[POLL] SD Card (Local Storage) Experience

Which phrasing best describes the performance/experience of the Wyze Cam SD Card function?

  • Not as reliable as the cloud
  • Equally as reliable as the cloud
  • More reliable than the cloud
  • Not usable in my cam (poor performance)

0 voters

 
How often do you remove the SD card from the camera?

  • Never
  • Seldom
  • Occasionally
  • Often

0 voters

 
For what purpose(s) do you remove it?

  • Record events with better results (less errors)
  • Record long events more quickly
  • Access data at the file level (like a hard drive)
  • Access card logs for use in beta testing
  • Troubleshoot cam (eg flash firmware)
  • Other

0 voters

 
Which size card do you use?

  • 16 GB
  • 32 GB
  • 64 GB
  • 128 GB
  • >128 GB

0 voters

 
Which speed card do you use?

  • Less than Class 10 (<10MB/s)
  • Class 10, U1, V10 (10MB/s) *
  • U3 or V30 (30MB/s)
  • V30+ (>30MB/s)
  • Don’t know :woman_shrugging: :man_shrugging:

0 voters

 * The Wyze Brand 32 GB MicroSD card sold on Wyze’s website is in this category
 

If you use the Wyze SD Card, what do you think?

  • Performs well, would purchase again
  • Not impressed, would not Purchase again
  • N/A - Have not purchased nor used a Wyze SD Card

0 voters

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Produced with the assistance of a collaborative community. Thanks! :slight_smile:

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This is really well done @peepeep !

I like that all the phrasing is in neutral wording so it doesn’t influence anyone positively or negatively in any way, or to just attract one kind of voter over another.

I like it. Great contribution my friend.

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Well done. thumbsup2

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@carverofchoice @Seapup

Thanks guys! :grin:  

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If you want a DIY deep dive, @Bam 's Topic just above has been linked-to widely and auto-compiled a list of backlinks you can explore to your heart’s content. Here’s a screen capture to show you the extent of the list and where on that Topic to find it:

If deep dive’s not your deal, here’s another good and fairly recent Topic:

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Post-up here any questions and/or particularly good stuff you may find. :slight_smile:

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Android app 2.29.2.127 (April 8, 2022)
v2 w/firmware 4.9.8.1002 (March 17, 2022)
SD Card Kingston Canvas Select 32GB Class 10, U1, V10

I am set to record 12-sec cloud clip Events (Cam Plus Lite.) I have SD card recording set to Events.

Controls becomes unresponsive when accessing SD card Playback via the button on/at the Livestream display screen and browsing and/or scrubbing around, especially scrubbing hours at a time on the timeline and/or changing days, it seems.

Accessing Playback via a cloud clip Event (ie, to its corresponding SD card Event) and browsing a step at a time forward or back via the left/right ‘arrows’ at the extremes of the timeline, controls stay responsive, including the 30 sec rewind/fast forward options.


/edit

Another thing noticed: When tabbing from Event to Event , you must wait a consistent 5 seconds before the tab-press will actually take you to the next Event. If pressed sooner, it returns you to the beginning of the Event being displayed.

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These are cheap ($5 per card for 2) and I’ve had good luck with them recordng in Events mode in high traffic areas.

The red package evolved into the white package - with a speed spec increase from 80 to 100 MB/s.

I wouldn’t have thought so, but the RESPONSIVENESS when accessing and browsing the evolved card is discernibly BETTER.

Which makes me want to cough up the big dough one day to see how silky smooth and immediate the big buck MONDO-ENDURO cards are.

But not yet. :slight_smile:

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Has anyone who has tested extensively both Event and Continuous SD recording options come to the conclusion that ‘scrubbing’ on the timeline (and the SD card experience in general) is much more responsive and reliable in Continuous mode?

I suspect (just starting to explore Continuous) that that is so.

TLDR; No, technologically there shouldn’t be any difference. But there could be a personal preference based on a few related considerations:

In event only, it can be annoying to me to scroll to the exact start of an event and start the recording right away. With continuous recording, I am able to always scroll a bit before the event starts, and get ready to press record. I have a little more flexibility and don’t have to be so precise. In that sense, continuous is more responsive because I’m never stopping the timeline on a blank spot where there is no video.

