10 best Wyze products: Wyze Cam, Wyze Vacuum and more
Wyze doesn’t give you all the bells and whistles, but it covers the high-function basics any smart home needs — and can save you significant sums.
Whitson Gordon
Whitson Gordon
When people ask me where to start with their smart home, I usually recommend light bulbs. Once you control your lights with your voice, switches begin to feel obsolete. Wyze Bulbs may not be quite as feature-rich as competitors like Philips Hue, but they contain some of the most important perks I recommend: temperature control (so you can have brighter hues during the day and reddish hues at night), voice control (so you can turn the lights on and off with Alexa), and automation features (so you can turn the lights on as you arrive home when used in conjunction with Wyze's door or motion sensors). At a fraction of the price compared to the competition, that's pretty awesome.
Got a lamp that doesn't take traditional light bulbs? Or a coffee maker you want to turn on at 6 a.m., ready for your wakeup? Smart plugs like the Wyze Plug allow you to automate just about anything that plugs in, as well as control it with your voice through Alexa.
I don't think smart locks get enough love. The ability to unlock your door automatically when you come home — and lock it when you go to bed at night — is priceless. Wyze offers a stellar smart lock for the money. It doesn't replace your external lock, just the internal deadbolt, so you wouldn't even know it's smart by looking at the door. You can add an optional keypad if you want to give friends or family one-time access.
Smart thermostats like Nest helped start the internet-of-things revolution, and the Wyze Thermostat turns that technology more affordable than ever. For a really low price, you get the ability to control the temperature from your phone, by using Alexa or even automatically as you come and go from the house. It'll even track your energy usage and give you tips to save money over time.
There are plenty of affordable robot vacuums on the market, but Wyze's version tries to keep costs down without the sacrifices. Unlike other similarly-priced vacuums, which may eschew Wi-Fi control or smart navigation, Wyze's vacuum uses LIDAR to map your house and plan an efficient path, while offering scheduling and other smart features through its app.
If you're looking for a security system that's more full-featured than just a few cameras, Wyze also has a series of sensors that can tell you when your doors have been opened, when motion is detected in the house and more — and alert the authorities if the alarm goes off.
Finally, as a companion to your smart cameras, Wyze also now offers a video doorbell for your front porch, which can let you know whether someone important is ringing (or whether it's just another package, you big spender). The Wyze Doorbell even comes with a chime, which puts its cost notably lower than many of its competitors.
While smartphones have become an almost crucial part of our daily lives, smart watches are still in their relative infancy, and it can be hard to spend a few hundred on one when you don't really know what it's like to live with it. Enter the Wyze Watch: for $20, you can get notifications and activity tracking on your wrist, albeit without a lot of the bells and whistles you'll find on watches from Apple and Fossil. But hey, it's $20 — the perfect price to see if a more expensive option is even worth it for your lifestyle.
If you have a yard but haven't tried a smart sprinkler controller, let me tell you: It's worth the upgrade. Not only are smart irrigation systems easier to configure than old-school models, but they allow for weather skips based on future forecasts, and can cycle your waterings intelligently to avoid waste. Wyze's 8-zone controller is incredibly affordable compared to other smart sprinkler controllers, too, so there's little reason not to try it out.
Wyze has gained a lot of momentum over the past couple years, and they're releasing new products at an incredibly rapid pace. They've even expanded into the smart fitness arena with a Wi-Fi smart scale and activity tracking band, both of which cost pennies compared to the competition.
If it all feels a little overwhelming, check out their starter kit: for just over $100, you get three bulbs, a camera, two plugs, and some sensors to kickstart your smart home from the ground up. You'd be surprised how much intelligence you get for the price.
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