YI Security Home Camera for Indoor

I originally wanted a Nest-like camera to use as a baby/nanny monitor and was confused by all of mixed reviews online across all products so wanted to set the help others who are in a similar position. I ended up ordering this Yi 1080p camera and the Wansview 1080p camera to do a trial, figuring I could always splurge on the Nest cam if the others didn’t work out. For anyone considering getting the Yi camera as a baby monitor, I highly recommend it for this over more traditional baby monitors. I’d also recommend it over the Wansview and the Nest. And here’s why... - Nest is obviously 3x the price out of the gate and has fewer features. Not sure why I’d recommend this path outside of integration with other Nest smart home devices. - The Wansview that I tried head-to-head with the Yi had worse picture quality (also didn’t love the fishbowl lens), and had a really significant lag even from the exact same spot as the Yi. Ended up sending this back immediately as it didn't even come close to as good as Yi in my opinion, despite the 4.5 star Amazon reviews. - WiFi allows us to monitor the baby anywhere. We can now step out of the house for a couple minutes or be at the neighbors and not have to worry. The 1080p connection has very minimal lag on our internet line (~1-3 seconds, which is solid). - Baby cry detection and motion detection are lifesavers and really work quite surprisingly well. I think the baby cry algorithm waits until it hears sustained crying of a few consecutive seconds too, which is helpful for avoiding a ton of false alarms. It’s not foolproof and you still want to be keeping an ear on your baby, but it’s good for capturing 80% of scenarios even with a white noise machine on and definitely met our needs. - Love that it records a 6 second clip with any of the alerts so you can review and decide if it’s worth paying attention to. - Exceptional video quality. I’m really impressed by this little gizmo and pleased by the value we got for the price. Would highly recommend and will be buying more to string our house together once we have a nanny start. Side note: The Yi Home Lite app on iOS is actually quite good too. A lot of bad reviews on Apple App Store about it since the original app was pulled by Apple, but they’ve made enough improvements to the Lite version that I honestly can’t tell if I’m missing any functionality. Also was a concern and was pleasantly surprised.

My wife and I are expecting our second child. For the first child we used a motorola baby monitor. After 10 months, the motorola baby monitor won't hold a charge, so I wanted to find a better solution. Also, I wanted to be able to keep an eye on the home while we are away and prevent any deliveries from being taken from the front porch. So I looked for a baby monitor that could also be used as a low cost security system. The Nest/Drop Cam seemed like a good option, but the cost was much higher than I wanted to spend, because I knew that I wanted 3 cameras, minimum. I rolled the dice, and purchased 1 of the YI 1080p Home Cameras. Setup was easy on my iphone 6. I like that I can configure the alerts in different ways for me and my wife. I like that with a 64mb card I can go way back in time. The resolution is really good and the camera is very concealable. All of my cameras are made for interior use, but for my front porch I shoot through the window, works fine 99% of the time, get some glare when the sun comes up, only lasts 5 minutes of the day. Night vision works really well and the system uses very little of my wifi bandwidth. CON: I didn't realized that there was NO App support for Kindle Fire when I bought this. In the evenings when the baby goes to bed, we always have a monitor on, if you are using your phone as the monitor you can't be doing anything else, it consumes that device. We have old Kindle Fire tablets that are no longer used, and my hope was to simply use that as a monitor and free up our phones. At the time of this review there is no app for kindle. I really hope that changes. All in all, I'm very happy with my purchase, I would recommend this camera to anyone in similar situations.

