After leaking a couple of days ago, Roku has now officially announced its new line of smart home lights, plugs, and cameras. Unlike Roku’s home theater products, which I presume the company makes itself to some degree, these smart home devices are “developed in partnership with Wyze,” which appears to just mean that Roku put its name on Wyze’s hardware and, possibly, add it’s own spin through software. Here’s what Roku has to offer and how they compare to the Wyze equivalent.
The smart home lineup from Roku includes 3 lighting products which consist of both white and color standard A19 LED smart bulbs and an LED smart light strip that comes in two lengths. The smart plugs include both an indoor plug with one receptacle and an outdoor plug with two receptacles. Lastly, there are four cameras in various forms. The main camera is an indoor camera that can also be purchased as an outdoor variant, which just means it comes with a weatherproof plug instead of the usual USB power brick. That same camera is also sold with a floodlight. The next camera is a motorized indoor camera that can be remotely rotated 360°. The third camera is a battery-powered outdoor camera and the last camera options are a pair of video doorbell cameras which come in a wired or battery-powered option.
All devices connect over WiFi and don’t require a hub, except for the battery-powered outdoor camera. Roku has made a new Roku Smart Home app, which is available in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, to manage these devices. They can be controlled by Google Assistant and Roku’s voice assistant at launch with support for Amazon’s Alexa coming in November. A cloud subscription plan for the cameras is also coming later.
Here’s how the pricing compares between Roku and Wyze for the same exact products. I also threw in Amazon’s pricing for the Wyze devices, since that includes shipping. To prevent the Prime Early Access Sale currently going on from skewing the prices, I used the average price on Amazon over the last 3 months from price tracking websites instead of the current price today.
Bold = Cheapest| Roku | Wyze | Wyze on Amazon* | |
| White Bulb 4-Pack | $23.99 | $33.99 | $39.98 |
| Color Bulb 2-Pack | $17.99 | $22.99 | $26.98 |
| Light Strip 16ft | $22.99 | $19.99 | $27.98 |
| Light Strip 32ft | $44.99 | $35.99 | $41.98 |
| Indoor Plug 2-Pack | $13.99 | $13.99 | $19.95 |
| Outdoor Plug 1-Pack | $14.99 | $11.99 | $17.91 |
| Indoor Camera 1-Pack | $26.99 | $29.99 | $35.66 |
| Indoor Camera 2-Pack | $49.99 | N/A | $69.76 |
| Outdoor Camera 1-Pack | $49.99 | $43.98 | $55.64 |
| 360° Indoor Camera | $39.99 | $33.99 | $44.23 |
| Battery Outdoor Camera | $73.99 | $73.99 | $79.98 |
| Floodlight Camera | $99.99 | $79.99 | $94.81 |
| Video Doorbell Wired | $79.99 | $58.99 | $60.99 |
| Video Doorbell Battery | $99.99 | $93.99 | $99.98 |
*Average price on Amazon over the last 3 months.
Roku sells five products at a cheaper price, Wyze sells eight at a cheaper price, and they tie on two products. If you were to buy one of every product from each company, you would save about 9% buying them from Wyze instead of Roku.
The problem I have with Roku now selling a lot of these products is that many of them are already quite old at this point. If I’m not mistaken, all of these products are at least two years old, so it’s as if Roku’s smart home lineup is already a generation behind, since Wyze is likely close to updating some, if not all, of these devices. The 360° pan camera, for example, was originally released by Wyze in 2018 and received very minor updates in 2021 when it was slightly refreshed. The big question is if Roku’s own software contributions will make enough of a difference to make these products matter or if rebranding another company’s hardware is just a quick way for Roku to expand its reach.
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Wyze expands its reach and Roku gets an instant smart home line. Remains to be seen how beneficial it will be for Wyze. Being simple and relatively cheap, I can see it appealing to some Roku users who don’t already have smart home setups, but will they be enough? I have my doubts. Maybe, if it goes well, Roku will buy Wyze, but that would probably end up sucking.
Noooooo I swear if Ruku buy Wyze I’ll be sooooo mad!!!
Yeah…I doubt that acquisition would ever happen. At least I hope not!
I would have thought Roku to simply implement Matter device support into their Smart Home channel app…I get the Matter doorbell/camera spec isn’t ready, but all the same… Why not for the rest??? Bulbs, plugs, garage etc?
Quick read on Waze plans re: Matter.
Wyze Talks Upcoming Products, Matter Ecosystem Plans in AMA
https://www.howtogeek.com/811868/wyze-talks-upcoming-products-matter-ecosystem-plans-in-ama/
Actually… Wyze is putting the Roku name on their (Wyze) products, thereby earning Roku the misnomer “original equipment manufacturer” (OEM).
Hopefully it fails and these devices end up on clearance at the local HD and Lowes
Or other big box store and they can be flashed to work with the wyze ecosystem
This is what I predict as well as hope will happen and I see it happening in fairly short order too ,be ause this is what happen with a lot of these smart home products.
And dvd if they don’t fail
I bet they will e carried at the local box box stores for about a year if that before they go on clearance for bargain bin prices ,this has happened even with a lot still current wyze products
I picked up a wyze starter kit for like $25 at HD and a wyze sense V2 for like $20
Both times the store had abi 2 in stock , oth times I only got 1 but should have got 2
Regret not getting the second starter pack
It felt lighter that the one I bought and it was opened so it was definitely missing something
I bet I could have got it for almost nothing if I asked the manger
I may buy these .. soon.
They will probably implement Device control & video feeds through the roku & since alitbof people have rokus they may be inclined to try this a setup out. Should be interesting to see how the experiment pans out.
I tried Roku’s app on my Wyze cams. No joy. “Waiting to connect” never does. With a minimal price difference there’s no benefit to buying Roku/
Likewise, that was the 1st thing I tried, so I could see my cams on my tv. Although since roku has not released a firmware to download you can probably by the cheaper roku cans and flash the wyze firmware “wink wink”