The Wyze Video Doorbell, like all of the company’s other products, distinguishes itself with one major attribute: It’s cheap. At $89 — which includes a digital chime — the Wyze Video Doorbell Pro is one of the least expensive video doorbells around from a well-known company. Yet it offers a good amount of features for the price, including an expansive view, battery power, and — if you pay up for an equally cheap subscription — person and package detection. This Wyze Video Doorbell Pro review will look at its various features, and compare it with the Ring Video Doorbell (2nd gen) to see which deserves a higher spot on our list of the best video doorbells.
Price and availability
The Wyze Video Doorbell Pro costs $89.99 and comes with a wireless chime. It’s available through Wyze.com, though as of this writing, the doorbell is on backorder; you can enter your email address to be notified when it’s available for purchase.
Wyze also sells the Wyze Video Doorbell for $49.99; this model is hardwired-only, but also comes with the chime. It has a 1080p resolution and a 3:4 aspect ratio, and only supports 2.4GHz Wi-Fi networks.
Design and installation
The Wyze Video Doorbell Pro has a fairly plain appearance. It looks like a supersized candy bar. The bulk of the device is white, with the exception of the camera and infrared sensor, which are glossy black.
The back of the doorbell has two screw contacts if you want to hardwire it, plus a micro USB port covered by a rubber flap for when you need to recharge it. Unfortunately, the design of the video doorbell doesn’t allow you to connect it to the Wyze Solar Panel. Unlike the Nest Doorbell (Battery) and some of Wyze’s other cameras — such as the Wyze Cam v.3, one of the best home security cameras — there’s no local storage on the Wyze Video Doorbell Pro, so all your videos will have to be saved to the cloud.
Similar to the Ring Video Doorbell (2nd gen), the Wyze Video Doorbell Pro can either be hardwired or run off battery power alone. Also like Ring’s video doorbell, you have to remove the entire unit off your door if you want to recharge its battery — which means you’ll be without a doorbell for a while.
Wyze says the battery should last about 6 months, so hopefully you won’t have to take it out of service too often. Still among budget wireless video doorbells, the Blink Video Doorbell, which uses two AA Lithium batteries, wins since it can last up to two years.
Video quality and performance
The Wyze Video Doorbell Pro has a 1440 x 1440 pixel resolution, and provides an expansive 150-degree view both horizontally and vertically. Overall, video quality was pretty good for a video doorbell that costs less than $100.
While I wasn’t able to do a direct head-to-head comparison with the Ring Video Doorbell, in looking at older footage I recorded, Ring’s camera tended to deliver much richer colors and a bit more definition than Wyze’s camera. The Wyze Video Doorbell Pro also had a bit of haziness around the edges of objects and, as natural for fisheye lenses, there was a bit of distortion at the edges of the frame.
That being said, Wyze’s camera was still good enough, allowing me to make out the details of visitors’ faces, even in night vision videos. The one area where it had trouble was when the sun was shining directly at the camera; pricier video doorbells, such as the Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2, have HDR which helps minimize this issue.
Subscription features
If you want to get access to all of the Wyze Video Doorbell Pro’s features, you have to subscribe to Wyze’s subscription service, called Cam Plus. With this, you get person, package, vehicle, and pet detection, along with unlimited video recordings and no “cool-down” period between recordings.
Without the subscription, videos are limited to 12 seconds in length, and there’s a 5-minute waiting period between recordings — less than ideal.
Fortunately, Cam Plus is the most affordable among the security camera subscription plans; it costs $1.99 per month per camera, and drops to $1.25/month per camera if you sign up for an annual subscription. By comparison, Ring costs $3 per month, and Nest and Arlo are both $6 per month. However, Nest’s plan covers every device at a single location, so if you’re planning to turn your house into a surveillance state, it may be a more economical option.
Read More: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/wyze-video-doorbell-pro