Wyze Cam V3 Review

Wyze is known as one of the more affordable smart home brands, and its new Wyze Cam V3 is a great budget-friendly option for keeping tabs on your home. This indoor/outdoor security camera is extremely compact and easy to install, and it offers versatility with both cloud and local video storage, as well as free and paid operation plans. The camera sends timely notifications any time it detects motion or sound, and its AI-powered smart alerts are surprisingly accurate considering the device’s low price.

About the Wyze Cam V3

• Color: White
• Connectivity: 2.4GHz Wi-Fi
• Power source: Indoor 5v/1A
• Resolution: 1080p
• Smart assistant: Alexa, Google Assistant
• Operational temperatures: -5°F to 113°F
• Weight: 98.8g
• Dimensions: 52mm (L) x 51mm (W) x 58.5mm (D)

The Wyze Cam V3 is the latest smart camera available from the brand—the new indoor/outdoor model has a plug-in design with a 6-foot power cord, and unlike the Wyze Cam Outdoor V2, it doesn’t require a base station for operation.

The camera provides 1080p high-definition footage both day and night, and it’s equipped with two-way audio, motion and sound detection, and a built-in “mini” siren that you can trigger through the app.

The V3 has a new Starlight CMOS Sensor that improves its performance in low-light settings, and it’s rated IP65 for weather and dust resistance.

This budget-friendly camera doesn’t offer quite as many features as more expensive models, but overall, we found it to be reliable and easy to use. Plus, it costs even less than the V2, making it a truly unbeatable value for outdoor security.

What we like

It is compact and lightweight

One of the best things about the Wyze Cam V3 is that it’s incredibly small, making it easy to tuck into a discreet corner of your home.

The camera itself is a 2-inch cube, and it comes with a convenient adjustable stand that lets you set it on a flat surface or mount it to the wall or ceiling. Because the design is so compact, it’s ideal for locations where you don’t necessarily want to broadcast that there’s a camera.

The Wyze Cam V3 is also easy to install virtually anywhere. It comes with a magnetic mounting kit that makes the camera quick to take down, if needed, but you can also just mount it the traditional way using a screw.

I opted to mount the camera on my covered porch using a screw, and the whole process took less than five minutes. Just keep in mind that this is a plug-in camera, so you’ll need to choose a location that’s within 6 feet of a power outlet.

It offers optional local storage

While many smart cameras use cloud storage to save recordings, the Wyze Cam V3 gives you the option to save footage via local storage.

There’s a slot where you can insert a 128GB microSD card (sold separately), and the camera will record 24/7 for up to 28 days. You can view this playback directly through the Wyze app.

Of course, the camera does offer cloud storage, as well. With a free plan, the camera will capture a still photo whenever motion is detected, and if you upgrade to a Cam Plus subscription, it will save a video clip that captures the duration of the movement.

You can choose to use just local or cloud storage with the camera, or you can use them both.

The smart alerts are accurate—with a subscription

If you want to increase the functionality of your camera, it’s worthwhile to purchase a Cam Plus subscription, which costs $1.99 per month or $23.88 annually. (This is on the lower side as camera subscription plans go—Nest Aware plans start at $6 per month, and Ring Protect starts at $4 per month.) With a subscription, your camera will be able to capture back-to-back recordings and you can adjust the video duration to as long as five minutes.

Additionally, the subscription includes smart alerts, which let you know if the camera sees a person, pet, vehicle or package.

Wyze offers a two-week free trial of Cam Plus, and during the trial, I was impressed by the accuracy of its smart detection abilities. It was able to accurately identify people, cars and pets (including both cats and dogs), sending timely push notifications to my phone and Apple Watch when it detected motion.

The app labels each event with these AI-powered tags when a recording is saved—so if there’s a person and a dog in the frame, the clip will be labeled with “Person” and “Pet” tags. Later, when you’re looking through the events tab, you can filter by these labels to see only clips with people, pets or cars in them, if desired.

What we don’t like

The app has its limitations

While testing the Wyze Cam V3, I did find that the app was lacking in certain features. For instance, the back-to-back recordings available with Cam Plus were often too frequent, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to shut them off or delay the time between notifications.

When I was bringing in groceries and walked past the camera several times in a few minutes, it would send a notification every time I passed by, leading to an annoying wall of alerts on my phone and constant buzzing on my smartwatch.

Additionally, while the Wyze Cam V3 can be connected to Amazon Alexa, it has limited usefulness. If you have an Echo Show, you can ask Alexa to display the live video feed from the camera, but there are no interactions available if your Alexa device doesn’t have a screen.

The outdoor adapter sold separately

While marketed as an indoor/outdoor security camera thanks to its IP65 weather and dust resistance, the Wyze Cam V3 only comes with an indoor power adapter. We were able to test the camera outdoors by placing it in a sheltered location, but if you’re planning to expose the camera (and its power cord) directly to the elements, you’re going to need to purchase the Wyze Outdoor Power Adapter separately, which will increase the overall cost of setup.

Privacy

Wyze hasn’t always had the best reputation when it comes to user privacy, but it seems that the brand has stepped up its game in recent years. When setting up a Wyze account, I was required to enable two-factor authentication, either via text message or an authenticator app such as Google Authenticator.

The app also provided a long, complicated recovery code that’s required to gain access to your account if you ever forget your password.

Should you buy the Wyze Cam V3?

Yes, it’s a great budget-friendly option.

If you’re looking for an indoor/outdoor security camera that won’t break the bank, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better option than the Wyze Cam V3.

The camera itself costs just $30—though you may need to spend an extra $14 on the outdoor power adapter, depending on where you plan to install it—and even the brand’s Cam Plus subscription is incredibly affordable at just $2 per month.

Despite its low price, this camera offers clear 1080p video, as well as both sound and motion alerts, and you can choose to use it with cloud storage, local storage on a microSD card or a combination of the two.

This camera’s compact size makes it ideal for discreet home security, and it’s easy to install in virtually any location, so long as there’s a power outlet nearby. The product does lack select features that you might find on more advanced models—for instance, the ability to delay the time between motion-triggered notifications—but it has all the basic functionality you need for an extremely reasonable price.