Wyze Cam OG Telephoto Indoor/Outdoor 1080p Wi-Fi Smart Home Security Camera with 3X Optical Zoom, Color Night Vision, Motion Detection, 2-Way Audio, Compatible with Alexa & Google Assistant, White

I recently had the pleasure of incorporating the Wyze Cam OG Telephoto Indoor/Outdoor 1080p Wi-Fi Smart Home Security Camera into my home security setup, and I must say that it has exceeded all my expectations. This impressive device has truly revolutionized the way I monitor and safeguard my property, providing unparalleled peace of mind.First and foremost, the Wyze Cam OG Telephoto offers a crystal-clear 1080p resolution, ensuring every detail is captured with remarkable clarity. Whether it's indoor or outdoor monitoring, this camera never fails to deliver sharp, vivid images, even in challenging lighting conditions. The telephoto lens further enhances its versatility, allowing for superior zoom capabilities, making it ideal for monitoring larger spaces or distant areas without sacrificing quality.The Wi-Fi connectivity is seamless, enabling easy setup and hassle-free remote access through the Wyze app. With just a few taps on my smartphone, I can instantly view the camera feed, adjust settings, and even receive real-time notifications when motion is detected. The app itself is intuitive and user-friendly, making navigation a breeze for both tech-savvy individuals and beginners alike.One standout feature that truly sets the Wyze Cam OG Telephoto apart is its advanced AI-powered person detection. This intelligent functionality accurately distinguishes between humans and other movement, significantly reducing false alerts. No more being bombarded with notifications triggered by passing cars or fluttering leaves. The camera's ability to recognize human activity ensures that I'm promptly notified of any potential security concerns, allowing me to take appropriate action swiftly.Another aspect worth mentioning is the camera's exceptional build quality and durability. Designed to withstand the elements, the Wyze Cam OG Telephoto is equipped with an IP65 weather-resistant rating, providing reliable performance even in adverse weather conditions. This peace of mind is invaluable, knowing that my camera can endure rain, snow, or intense heat without compromising its functionality.The Wyze Cam OG Telephoto is also impressively versatile, offering flexible installation options. Its magnetic base allows for quick attachment to any metal surface, and the included mounting kit provides additional choices for secure placement. Whether you prefer wall mounting or positioning it on a shelf, this camera effortlessly adapts to your needs.To top it all off, the Wyze Cam OG Telephoto comes at an exceptionally affordable price point, making it accessible to a wide range of users. Its value for money is unbeatable, especially considering the abundance of features and the high-quality footage it provides.In conclusion, the Wyze Cam OG Telephoto Indoor/Outdoor 1080p Wi-Fi Smart Home Security Camera is an absolute game-changer in the realm of home security. Its remarkable image quality, intelligent person detection, and robust build ensure a reliable and effective surveillance system. Whether you're keeping an eye on your property, loved ones, or valuable possessions, this camera delivers with exceptional performance. With Wyze Cam OG Telephoto, you can rest easy knowing you have a reliable and vigilant security companion by your side.

Runs 24/7, has noise alerts and good zoom in capability, small, compact and cool!

This is a great system but many people complain that all their cameras go offline every now and then - mine would always stop working after two or three days, and I'd need to restart the hotspot to get them working again. I'll spare you the details of how exasperating this was (none of the fixes suggested on the Wyze website or forums helped). I didn't know if the problem was with the cameras or the hotspot. But then I discovered the fix... the system has been working fine for a few weeks now. In your phone (Android), go to Settings, Apps, Wyze, then Storage & Cache, and hit Clear Cache. Apparently, if the cache gets too full the system slows down to the point that a timeout gets triggered and this bumps it off the network. Clearing the cache at least once a day has kept the system running as it should. The system is great - economical (Black Friday deals helped a lot), easy to set up, and gives your peace of mind a real boost.

I bought this thinking it had a 3x ZOOM telephoto lens. That is wrong. Instead it has a fixed magnification lens, which is set to 3x as compared to the regular OG camera. This gives this camera a much more narrow field-of-view. It appears indeed it isn't even a wide-angle lens. So, for the application I was hoping for, it didn't work. Further the video quality at extreme zoom settings is much less than the regular OG camera, with the night vision much more grainy at high zoom rates. I'm not disappointed enough to return in, but fair warning it doesn't have any better resolution at high magnifications than the non-zoom OG camera

