Wyze Cam OG Review

The Wyze Cam OG is a fairly simple camera, with a 120° field of view (FOV) and built-in spotlight, and while it does not pan or tilt, it's a very capable unit that performed well across all of our tests. It is also very budget-friendly.

Performance Comparison

We've broken down the OG's performance into three major metrics below. Recorded Video Quality, Monitoring Performance, and Ease of Use. With each major metric encompassing a range of sub-metrics.

Recorded Video Quality

Our first major test metric tested each camera's ability to record in the daytime as well as at night and measured each camera's field of view. The Wyze Cam OG offers 1080p recordings for both daylight and color night vision, as well as 24/7 recording to a microSD card. Our team found the daytime recordings were crisp enough to make out detail, although compared to the recordings produced by other cameras, the OG's colors and textures were just a little bit off, with a slightly hazy and pastel look. Our team also observed that the camera had a harder time recording very bright white areas, but the video was still good enough to easily make out facial details and does not blur with motion or distance.

When it comes down to night vision recordings, Wyze does very well across all of its product offerings, and the Wyze Cam OG is no exception. The color night vision is nothing short of amazing and needs very little light to record great video, whereas other cameras can only record pitch-black darkness.

Infrared recordings are also very crisp and clean, although the camera's powerful infrared lights can over-illuminate white and reflective surfaces, resulting in overly bright areas of video.

Overall, the OG is really good at recording day or night. It did exhibit the minor issues of colors that looked relatively flat and edges somewhat smoothed, but it still easily outperforms the majority of the competition, including considerably more expensive models.

The Wyze Cam OG offers a 120 degree field of view, which is pretty standard for home security cameras, although other brands offer an even wider field of view, up to 140 degrees. The OG also does not pan or tilt, but is designed to stack so that multiple cameras can cover different views while taking up very little space.

Monitoring Performance

Our second major metric covered a range of tests to determine how well each camera detected sound and motion, recorded those sounds, and any latencies or delays present in live video.

The Wyze Cam OG does very well when it comes to live video. It has a very quick video response, with almost no noticeable delay — a great improvement from previous models. Quick movements can get a little blurry, but it usually only happens with close objects passing by. The sound also has a slight delay but is otherwise not very noticeable.

The sound quality picked up by the camera's microphone is sharp, and it's easy to hear what people say clearly. However, some voices can be a bit quiet, and if you really scrutinize the audio quality, you can hear an almost unnoticeable static noise.

The camera speakers also produce good quality sound, with good volume, but it could be a bit clearer. An alarm can be used on the camera as well, producing a siren that is 67.6 decibels.

Ease of Use

A security camera provides the greatest benefits if you can easily adjust what it monitors, where it monitors, set notifications, and easily access recordings. The Wyze Cam OG ticks all the boxes for ease of use.

The home screen has tabs for 'Events', where all of your recordings are available, 'Monitoring', where you can control your home security if you have the additional subscription, and 'Account', where you can access your account information and services. Every camera that is connected is also available from the home screen, where you can turn them on or off. Additionally, you can tap on a connected camera to quickly access a specific camera to watch a live feed or manually make a recording.

On an individual camera's screen, you can easily access its settings.

Navigating doesn't get much more straightforward or intuitive, which makes setting notifications and alerts easy. Advanced detection can be set up if using an add-on subscription service, which extends motion detection to identify specific types of motions, like people, packages, vehicles, and animals.

Sound detection can also easily be set up to trigger notifications. The sound detection can specifically include an alert for when a fire or carbon monoxide alarm goes off in your home while you are away, adding to the security of your home.

The app also allows you to specify where you want your camera to watch and receive notifications only for detections within your customized zone. So you won't get notified every time the wind blows a few leaves on a bush at the corner of your property or a neighbor at the edge of their yard is mowing a lawn when you customize the zone to exclude those areas.

While the camera app does offer add-on subscription services, its free features are easy to use. Wyze includes a free rolling 14-day cloud storage, and you can record locally to a micro sd card up to 256GB.

Should You Buy the Wyze Cam OG?

The Wyze Cam OG is an exceptional home security camera with incredible value. If a 120 degree field of view is sufficient, and you don't need the ability to pan or tilt the camera, then you'd be hard-pressed to find a better security camera. Beyond great performance, it's also really affordable, and our team thinks it would be a great security camera option for most.

What Other Security Cameras Should You Consider?

While the Wyze Cam OG is a great security camera that offers exceptional performance at a very low price, it does not pan or tilt like a couple of other models from Wyze. If you are looking for a camera with great performance as well as the ability to pan and tilt, then you need to take a good look at the Wyze Cam Pan v3. It performs very similarly to the OG and offers the same suite of app features and add-on services. This camera includes panning and tilting abilities and does so while remaining incredibly affordable.