Wyze’s cheap and questionable security cam levels up with Wi-Fi 6, edge AI, and 2.5K video

You might think twice before buying a Wyze camera. The company’s security practices are questionable enough that I personally boycotted them in 2022, and since then, they’ve twice briefly let strangers peek into another Wyze owner’s home. In fact, The New York Times and CNET don’t recommend Wyze cameras anymore, and we haven’t done so for a while.

But some Verge readers have told us that if you’re pointing them outside of your home and recording to a local SD card, there’s no better bang for your buck. So, we figure some will appreciate Wyze’s announcement today of the Wyze Cam v4, on sale now.

The $36 camera is getting a big spec bump over the v3: it now captures 2.5K (2560 x 1440) video with what Wyze is sometimes calling HDR and sometimes calling “wide dynamic range,” up from 1080p previously. It’s got onboard AI processing for faster notifications and basic AI person detection that doesn’t rely on your camera sending images to the cloud. It can also use that local AI person detection to auto-zoom in and follow people, and it adds a motion-activated spotlight and motion-activated voice warnings.

While many of those features also arrived with the $49.99 Wyze Cam v3 Pro in 2022 and are mostly getting more affordable, the v3 Pro didn’t have Wi-Fi 6. Here, you get “an extra 20 meters of range, better handling of congestion, and a higher connection speed.” It still only supports 2.4GHz networks, though.

Here’s the list of improvements Wyze head of marketing Kyle Christensen sent our way:

Wyze also says there’s “louder and clearer audio,” and its mic can pick up sound further away.

Christensen didn’t respond to a question about whether the Wyze Cam v4 can be used entirely without Wyze’s worrying cloud but confirmed that, like previous Wyze Cams, it can optionally do continuous recording to a microSD card, no subscription required. The v4 supports up to a 512GB card now, up from 256GB previously.