On the other hand, events-only recording saves me a lot of wasted time searching for where the thing I wanted to see happened without having a bunch of pointless video to jump through (this is a little better with the new GUI though since it shows where events start in the timeline now). In that sense it’s more efficient, though it can be a pain to scroll through the timeline and start at the right spot.

I haven’t really paid close attention to responsiveness as in how fast the video starts, but from a technical standpoint I don’t think it actually makes a difference in that way. At least it shouldn’t. Every recording is always broken down into 1 minute recordings. It shouldn’t matter if they are consecutive or hours apart, the SD card reader will still be referring back to the File Allocation Table to decide what it is playing next/when for every file/minute.

The files are not necessarily stored in connective sectors either, even the same file may be fragmented on an SD card. For example, 1 second of an event may be recorded on the sector 100 while the next second is recorded thousands or millions of sectors away and the third second is stored halfway between them. This fragmentation does not make any difference on flash memory though. They have no moving parts, so fragmentation has no effect on responsiveness/performance. This is why they tell people not to “defrag” SD cards or SSD’s. It doesn’t do anything but wear out the drive for absolutely no reason at all.

So, as far as how fast the technology responds, there shouldn’t be any difference. As far as how easy it is to do the things you want it to (start it where you want to, find what you want to), there could be some differences in that sense = personal preference.

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Great minds think alike :rofl:

Exactly the same cards on all of my v3s and my dash cam/rear view camera. The one in the dash cam combo is over two years old. Two on my v3s just had their one year anniversary. The other three installed back in July. All set to continuous recording.

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Peepeep, great thread. I enjoyed seeing the results after I voted.

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But I feel that there is - or may be - doesn’t that count? :wink:

Good points, Carver, thanks!

Yep. Did you notice scrub-and-drop near an Event beginning ‘snaps-to’? That helps. A little.
/edit: With the latest app and latest v2 firmware this is no longer active, it seems.

habib, good to know these (cheap) bad boys can stand up to Continuous. I hate taking cams down (and having to re-position precisely, etc) so I’ve stuck to Event mode thinking I could leave them be longer that way. Plus it has mostly suited my needs. :slight_smile:

Cool, Steven! Funny, it came out of another prospective post asserting that we should remember that these are primarily cloud cams by design. This post was our (me and some forum folk who helped compose it) attempt to check my assumption that:

I lost the will to post the original after this effort. :slight_smile:

Noticed this speed rating discrepancy. Cheap card trounces premium? Something’s amiss. :slight_smile:

You asked what we actually use, not what is best.

Of course premium cards are better, but they’re also much more expensive.

This poll also started back before Wyze had a 2K camera. I do use better cards in most of my V3 Pro cams, but never really noticed much of difference in the other cams. The other cams have low enough resolution that a more premium card didn’t make a noticeable difference enough to justify the extra cost, at least to me.


Edit: I totally misunderstood Peep’s comment intention because I ignored the Kingston picture…see my correction a few comments down (ie: Kingston must have a mistype on their packaging, it should say 10MB/s not 100MB/s)

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Have you noticed longer lifespan of Premium cards in older cameras? Or do Premium and cheap cards last about the same amount of years?

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There are people whose opinions I highly respect that swear by premium and endurance cards making a big difference in performance and longevity.

I have to admit that I have only 3 years of continuous video recording in my cams so far, and that is a long way from the long-term potential SD cards could go with good cards. I do have a variety of card types in my cameras, including some high endurance and U3/V30 and mostly U1/V10 cards (mostly Sandisk 128GB cards) and I have not noticed much difference at all between any of them in my personal use with Wyze cams.

For context, I’m going on 40 Wyze cameras (including every Wyze Cam Model except the Wyze Cam V1 and WCO V2), so not an insignificant amount of experience.

So far, all the “cheap” SanDisk 128GB U1 C10 A1 cards I started 3 years ago and use the most of, are still going strong. But again, I’ve only had them running continuous for around 3 years, but 3 years of continuous recording is still pretty good. I looked up several “High Endurance” card warranties and most of them have warranties that would be expired for me this year anyway. Some of them only have 2 year warranties, some 3yrs, I found one that goes for 5 years. So to have non-high endurance cards that lasts 3+ years at a much lower cost…well, I can’t complain about that…but again, 3 years is also a small amount of time for this kind of thing.

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