A security camera is something that, ideally, you never want to worry about.
You set it up, and expect it to just work.
TheWyze Cam Panis a powerful security camera with an incredibly low price.
Should you spend a bit extra and go for a pricier camera?
That piece has a glossy plastic cover and rotates up and down to provide the camera’s tilt capability.
Image quality is good and I’ll include some photos later in the review.
They aren’t visible during the day and will only turn on if you have night vision enabled.
The original Wyze Cam models were incredibly successful with more than 150,000 registered users.
The Pan builds off of their success and includes all the features that made them great.
Now, for just a bit more, you get PTZ capabilities as well.
At the base of the unit, we find the rubberized base that the Pan rotates on.
I would recommend either a16GBor a32GB cardso you don’t have to worry about losing footage.
The Wyze Cam Pan has three main recording modes: continuous, alerts, and time lapse.
Continuous will constantly record to the SD card and replace old footage as the card fills up.
The alerts mode will record short 12-second clips whenever it detects movement or certain sounds.
These clips can then be automatically backed to the AWS cloud on a rolling 14-day timeframe.
you’re free to also setup phone notifications to correspond with these clips.
Setting up the Wyze Cam Pan is simple.
The app will then displaya QR codeon your phone screen.
Create an account and place your phone in front of the camera to pair the two.
The whole process took less than three minutes.
If you get stuck, the camera also gives audio directions to guide you along.
Unfortunately, this is where one of the biggest drawbacks comes into play.
This something that Wyze should be able to implement in the future but it’s just not there yet.
Although, your phone will need to be connected to the internet as well.
The mobile app is very simple to navigate.
The timeline will turn green during time frames in which the camera was recording.
you could also pinch to zoom in on certain areas of interest in the footage.
The image is bright and crisp and you’re free to zoom in while still maintaining quality.
The right screenshot is what the live stream view looks like.
Here you might see I have night vision turned on in an otherwise pitch black room.
I was really impressed with how well this feature worked.
The camera can move very rapidly but I sometimes found it a bit too fast.
It rotates almost instantly after you push a button, but the video lags behind by about 15 seconds.
This made it cumbersome to line up a shot of a certain area due to the disconnect.
Maybe this 10-15 second delay in video playback is something Wyze can improve in future software updates.
The motion tracking mode worked much better than I expected for a $30 camera.
The camera pans and tilts to follow the subject as it moves around its field of view.
Below is shortfootage I tookof it in action.
Motion tagging gives you the option to add a green box around where the camera detects movement.
It’s not the best, but gets the job done here.
The Pan Scan is a unique feature that allows you to keep track of a whole room at once.
This mode allows you to set pre-defined waypoints around the camera that you want to keep track of.
The camera will then cycle through these waypoints every few seconds.
The app also offers some more advanced controls as well.
it’s possible for you to customize what alerts you want and when you want them.
Finally, you could reformat the SD card and adjust how sensitive the motor controls are as well.
That’s about all there is to it.
It’s not perfect though.
I’d love to see web playback and a more responsive interface.
My recommendation would be to buy one first and set it up for a few weeks.
If it meets your needs, great.
Problem solved for less than $30.