EDIT: I can no longer recommend these products to anyone. The company is really pushing for people to purchase the cloud packages. So much so that anytime you ask for support, the first thing they say is, you should upgrade to the premium plan, or have you upgraded to the cloud service. Now they are pushing ads when you launch the app and you cannot turn them off without, you guessed it, purchasing a premium plan. So please, before you purchase anything from Yi, check up the community forums and look at how many people are complaining about different things and the canned responses they get back. It is sad, I used to like these cheap little cameras and I would promote them and show them to people, now I will steer them away Original review below: I'll start off with I have purchased 4 of these cameras over the last few years. I had the old black 720p, the newer 720p that only came in white for some reason and then 2 of the 1080p versions. My older ones have worked great. I switched out the black base (720p) with the newer 1080p camera so that I could mount it in my front window to watch the porch area. I had to purchase a 10 foot usb cable to reach the outlet and to route it along the outside of the window frame, but it was cheap, and isn't really visible. So my take- Pros: 1. Cheap - The cameras are inexpensive and you don't have to use the cloud service when you use the SD card option. I see some of the reviews complaining that they can't see longer videos, but I haven't had that problem and all my cameras have the latest updates. 2. Easy to install - The app (Android in my case) was easy to install, then scan the back of the camera, identify your 2.4 Ghz WiFi (it doesn't work on 5Ghz yet), type in your password, point your phone at the camera and wait. Camera connects and you are good to go. I was even able to share one of my cameras with someone else so she could check in as well. She could make changes, but she could view it on her phone and on the desktop app. 3. Desktop app - You can install a PC software, which I use when I worked late so no one could sneak off the elevator at work and scare the &*^% out of me. 4. Motion record - It works pretty well and you can change the amount of movement needed for activation and how frequent it sends you the notice. 5. Mounting - you can pop off the vertical piece and there are 3 small screw holes in the base. I used these to mount the cam upside down in the front window. 6. Support (sorta)- The few times I've had to contact support for something they got back to me within 24 hours. I realize that they are not US based, so there is a time difference. I will also say that I had a camera that stopped connecting to my network and they sent a replacement right away. Cons - 1. Night shots - Night vision isn't very good, but that is probably more to do with the fact I'm shooting through a window. I have the cams angled to help, but still get some IR reflection. If a car drives by the headlights wipe out the video as well before it can shutter the lens. 2. Connections - I wouldn't have to mention this on the older cameras, but I did have a camera that stopped connecting to my network. I tried resetting the camera (SOOO many times), I tried it on other networks (I even setup a new dedicated network) and when it wouldn't work, tech support sent me a new 1080p camera. 3. Connections part deux - The new camera connects to the network well, but will go offline every so often. At first I thought one of my animals was unplugging it because that was how the camera seemed. I couldn't ping it, no connection or anything. I have now plugged it into a remote switching outlet that I can then power cycle the camera to get it to reconnect. Sometimes it will go 5 days before it needs to be 'rebooted', but I had to reboot at 6:30 last night and again at 7:30 this morning. Hopefully this one isn't getting ready to die too. 4. Audio - They advertise this as 2-way audio, which it is, but don't plan on using it as an intercom device. My voice would come out 'tinny' from the camera, which you should expect from a speaker that small. I have had some times where the audio didn't match the video, but it would only be off a fraction of a second upto a full second. It is more annoying really.

Ok, so you're going to want to read this in its entirety as it contains information I wanted to know but couldn't find in any of the reviews or manufacturer comments. First off, WOW! This is going to sound like a shill review, but I assure you: I am a real person with no ties whatsoever to this company. I am a composer for film and TV shows with a home studio that is...well, it's expensive. While everything is insured and I keep redundant offsite backups of my files, it would still spell potential disaster for my career if my gear was stolen; when you're working with 12 hour deadlines for international clients you don't really get to say, "er, my studio was stolen and it'll be two weeks before I can replace it," because that's when they say, "cool, well we're going to find another composer." To replace and rebuild a studio takes a lot of time. Because of this, I get extremely paranoid every time I go out of town. I just went on my honeymoon last week and purchased this camera to try to provide a bit of piece of mind, and it did that and more. Read on. This camera does one thing, and it does it efficiently and in a way that I can't conceive of being more user friendly than it is: it monitors your home and alerts you to any and all kinds of activity that involve changes in the space-time continuum. Considering that thieves and fires both exist within space-time, this camera has you covered. Not only does it alert you to any potential baddies looking to sack your castle, but it captures more than enough visual evidence to get a conviction. When it detects any motion, it immediately starts recording in crisp 1080p quality, and it doesn't need a whole lot of light to capture clear images. Quick rabbit trail: I see people complaining that it "only" records 6 seconds of video (which does include audio). Boo hoo. This is not a surveillance camera; it is a monitoring system, and it's a damn good one. Traditional home security systems can be problematic; for every 100 false alarms there might be one legitimate alert, but by then your local PD probably won't take it too seriously. It's also an issue when you have guests, and constantly needing to remember to punch in codes and the like just isn't my style. Having your dog shot or your door broken down by the police because a mouse tripped a motion sensor while you were vacationing in Bermuda is no bueno. This puts your home security in YOUR hands. So let's cover some important details: -Just to recap, this camera sends an alert to your device (it's compatible with all major mobile device iOS's) and records 6 seconds of beautiful, high quality video and audio when it detects any motion. You can choose to discard or save the video. Choosing the latter option saves it to the drive on your mobile device. -You can at your leisure "check" your camera, which allows you to monitor your home in real time. It doesn't record anything when you do this; it is simply live streaming what is happening in your home at that moment. -It must be plugged in at all times, which is actually preferable; batteries introduce one more point of potential failure in a device that, above all else, needs to be reliable. -It must have access to wifi at all times (kind of a no brainer, but I figured I should mention it). -IMPORTANT (and very cool): multiple people can log into your account at the same time. This means that if you're going on vacay somewhere where cell reception might be spotty, you can get two or three of your closest mates to download the app, give them your login info, and ask them to enable alerts from the app. They would then be alerted just as you are when any activity is detected and will have access to the video. So yeah, in my not so humble opinion this camera is a huge win for anyone looking to work on their home security game. Buy it with confidence. It is an unusually fantastic product.

