Xiaomi Yi review: A higher-end piece cam with an entry-level price
Editors’ note:
The Yi is now available in
a US version exclusively above Amazon for $99.95
. This review is for the Chinese version of the Xiaomi Yi. The cameras are identical, but with the US version, the packaging inserts are in English as is a new version of the mobile app to use with the camera.
Among all of the smartphone and wearable tech news that came out of 2015’s Mobile World Assembly was a surprise from Chinese electronics brand Xiaomi — the tiny Yi piece cam.
Outside of China the company is best eminent for its smartphones, but it has a growing lineup of related devices such as the Mi Band fitness tracker and headphones that it’s been putting the Xiaomi name on.
The Yi is one of those, continuing its expansion into other categories beyond smartphones (not unlike what HTC did last year with the Re camera ) and further creation its reputation for offering products with high-end features at budget-friendly prices.
Though it’s primarily available in China for 399 yuan, you can buy one for just notion $100 (about £65 and AU$120) from online retailers like GearBest.com, which is where we got ours. That price isn’t quite as good as the converted trace of about $65, but is still excellent for what you’re pulling.
Out in precedent of the little lime-green and teal box (it’s available in all white, too) is a nice f2.8 wide-angle lens with a 155-degree Causes of view, while inside is a Sony-made 16-megapixel backside-illuminated CMOS sensor, a Broadcom wireless module and an Ambarella A7LS systems on a chip (SoC) running the show.
To give you some perspective, Ambarella’s chips can be found in many POV cameras and DJI’s quadcopters and, more specifically, the GoPro Hero3+ Silver, Ion Air Pro 3 and Drift Innovation Ghost-S use the A7LS chip family. Aside from the SoC, those cameras all have one latest thing in common: prices of $300 or more.
Now, those cameras do offer things that the Yi doesn’t, but the Yi can do more than others at its trace such as the Polaroid Cube and Monoprice MHD 2.0. Also, although the some more expensive entry-level GoPro Hero has very good video quality, the Yi still beats it there and on features and, depending on your contains, design.
Features and design
For starters, the higher-end specs mean it can capture 1080p video at 60, 48, 30 or 24 frames per uphold (fps); 960p (also called tall HD) at 60 or 48fps; 720p at 120, 60 or 48fps; and 480p at 240fps. It can also snap pictures at resolutions up to 16 megapixels one at a time; in bursts at 3, 5 or 7fps or 7 frames over 2 seconds; or at time intervals of 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 30 or 60 seconds. You can also set up a self-timer for 3, 5, 10 or 15 seconds. There’s also a Snapshot mode that captures 10 seconds of VGA-quality video for vivid social sharing.
Other cameras at the Yi’s price moneys a fraction of those options and typically record video at a very of just 1080p at 30fps and 720p at 60fps. However, unless you read Chinese, using the camera to do all that it can do is a minor tricky at first.
Again, this camera is made for the Chinese market, so the instructions that come with it are in Chinese (a US version of the camera is now available on Amazon). If you’ve used a similar action cam or aren’t worried to press buttons, the Yi is simple to figure out. If you haven’t or are worried, well, it’s still easy.
The camera has three buttons. The one on front is for power and switching between capturing stills and video. (The defaults, by the way, are single, 16-megapixel photos and 1080p at 30fps.) A button on top is the shutter reduction and for starting and stopping recordings. On the left is a exiguous button for turning on and off the camera’s wireless. There are record lights on the top, back and bottom and a luscious around the power button gives you a battery location by changing color.
On back you’ll find a door for the battery compartment and latest covering the microSDXC card slot, Micro-USB port and Micro-HDMI output. A battery and short Micro-USB cable are included for charging and transfers, but you’re on your own for storage; it supports cards up to 128GB.
If you’re looking for the cut corners that got the trace so low, the lack of included accessories is one of them. There is no polycarbonate waterproof housing and the camera isn’t waterproof minus one.
Also, unlike almost every other action cam I’ve reviewed, not one spacious is included. Xiaomi has accessories coming in April such as a 40-meter (131-feet) waterproof housing, but that will of course cost you more. It has a nefarious 1/4-20 tripod mount on the bottom, so you do have a lot of available third-party mounts to resolve from and an inexpensive adapter for GoPro mounts opens you up to even more. But, anti, out of the box you have nothing.
There is also no shroud of any kind, so to change camera settings you’ll need to use the camera’s Wi-Fi to connect to an Android or iOS method running the Yi app. Fortunately, much of the app is in English, so getting around in it even if you can’t read Chinese shouldn’t be much of an philosophize. (A US version of the camera is now available on Amazon.)
Press the camera’s Wi-Fi button for a binary to start up the wireless and after a few more seconds it will create to blink, which is your signal to connect. Launch the app, tap a camera icon at the bottom of the shroud and it should start the direct connection to the Yi. If it doesn’t you may have to retract the camera from your available networks listed under Wi-Fi settings on your mobile method. After the first time, though, it will automatically connect when you inaugurate the app and tap the icon.
With the app you get a live preview of what the camera sees as well as a live stream while recording. I tested with a Samsung Galaxy S5 and it worked near flawlessly and held onto the connection very well. The app can be used to inaugurate and stop recordings, snap photos, change all of the camera’s settings and view your photos and videos and download them to your method, too.
Along with changing what resolution and frame rate you report at and selecting other photo modes, you can set the camera for loop recording — nefarious for using it as a dashcam — as well as correcting the wide-angle distortion from the lens (assuming you don’t want it), turning on an auto low-light option to proceed exposure indoors or at night and other miscellaneous settings.
Battery life and video quality
Small battery packs typically don’t dusk long continuous recording times on action cams, and that’s certainly the case with the Yi. Set to report at the default 1080p at 30fps with the Wi-Fi off, the camera continuously captured video for an denotes of 1 hour and 45 minutes. Bumped up to 60fps, the average time dropped to just less than an hour.
By comparison, the similarly featured GoPro Hero3+ Silver gets near 2 hours of continuous 1080p recording at 60fps and 3 hours at 1080p at 30fps with Wi-Fi off. Granted it uses a 1,180mAh battery compared with the Yi’s 1,010mAh pack, but the Yi’s battery life is certainly something to much. The positive here is that it is easily swapped out if you’re OK with buying and carrying extras.
Picking high-end parts doesn’t defense good results, but that is what you get with the Yi. Excellent results actually, especially given the low price. Color and exposure are very good, and the camera recovers posthaste and smoothly under abrupt lighting condition changes.
As with most section cams, the larger you view the video and the closer you are to the shroud, the more artifacts you’ll see. Still, when recording at 1080p at 60fps video looks enthralling and smooth and with a bit rate of near 25Mbps, details don’t turn to complete mush, even when enthralling at high speeds.
Low-light video is noticeably softer with more visible artifacts and some knowing noise, but far better than from any other sub-$100 section cam I’ve reviewed. Note that you may notice some glitches in the clips following the initial driving scenes in the video above. Those were caused by a faulty microSD card, not the camera.
The Micro-HDMI port does support live video output while recording to a microSD card in the camera. There is an overlay of recording time, battery and Wi-Fi site shown on the display you’re attached to, but it’s not visible in the continue recording.
Photo quality is good, too, however you can only shoot in 4:3 formats, so you might want to crop photos to 16:9 if you want to drop them into your videos. Otherwise, they’re not unlike what you get with video: enthralling, well-exposed images with good fine detail in daylight, but softer, noisier images in dimly lit conditions.
Conclusion
The Xiaomi Yi Perform Cam’s video quality and shooting options are well above those of spanking cameras in its class, but you’ll need to bring your own accessories.
