What is the Wyze Cam Plus subscription and should you pay for it?

Cheap cameras can be expensive

If you’re familiar with the state of smart home security, you probably weren’t shocked when Wyze launched its Cam Plus subscription in 2020. It’s become the standard business model for companies within the space, and as features associated with recurring costs roll out, like storage and AI image processing in the cloud, the money for that has to come from somewhere. Subscriptions also give companies more dependable year-round income so they don’t have to rely solely on hardware sales to stay profitable — a point Wyze made in its video about almost going bankrupt.

Wyze distinguished itself from its competition by selling extremely affordable security cameras that were easy to set up and worked well. They weren’t the best devices on the market, but they were extremely good for the money. The increasing popularity of subscriptions has added another area in which Wyze needs to excel to stay competitive. When Wyze first launched its subscription service, companies like Ring and Nest already had their subscription model established for years. While this put Wyze at a timing disadvantage, it at least gave them a clear look at what features they needed to offer, and the prices it had to compete with.

What is Cam Plus

Wyze has three separate services named some variation of “Cam Plus” available: Cam Plus Lite, Cam Plus, and Cam Plus Pro. It’s a tiered “good/better/best” pricing structure that tries to offer compelling reasons to upgrade.

Cam Plus Lite: Free/pay-what-you-want. As of February 15, 2022, Cam Plus Lite offers 12-second recordings saved to the cloud for 14 days with a 5-minute cooldown between recordings, along with AI person detection. You can pair that with a microSD card to have a full recording of any events, but you risk losing that if your cameras are stolen or the storage fails. You can view your cameras live via the Wyze app, and record straight to your phone as well.

The launch of Cam Plus Lite coincides with Wyze removing the same 12-second recording feature from the original free tier. It’s easy enough to opt into Cam Plus Lite on Wyze’s website if you want to keep that feature, otherwise you’ll be downgraded to image thumbnails instead. The only drawback seems to be that you’ll have to attach a payment method to your account regardless of whether you intend to give Wyze the suggested $1 every month or not.

Cam Plus: $1.99/month or $15/year per camera. In addition to the AI person detection in the Lite tier, Cam Plus adds AI detection of packages vehicles and pets. This option also includes 2 weeks of full event recordings stored on the cloud with no cooldown. Anyone with a Cam Plus plan or better also gets a discount on Wyze products. Most of the discounts are $2-$5, but the more expensive items like the Wyze cordless or robot vacuums can be in the $10-$20 range.

Cam Plus Pro: $3.99/month or $39.99/year per camera. For over double the cost of the Plus subscription, Wyze adds alarm arming, visual notifications, and 24/7 monitoring through the security app maker and professional monitoring service Noonlight (who also provides monitoring services for Eufy). Wyze says that later in 2022 it will also get AI “friendly face” detection to prevent unnecessary alarm triggers, but doesn’t have a timeframe for release. It’s also not yet available for its latest camera, the Cam Pan v2. This will probably change in the very near future, but for now, it’s only compatible with the Cam v2, Wyze Cam v3 and Pan v1.

Premium features, premium price

If you want home monitoring, Nest no longer partners with Brinks for that service, so it’s nice to have that available through Wyze. 24/7 Monitoring through Wyze’s Cam Plus Pro feels like an odd option for anyone with more than a single camera, though. The much better deal seems to be opting into their separate monitoring service that comes in at $4.99 per month, includes a free Cam Plus subscription for one camera, and supports up to 5 cameras. (Wyze also says that limit will increase soon, but no mention of when).

Wyze may beat out most of its competition in hardware cost, but if you’re tempted to put that cost savings into additional cameras, you’ll quickly end up spending more per month in subscription fees than you would with Nest, or any of the other companies that offer a flat-rate subscription. The flat-fee model makes it clear just how expensive it can be to have a bunch of cheap Wyze cameras. While Wyze’s Cam Plus is a good deal if you only have a few cameras, past that there are better deals to be found.

Wyze has a couple of problems that other companies don’t.

• Its subscription model has been behind the times since Wyze launched it. While Wyze charges a very small amount per camera for this service, the likes of Nest, Ring, Blink, Arlo, and Eufy have the option to cover all of your cameras for one flat price. I wouldn’t be surprised if Wyze adopts this model soon, too, because it seems like its business model changes with the seasons.
• Wyze consistently announces future features with often absent timelines and sometimes has to eat its own words when it can’t deliver on that promise. It announced person detection would be free when it thought the feature could be run in-camera, but it launched as a paid feature to help offset the cost of cloud computing. The company seems to have learned from that by only making big promises in its paid subscriptions, but that hasn’t stopped it from listing these features that don’t exist yet as selling points.

End of life issue

On February 1, 2022, Wyze ended support for its Cam v1. Users were frustrated, as Wyze only let customers know seven days ahead of time, stating it “can no longer support a necessary security update” giving them a $3 coupon as compensation. Customers can still use the cameras for now, but that could change in a future policy update.

The Wyze Cam v1 launched 5 years ago for just $20, and has had regular firmware updates and security patches up until its recent end-of-life announcement. That’s not a bad run for most smart devices, let alone one that cheap, but customers complained that the one-week notice wasn’t long enough. Wyze also hasn’t made a formal announcement about the change, either. Instead, Wyze just added a new end-of-life section to its terms and conditions page saying it would post any devices there as they hit their EOL date.

Is Cam Plus Worth it?

I think that Wyze’s Cam Plus is a prudent choice for lots of customers. Wyze’s cameras cost a fraction of many of its competitors, and the video quality is good. Cameras from Wyze’s Pan line can add a lot of extra coverage without increasing the number of cameras you’re paying for every month. Unless Wyze modernizes its subscription pricing, though, other budget camera companies like Blink and Eufy that cap their subscription at $10 per month may win over customers who want to add a lot of extra camera coverage without spending any more for it every month. For anyone that only needs a few cameras, though, Wyze looks like the right choice.

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