YI 1080p Home Review

This futuristic-looking indoor security camera could have been designed by Pixar. Looks aside, this decent performing, economy camera was frequently bested by the competition in performance, features, and price. That said, this unit has great audio and good daytime video.

Performance Comparison

Recorded Video Quality

The recorded video of the YI 1080p Home offers users great image quality, capturing crisp details from as far as 25 feet away. However, the low frame rate of the camera results in blurring with moving subjects and some jittering. Also, the camera lacks color night vision, and when it's dark, it has a limited ability to capture facial details. These impactful shortcomings led to a lackluster score in the recorded video quality metric.

The YI also has a fairly narrow field of view, covering just 112º horizontally. This isn't terrible if you are not going to use it in tight spaces such as a front porch, but the narrow field of view will limit the user's options for placement. Finally, in addition to not being in color, the night vision has the added issue of frequently overexposing surfaces. We were not impressed with the YI's performance in this review.

Monitoring Performance

The YI 1080p Home earned a respectable score in the monitoring performance assessment. Whereas the recorded video quality metric focuses on recorded video and night vision quality, this assessment focuses on real-time video and sound quality. The YI does well here. The latency between actual events the camera captures and their on-screen rendering is less than one second, so fast movements do not blur — that's a pretty good result. On the other hand, the sound quality is a mixed bag.

Good news first — the live audio of the YI 1080p Home is quite smooth, and we didn't hear any background static either. There was a bit of an echo, and voices sounded slightly muffled, but it picked up noises quite well. That said, the YI lacks a speaker, thus eliminating the ability to take through the camera and to set alarms to sound in certain scenarios.

Ease of Use

The YI 1080p did well in our ease of use assessment, earning an above-average score. This assessment focuses on the app used to program and access data from the camera. It also looks at data storage options and how the camera is mounted.

The YI app proved to be quite easy to navigate. The home screen hosts quick settings such as 'Home' and 'Away' mode and access to the live feeds from all the connected cameras (if you're using more than one) and recorded activities. Additionally, each camera has a device settings page where you make changes specific to each one.

The YI also has a host of alerts that can be set for people, vehicles, animals, and general motion. It also has sound-based alerts for abnormally loud sounds like a baby crying. Data is stored in an onboard SD card and the cloud (subscription required). The SD card option allows you to record 24/7 video, and the camera starts rolling over recordings when the SD card is at 20% capacity — we like that because it's easy to manage the data. Finally, the camera comes with a built-in articulating stand. Unfortunately, it is meant to be wall-mounted.

Value

While the YI 1080p Home is moderately priced, it lacks many of the features and functionality of similarly priced models. As such, we do not find this camera to be a particularly great value.

Conclusion