The Xiaomi Yi is a dashboard camera that has been released from Xiaomi some time now. The camera can be found at an unbelievably low price, when alternatives cameras from other companies like the Garmin Dash Cam 35 or the RAC 05 GPS have at least the twice price from the Xiaomi Yi. So what’s missing from the Yi to make it so competitively priced, or is it just the Chinese manufacturing and branding?
Design
The camera comes out in two colors, Gold and Grey. The body is a little plasticky, but the bundle overall doesn’t feel particularly cheap. The Yi camera is approximately GoPro-sized, comes in the box with a long USB cable you can route round your windscreen, a suction mount and a non-captured power adapter. The last one is a really pleasing addition since you can have two USB ports at the same time, one to power the Yi and one for your mobile or other device that needs power from a usb cable. The camera is made out of PC + ABS and at the back it is equipped with a 2.7 inch LCD Screen. Is equipped with a Micro USB slot and a TF card slot for card expansion. The camera weights only 74 grams and its dimensions are 7.4 x 1.94 x 5.24 cm
Features
The camera is to be connected through the suction mount on the windshield of your car and take images or shoot video from this position. The negative for the camera is that is not equipped with a GPS system. Features WIFi connection, so you can connect it to your pc and control it from there. The images/video that you take, you can extract them from the USB slot that has or take out the TF card and put it in a card reader. Very convenient for recording the way in a long trip, but in a case of a car accident since it doesn’t features GPS, I don’t know if it gonna help. For the video capturing a standard MP4 format is used, and a data rate of approximately 15Mbits/sec for 1080p/30 footage, which is reasonable. Shooting options include Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) at both 30 and 60 frames per second, plus 2,304 x 1,296 at 30 frames per second. The F1.8 lens offers a 165-degree field of view – which although pretty wide shows some distortion, particularly in Full HD. The image resolution is just 3M (2048 x 1536), so in case you want to see for example a license plate, you have to be close to get a good catch of it. Like many dashboard cameras on the market, the Yi also includes additional safety features. This feature is called Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). These include a lane-departure warning system (LDWS) and forward-sensing system (FSS). If you enable ADAS means you can shoot only in Full HD at 30 frames per second, not the other two options.
Battery
The Xiaomi Yi camera comes with a 240mAh battery. Don’t forget that when you are in the car, you sill have it connected it to your car charger, so you don’t care about the battery there.
Conclusion
The Xiaomi Yi camera is one of the cheapest cameras in its category. This is because it doesn’t feature GPS. Despite that, is a good camera, from a company that makes very good cameras and having the support of Xiaomi. You can find the Xiaomi Yi camera at Banggood and if you use our coupon code BGCAuto, you will be able to buy the camera at a lower price, and for only $61.59 will be yours!