$20 versus $2700 security camera face-off comparison
The world of Security cameras is clouded with technical spec comparisons, usages and all that. But what about the most basic of questions–A faceoff–Which of these two cameras is just…better?
Let’s find out together.
The Contenders
In this corner, coming to us from their headquarters in Seattle, Washington—Wyze Cam V2!! This bad boy is one of the cheapest cameras on the market.
Retail price from the manufacturer’s site is $19.99, and you can pick it up on amazon for a few bucks beyond that.
Data is transmitted through wifi, and you’re quite limited on where you can view the footages. They have an aftermarket firmware you can install to make it available to some platforms, but it’s very cumbersome to use and the quality is about what you’d expect comparatively speaking.
That said, for $20 I’m still really quite impressed what this little guy has to offer. Let’s take a look at a sample photo.
Quick technical note: RTSP firmware was used to take this footage, pulled into Wave VMS for recording. The output from the app required you to watch everything in 1x speed to record out and that just wasn’t good enough for editing video!
AND IN THIS CORNER, Developed in South Korea by Hanwha Techwin, a combined 20Megapixel monstrosity of a camera.
It combines 4 different 5 Megapixel cameras and stitches them together nearly seamlessly into one high resolution image. Check this out.
Image resolution can be scaled by blogs sometimes, so check out there source image comparison screenshots:
What makes the Hanwha camera so expensive?
Now this is the burning question we all have. If the $20 camera can show you the same scene that the $2700 camera can, why would you ever buy the big one?
That’s a great question. Let’s dive into some advantages of the PNM-9030V over this cheap alternative.
The Hanwha camera is designed to be used outdoors. It’s got internal heaters and blowers that allow it to cope with harsh weather environments. Also, they’re POE — Power over Ethernet. One wire pull gives you data and power for the camera, heater and blower.
Let’s talk about raw power for a second though.
This camera is powered by the Hanwha Techwin WISENET 5 chip. That means it’s got a ton more horsepower under the hood than the little Wyze cam.
For starters, the resolution of the camera being pulled in is 7744×1936 compared to the Wyze cam’s 1920×1080. It’s an entirely different scale of image compared to what the Wyze Cam can capture.
Advanced in-camera analytics
Wyze does offer some basic analytics for event recording within their software, but it doesn’t compare to what comes built into this Hanwha camera.
Not only does the camera support edge recording for 2x SD card slots up to 512GB compared to the Wyze Cam’s measly 32GB slot, but with high end VMS’s you can pull that data into those systems as well.
Analytics included with this Hanwha camera are:
- Tampering
- Loitering (up to 60 seconds)
- Virtual Line (Line crossing, directional crossing)
- Enter/exit
- Appear/Disappear
- Audio Detection
- Motion Detection
- Sound Classification (Glass shatter, explosion, gunshot, scream)
- Heatmapping
The Shootout
Without further adue, here is the straight up comparison. Click on the photos to look at the full resolution image. Zoom in to really see how much detail the images have.
Conclusion
There are some seriously fantastic security cameras out there. This Hanwha is a fantastic example, and it’s not even the best of the best. I mean, It’s up there though.
The value of a Wyze Cam comes from the price and usability for a consumer. For commercial applications, analytics, advanced features and government—these high end cameras are great future proofing.
As we all expected, the $2700 camera blew the $20 camera out of the water. What we can also take away from this is that home security doesn’t need to break the bank to be effective.
Sources
- Source: https://www.hanwhasecurity.com/pnm-9030v.html Hanwha Techwin PNM-9030V Manual
- https://wyze.com/wyze-cam.html Source: Wyze Cam Data Sheet
