Wyze launches its $50 wire-free outdoor camera
In recent years, Seattle-based Wyze made a name for itself thanks to making a lot of smart home gadgets affordable. These days, the company sells everything from smart plugs and locks to scales and fitness bands, but what started it all was the $20 Wyze indoor security camera. Today, the company is following that up with its newest camera, the Wyze Cam Outdoor, which is launching in early access today.
It'll cost $50 for the starter bundle with a base station and once the camera is out of early access, you'll be able to add additional cameras for $40 each. As usual, Wyze is undercutting many of its direct competitors in this space for basic outdoor security cameras on price.
For the most part, that name tells you everything you need. It's a 20 fps 1080p camera for live streaming and recording and features IP65 water resistance that keeps the overall blocky aesthetics of the original Wyze camera. It also offers a night vision mode and two-way audio through the Wyze app, which also offers a rolling 14 days of free cloud storage, in addition to on-device storage. And, of course, it also uses some onboard smarts to do motion detection, using a standard PIR sensor.
Image Credits: Wyze /
Like similar products, it runs purely on battery power, so you don't have to string any cables across your yard. The company says the battery should last three to six months.
It mounts to its base with magnets, but you still need to do a bit of DIY to screw that base into your walls, ceilings or garden fences.
The base station itself is obviously cabled (and that includes the option to plug in an ethernet cable, in addition to WiFi support). One nice feature here is that the base station also includes an SD card slot, so you can store videos on there, too.
Given that it's pretty small, at 2.3*2.3*2.8 inches, Wyze also built another nifty feature into the software: offline travel mode. With this, the company says, you can watch your hotel room or campsite while you're away from home.
Image Credits: Wyze
Based on the samples, this looks to be a pretty capable outdoor camera, but hardware is only one piece of the puzzle here. A lot depends on how well the app and on-camera motion detection work, too. We'll take a closer look at those once we get a review sample in the next couple of weeks.
If you don't want to wait until then, the starter pack is now available in Wyze's shop and in the Wyze app.