In the first sentence describing this camera on the Amazon page, the importer/seller states that this camera has 3x optical zoom. They make the same claim in the detailed specifications for the camera, which is found further down in the page. This is a false claim. This camera has fixed focal length (fixed angle of view). The focus distance is also fixed. The term “zoom” refers by convention to the ability for the focal length of a lens to vary so that the angle of view can vary. More particularly, “3x optical zoom” implies that the focal length of the lens can vary over a range where the long end is 3x greater than the short end. Since there is no such capability, the question that begs an answer is where the number 3 comes from. Since the focal length of the lens is fixed, the best guess (probably) is that they are using interpolation/upscaling to simulate a focal length 3x longer than the actual focal length of the lens. If this happens to be a correct guess, the claim is false on two counts (it isn’t done optically, and while the upscaling simulates a telephoto capability, a telephoto capability and a zoom capability are not one and the same thing). And if this happens to be a correct guess, it would explain why the images do not seem to have as much detail as they should given the 2K claim. The actual, inherent resolution of a sharply focused image taken with this camera is nowhere near as great as it should be for a 1080 x 1920 (2K) camera.For any camera with fixed focal length and fixed focus, one of the fundamental questions is what the minimum distance is, at which the target image will be in sharp focus. For the Wyze OG Telephoto, this distance is about 10’. The next question is what the target width is at this distance (as determined by the angle of view). At this minimum distance, the target width is about 40”. Depending on how you intend to use the camera, these numbers might not matter. An example of when it would matter would be if you were wanting to use the camera to capture close-up images of small birds at a bird feeder. You will need to place the camera no closer than 10’ from the feeder. A typical bird feeder will then take up perhaps 1/5 of the image width, and thus about 1/5 of the horizontal pixels. The number of pixels actually used for the feeder and the birds at the feeder will then be not more than 20% of total image pixels, probably not more than 10%.There are a couple of other problems with the image quality. When I took pictures of a perfectly rectangular target with the target centered in the camera frame and nearly filling the frame, the camera needed to be offset laterally from the center of the target by a distance that was about 1/4 the distance to the target. When the camera was not offset in this manner, the two vertical sides of the rectangle were very different in size, i.e., the rectangle was not a rectangle. This is likely due to the lens not being in correct directional alignment with the sensor, which is suggestive of poor quality control in the manufacturing.Image quality suffers further from the excessive use of sharpening. I am not a fan of image sharpening, because it creates artifacts at the boundary between light and dark regions of the image. For this camera, these specific artifacts are overt, to such an extent that in my individual opinion the images are ruined by this artifact.In spite of the several problems with the image quality, the image quality may be as good as it needs to be, depending on your expectations and on how you intend to use the camera. Security cameras in general are not known for their image quality, especially one as dirt cheap (inexpensive) as this one.During the setup procedure, it is impossible not to notice this displayed message: "Get Cam Plus to remove 5-minute cooldown period and record longer motion”. This message and variations of it, which include a small icon displayed on the “live view” screen, are pervasive in the app running on your phone. If the need for a 5-minute cooldown between successive recordings of motion-triggered events happens to be genuine, there are two observations that need to be noted. First, it is not possible for any subscription service to cause the sensor to cool down more quickly, absent a fan that is controlled remotely, which does not exist in this little camera, and which could more easily be controlled by the firmware in the camera, if a fan existed. Second, any camera that genuinely needs a cooldown period longer than a few seconds is useless in many scenarios, which certainly includes security camera use.My curiosity about this 5-minute cooldown was piqued to the extent that I spent a little time in an endeavor to learn what the actual impact of it is. This endeavor was encumbered by a user interface that struck me as nonintuitive, and also by the lack of a user manual. I would have been happy with a downloadable PDF file, but there is none. Eventually I sought the help of their customer support, which was via chat, which I abhor because for any sort of technical communication, the efficiency of chat is deplorable. The session abruptly ended before my question had been answered, however I was pleasantly surprised later in the day when I discovered an email that the support person had sent me. Here is an excerpt: “Regarding your Wyze Cam OG that has a 5-minute cooldown time …, please check our support article Event Recording Schedules on Wyze Cam v1/v2 and Pan. This applies to all our Wyze Cam devices in terms of event recording length and cooldown time.” Here is an excerpt from the referenced article: “Cool Down Period - There is a 5-minute cool down or ‘rest’ period after Sound or Motion triggers an Event video. Unless you have Cam Plus, which removes this cool down and gives you full length videos, there will be 5 minutes between every 12-second Event video. Sound and Motion are separate triggers. If sound triggers an Event video, but during the 5-minute cool down the camera detects motion, another Event video will be recorded.”Evidently, Wyze believes that the typical buyer is gullible enough such that by using the words “cool down”, the typical buyer will be believe that this really is a physical limitation of the camera (and not simply an artificial restriction put there by Wyze to help selling subscriptions), and that the only possible means by which it is possible to circumvent the make-believe physical limitation is with the aid of a subscription service.In my experimentation, I discovered that it is not as bad as this article makes it seem, for the present time anyway. When the MicroSD card is enabled, motion-triggered or sound-triggered events cause the camera to record both thumbnails and video clips to the card. I discovered that only the thumbnails are affected by the goofball 5-minute cooldown. The video clips, which are all that would matter to me, are not affected. They are all one minute in length (not 12 seconds as the article states), and they can occur with no intervening time gaps.Given that Wyze did this, it would not surprise for them to use a future firmware “upgrade” to apply the restriction to the video clips. Among the several reasons that I abhor this kind of thing, there is the question of what will happen in the event that Wyze goes out of business and the subscription service is shut down.There are plenty of reputable companies who manufacture security cameras of excellent quality and who do not endeavor to use the camera as a vehicle by which they can compel people to pay for a subscription service. I have not looked into the subscription service to learn, for example, if the video clips captured by the camera are automatically uploaded and stored on a remote server. If this is done, then depending on the storage allocation, the service might be worthwhile for all I could say. I don’t know, but I do know that it rubs me the wrong way for a manufacturer to do this kind of thing. I’m not suggesting that there is anything illegal about it, and ethics are subject to individual opinion. I simply do not like it, personally.