This is my first attempt to get a camera for my home since I dropped the security company. I have read many reviews on different security cameras over the past few weeks and finally settled on this one for a few reasons. The positive reviews on the camera is one of the most important reasons why I chose this camera. I want reviews from people who have not gotten the product for free or with a discount so their reviews are reliable and not skewed. I also need a camera that's easy to install. This one certainly is. It installed the app from Google Play Store, listened to the prompts and it walked me through the entire process in less than 10 minutes. I also want a product whose company is willing to work with customers and update the software on a regular basis. I went to their website and found that they have a page with their latest software update for different cameras so I know they are actively working on them. They also have a forum where people can ask questions to get answers. Granted, not all answers were great and quite a few people were frustrated. But a lot of the answers have good info I can use. Now it is not all great with this camera. The major issue that irks me the most is I can't seem to get the app to work to see live footage from my office. I work for a major software company and I am their Software QA Engineer. I know a thing or two about software and networking. For the life of me, I can't get the app to connect to the camera I have at home to see real time footage. I also installed their desktop app and I have the same issue there. Although I can't connect to the camera to see the real time footage, the camera still detects motion and sends me alerts. So I know the camera is still working, I just can't connect to it via the app in my office. The other negative is sensitivity of the motion detection feature. I have moved it to low and it does not seem to make a difference on the "sensitivity" level. Every slight movement, it will send an alert. For the most part, this doesn't irk me as much because I can always delete the alerts without any issue. By the way, if you can update the software with a "Delete all" feature, it will be great. If I have over 10-20 alerts, it is tedious to have to click every single radio button before I hit the Delete key. I have an iPad mini, Samsung galaxy tab, and a Microsoft phone. I can't find the app on my Apple app store (I find this unbelievable... maybe I didn't use the correct keyword??) nor can I find the app on the Microsoft app store. Nowadays, creating an app for Apple and Microsoft is easy. Please give this a thought or more so it will appeal to more people who have such devices. Overall, it is a good security camera. For the major irk factor mentioned above, I deducted a star from it. The camera is good but I can't say that it is great because of the negatives above.

I've been toying with both Nest and Kuna cameras, and while these 2 are pretty good, both requires a subscription and Kuna currently does not offer indoor cameras. Nest is way too expensive and if you add the subscription cost, you might as well pay ADT to monitor your home. And that's when Yi Tech comes to save the day! They make both outdoor and indoor cam. Their app is good (not great). Not as great as Kuna where it automatically sends you live snaps when it detects motion. But it's great for what I need it for. To monitor the garage. The video quality is pretty amazing considering my Kuna outdoor lamp only records at 720p. The Yi apps also notifies you instantly when it detects motion. The sensitivity can be adjusted for your personal needs. The build quality if very good. This cam is only $50? This is on par with other wifi cams that are in the hundreds. And this cam as 1 feature that destroys all other. It has an SD slot! Not only does it record to the SD Card you can view the recording just as if you were subscribed to their Cloud. The apps only records a scene when it detects motions so it's pretty friendly to the SD card and won't burn it out by constantly recording on it. When it detects motion, it sends you a notice, records it and it's ready for you to view on your phone instantly! How awesome is that? No need to pay Kuna / Nest $10+ a month. But if you want their cloud feature, you can pay for it. So it's a win / win. Update: You can actually change the settings so it will record all day or only record when there is activites detected. You can also select the regions to where the camera will only record when it detects motion in that area. (Kuna wants you to be a premium member to do this). If you want their cloud service, it's only $19.99 every quarter. If you pay the annual fee straight out, it's only $66. That's only $5.50 a month. And you get up to 5 cameras, and videos are stored for 7 days. (Only motion detected videos are recorded). If you want to record everything, they offer a Premium plan which is more expensive not not really necessary. Who wants to scan through videos with no action? Now, all I am waiting for is for Yi Tech to make outdoor light cameras like Kuna. I would love to swap out all my Kuna cam to Yi. Planning to get the Yi Dome for the Kitchen area. This is an amazing product. Well worth the price and then some. If they can improve on the apps where it sends you live snaps of activities, it would be GAME OVER!

