Wyze Cam Pan Smart Home Camera An affordable pan and tilt Wi-Fi smart home camera

Compact size: The camera is shaped like a small rectangle. What is funny about it is that this is the larger model offered by this brand (along with the smaller Wyze Cam).

Friendly app: To use the Wyze Cam Pan, you need to download the Wyze app, which you can get here: Google Play or App Store.

Easy to install and set up: It took me several minutes to download the Wyze app, install it, register a new user account and connect the camera. If you follow the instructions in the app (or on the Wyze website), you will probably succeed quickly.

Physically, installing the camera is easy as well. At the base, it has a ¼ threaded screw hole that is compatible with standard camera mounts, so it can be mounted on any surface. Please note you can find additional accessories online to maximize your experience with the Wyze Cam Pan.

Excellent video quality: The camera shoots videos at 1080P Full-HD resolution, and the outcome during live streaming and in the saved files looks great.

The video quality also looks great when zooming in (up to 8x) and in night vision mode (the camera distinguishes 18 steps of gray).

Works with Amazon Alexa: The main reason I purchased this camera is that it is supposed to synchronize with Alexa. After pairing the camera with your Amazon device, you should be able to ask Alexa to show your camera on any Amazon device with a screen, to pull up a live feed of your camera for up to 10 minutes. Currently, Wyze cameras work with Echo Spot, Echo Show, and Fire TV 4K and HD.

Unfortunately, as can be seen in my video of the Wyze Cam Pan, I did not manage to use it with my Fire HD 8 tablet. From what I understand, this device does not support this camera. Hopefully, this issue will be solved someday soon, because based on the available devices you can use it with, I do not see any logical reason to prevent more potential users from doing that.

Large variety of features: The basic features are executed well, and include: pan and tilt movement; zoom in (up to 8x); saving video into files; playback by scrolling through the timeline and pinch zooming the timeline for easier navigation (possible when a microSD card, not included, is installed); 2-way audio (speaker and microphone); recording videos or taking pictures directly to your phone for later viewing or sharing; night vision; and continuous recording to a microSD card (sold separately), where older files are automatically overwritten when storage reaches capacity.

The advanced features include: Alexa support (assuming you have read what I wrote in the previous paragraph); Pan Scan, where the camera automatically scans its surroundings by rotating to up to 4 custom waypoints and pauses for 10 seconds at each one; Motion Tracking, which auto-tracks any moving object detected within its field of view; Motion and Sound Detection, which records a 12-second video that is securely stored in the AWS cloud; Motion Tagging, which highlights motion in both live stream and playback modes; a custom Motion Detection Zone, so alert videos are triggered only by motion in a specific area of the field of view; Time Lapse; Smart Sound Recognition of the tonal patterns of smoke alarms and CO monitors; Push Notifications; Alert Scheduling, to turn motion and sound detection on and off at specific times of the day; and IFTTT integration, with 4 triggers (motion, sound, CO alarm and smoke alarm) and 5 actions (turn on/off motion alerts, turn on/off push notifications, and upload an alert video to the cloud).

Free rolling 14-day cloud storage: By owning the Wyze Cam Pan, you have free access to saved motion and sound-triggered alert videos for a rolling 14 days, in perpetuity.

According to the manufacturer site, the files are saved into secure AWS cloud storage. The Wyze Cam Pan uses end-to-end encryption for uploading and downloading alert videos to and from the AWS cloud.