Hot on the heels of the new Wyze Battery Cam Pro, the company is prepared to increment the Wyze Cam v3 — which is possibly their best selling and most highly regarded WiFi camera.
The upcoming Wyze Cam v4 quite clearly picks up a spotlight, as shown above and sourced from the publicly available Android app. While the Wyze Cam v3 Pro (and OG model) also contains a spotlight, thus far that higher tier of branding denotes 2k resolution (which doesn’t actually speak to image quality)… so one might safely assume that the Wyze Cam v4 clocks in at 1080p. As to other likely assumptions, the Wyze Cam Plus Lite plan probably won’t be available, given the company’s enhanced focus on subscription revenue. The Wyze Cam v4 carries forward the original Wyze Cam’s housing and mount tradition (vs the OG’s more simplistic post), with just slight rounding of some previously sharper edges. And perhaps they’ll make the jump to USB-C, as they have with the Battery Cam Pro. I’d personally also be expecting a greater field of view, certainly more than the v3 Pro’s range.
But as compelling as Wyze’s pricing, color night vision, and illusion of hipness have been, I cannot recommend anyone purchase or utilize their hardware and services given a recent incident in which up to 2300 users had access to the live camera feeds of ten households. From the reddit chatter, this may have included strangers peeking in on a monitored special needs person.
This was Wyze’s LastPass tipping point. After X number of incidents, we’ve been sufficiently forewarned. Wyze’s seemingly substandard operational practices (as we not-so-fondly remember those bricked robot vacs and contact sensors) and lax security posture seem baked into their corporate DNA — with that knowledge, consumers (and Roku, Inc) should be prepared for more of the same or to simply jump ship. Which is my recommendation. The New York Times Wirecutter has landed upon similar:
We believe Wyze is acting irresponsibly to its customers. As such, we’ve made the difficult but unavoidable decision to revoke our recommendation of all Wyze cameras until the company implements meaningful changes to its security and privacy procedures. The concern is not that Wyze had a security incident—just about every company or organization in the world will probably have to deal with some sort of security trip-up […] The greater issue is how this company responds to a crisis. With this incident, and others in the past, it’s clear Wyze has failed to develop the sorts of robust procedures that adequately protect its customers the way they deserve. The fundamental relationship between smart-home companies and their customers is founded on trust. No company can guarantee safety and security 100% of the time, but customers need to be confident that those who make and sell these products, especially security devices, are worthy of their trust. Wyze’s inability to meet these basic standards puts its customers and its devices at risk