes on either side of my walkway. This presents a bit of a challenging setup, as the camera'south nighttime vision has to both business relationship for the bushes, as well as the darker pathway. The Blink XT2 handled this scenario much better than the Wyze Cam Outdoor.

When I walked toward the cameras, the Wyze Cam had a much harder time adjusting, and as a result, I— and the bushes — were briefly washed out, making information technology impossible to recognize my face or any other distinguishing features. Past dissimilarity, the Blink XT2 presented a video that was much more than evenly lit.

I also found that the Wyze Cam Outdoor'southward motility sensor was slower to observe me. Fifty-fifty with motion detection set up to its most sensitive, I was usually inside ten feet earlier the camera sensed my presence and started recording. The Blink XT2 was able to find me from about fifteen feet away.

Twenty-four hour period or night, y'all have to be adequately close in order for the Wyze Cam Outdoor to hear you. When I stood virtually 6 feet in front of the camera, the camera's microphone was able to pick upwards my voice every bit I spoke in a conversational tone. All the same, audio was a bit choppy.

The Wyze Cam Outdoor can distinguish between people and other objects, and will tag videos if information technology thinks information technology saw a person. In my few days testing the camera, information technology was very accurate; there were only a couple of videos where information technology did not recognize that at that place was a person in frame.

Wyze Cam Outdoor: Features and settings

The Wyze Outdoor lacks a few features found on the visitor'due south indoor photographic camera. First, there's no customizable move detection zone. Instead, in the Wyze app, you're shown a thumbnail of what the camera is seeing, the lower ii-thirds of which has a transparent greenish overlay. Y'all then have to physically move the photographic camera so that the green section covers the area yous want monitored. In the app, you can and then suit two sliders, one for detection distance and the other for epitome sensitivity.

This is more bones than even the rudimentary motion detection zone for the indoor Wyze Cam, and far behind the Blink XT2, which lets yous create motion detection zones with much more complex shapes.

Avant-garde settings include Night vision IR lights, Fourth dimension Stamp watermark, and night vision way. You can too schedule the camera to turn motion detection on and off at certain times. You're able set triggers based on other Wyze devices; if you have a Wyze smart seedling, for instance, yous can trigger the camera to plow on when the bulb turns on.

However, these settings are paltry compared to what the Blink XT offers. In that photographic camera's app, you can prepare recording fourth dimension (from five seconds up to 1 minute), adjust the re-trigger time from x seconds to lx seconds, and more. Blink's camera even has a temperature sensor built in, and tin transport you alerts if information technology gets likewise hot or likewise cold.

Wyze Cam Outdoor: Deject video storage

The Wyze Cam has person detection—a feature the Blink XT lacks—but information technology won't exist free for everyone. If you created a Wyze account before November 26, 2019, you'll become this feature for free, merely anyone who signed up afterwards that date will have to subscribe to an optional service chosen Wyze Cam Plus.

Wyze Cam Plus costs $1.99 per month per camera if yous sign upwards for a calendar month-to-calendar month plan. If yous opt for a yearly subscription, the annual cost is $fourteen.99 per camera. Other features in the Wyze Cam Plus subscription include the ability to record videos for every bit long as move is detected (and not just 12-second clips), and store those videos in the cloud for up to 14 days.

Security camera cloud storage plans compared

Wyze Cam Outdoor: Travel manner

The Wyze Cam Outdoor has a unique feature called Travel Mode. Pack upwardly the camera for your vacation, and in Travel Way, you can use it to record motion events equally well as time-lapse videos to a MicroSD card.

This way, you lot tin use the Wyze Cam Outdoor to, say, monitor your hotel room, or if you're outdoors, capture a time-lapse video of nature. Of class, this means you no longer have the Wyze Cam outdoor monitoring your dwelling while you're away.

Wyze Cam Outdoor: Battery Life

The Wyze Cam Outdoor can conserve its battery life; the company estimates that the camera volition concluding from three to 6 months (based on 10 to 20 recording events per 24-hour interval) without needing a recharge. The camera'south batteries (two 2,600 mAh) are not replaceable, and so you lot'll need to accuse it via a micro USB port, which you can plug into the Wyze Cam'southward base of operations station.

That's user-friendly, but non nearly as convenient every bit the Blink XT2, which can last upwards to ii years on two AA batteries. I appreciate that the Wyze Cam's built-in battery ways I'm not calculation to e-waste matter, but a longer bombardment life would be better.

Wyze Cam Outdoor: Video storage

Aside from its cost, part of the bargain that comes with the Wyze camera is its 14 days of gratis rolling cloud storage. However, clips are limited to 12 seconds, and there's a minimum of a 1-minute "cool downwards" period between each recording, during which time the camera won't capture whatever video.

Blink'due south camera doesn't accept local storage (an updated base of operations station, which will let you attach a USB drive, is in the works), but the company does offering up to 120 minutes of gratis video storage, with videos up to 60 seconds in length.

Wyze Cam Outdoor: Verdict

Wyze has made its name with inexpensive though effective smart domicile products. Its $20 Wyze Cam is one of the all-time abode security cameras for its value.

It's hard to be overly critical of something every bit cheap as the $50 Wyze Cam Outdoor. After all, what do you wait for this little? And for the toll, the Wyze Camera Outdoor is a pretty good camera. You get gratuitous 14-day cloud storage, optional local storage, and the video isn't bad. Withal, I call up the best upkeep outdoor camera is the Glimmer XT2, which costs twice as much, simply has far more settings and delivers a amend picture at night, when you're nigh likely to need it.

Michael A. Prospero is the deputy editor at Tom'south Guide overseeing the habitation, smart dwelling, drones, and fitness/wearables categories, every bit well as all buying guides and other evergreen content. When he's not testing out the latest running watch, skiing or grooming for a marathon, he's probably using the latest sous vide machine or some other cooking gadget.