Wyze Labs, Inc. has been a disruptive force in the smart home security industry for years. But now Wyze is looking to shake things up all over again with a new pay-what-you-want plan dubbed “Cam Plus Lite,” according to recent reports detailing the launch of the new plan.
In terms of coverage and features, Wyze Cam Plus Lite will be applicable not on a per-device basis as its other plans are. But will instead cover an entire household of products. With support available for Wyze Cam v2, Cam v3, Pan v1, Pan v2, and Cam Outdoor. That’s as of this writing. Support is planned for Video Doorbell at a later, unspecified date too.
In terms of what that plan nets users, Wyze says it will allow up to 12-second video recordings up to every five minutes. That includes cloud storage of the footage, stored for up to 14 days. Person detection is included in the package as well.
What does the Wyze Cam Plus Lite plan mean for current free and subscription users?
Notably, what’s missing from Wyze Cam Plus Lite is the Wyze Web View, detection triggers, and product discounts found in Wyze Cam Plus. That won’t be changing. Nither will that plan’s price, at $2 per month or $15 per year — that’s a per-device cost. Whereas users could potentially pay almost nothing for the new smart home-ready plan from Wyze.
The presently free Basic Plan will stick around as well. The biggest differentiators are that the plan takes snapshots, up to every five minutes. And, of course, it offers alerts for motion, sound, smoke, and carbon monoxide. Although Basic Plan users will require person detection starting February 15 in order to trigger a cloud-based event recording to be saved.
Wyze has some other changes too, to balance things out
In addition to changes to the cloud storage side of things, Wyze also unveiled that it has acquired an exFAT license. That means that users who want to use local storage instead won’t be losing out on much. Since exFAT supports microSD card sizes larger than 32GB. In terms of where that’s available, as of this writing, that’s only on Wyze Cam v3 — pending a firmware update. The next firmware update will deliver the feature to more cameras.
Event playback is getting a rework too, allowing one-tap access for timestamps. And buttons for 30-second skip and rewind. Those features will arrive in mid-February.
2022-01-14 15:07:12