Initial review and 1.5 year update. After one full week of usage, I'm ready to review the YI 1080P camera system. Take that description with a grain of salt, because you get more than just a simple camera at a price that's almost stupidly low. Over the next few paragraphs I'll go over the included hardware, features, setup and value and compare each of those aspects to other systems on the market. Start your engines. So let's talk about the included hardware. Each camera comes in a small box similar to a new cell phone. They are so small that you will believe that they've forgotten something. Nope, inside that tiny box is everything for a single camera system. Open it up and you'll get the camera itself which is attached to its own base and, again, like a cell phone, a micro USB cord and outlet plug. This means that if anything ever happens to your power cord, you can get a spare very quickly. You'll also get some literature on setup and all that, which is pretty standard. There is no base unit like Arlo has. It's just a camera, similar to the Piper/Nest/most other systems. The quality of the hardware is also very decent. We all know the quality difference between Lego and Duplo, an iPad and a $60 tablet, a Yugo and a Honda. These cameras are decent quality. Maybe not at Nest standard, but good all the same. They are not Duplo or Yugo but won't break the bank like Nest will. That about sums it up for the hardware or included materials. As I stated earlier, the box the camera comes in is super small, so if you order two cameras like I did, you'll be underwhelmed at the size of the box they come in. Don't worry, good things come in small packages too. Moving on to features. These 1080P YI cameras come with a boatload of features. You can of course view them from your phone in and outside of your wifi network, so if you are at work and want to check in on your home, you can do that. They have two way audio so you can talk with someone or mess with your cats while you are away (not that I've ever done this...). Is it nighttime? No problem, these have very decent night vision capability, so they can see in pitch black darkness. Did something move over there? These sense motion and record it. Is something in the room always moving, like a fan but don't want that to set off the motion detection? You can select a specific area of the room to detect motion in, and not other areas, so if you have animals like cats or dogs that roam around during the day, set the selection area higher so it won't detect them. You can also set the motion sensitivity and alert frequency. Maybe your cat is chasing a reflection on a wall from an open window and you don't want to constantly get an update every few seconds. You can set the frequency lower and get fewer notifications. You can also take videos or pictures of what your camera sees at will. Of course all of this motion and recording can be set up to be stored on the YI servers or be saved to a micro SD card (not included, but you can get a 32 gb Samsung from Amazon for $12) for further review. Have a set schedule? Maybe you don't want it to record motion at night, but you are gone for ten hours during the day. Set it up to record while you are gone. You can of course turn it off at will from your phone. There's also a crying baby setting. I don't have a baby, nor am I going to borrow one to test the feature, but it does exist. I'm guessing that it will listen specifically for that type of sound and send notifications specifically for it. You can also add a bunch of cameras to a single system and jump between those cameras at will. YI also makes a camera that can move and pivot 360 degrees. I have no idea if that camera would integrate into this system, but I bet it would. Most other good systems on the market have something along these features, so its par for the course here. The lack of a giant siren that the Arlo system has can be seen as a downside, but none of the other major systems have these either, so take that how you want. So what about setting these things up? How hard is it? What's involved? Well, this can be accomplished in just a few really simple steps. The first thing you want to make sure of; that your phone you are using to set these up is on the same network as the cameras will be. I run two separate wifi networks, a 2.5 and a 5ghz. These cameras will currently only work on 2.5 ghz, so I had to jump over to the other network, no big deal. So first, download the YI Home app and start it up. Let the system guide you from here. It will show you everything you need to know, but it's pretty basic. Next you'll hit a small plus button to add a camera. Plug in your YI camera and wait. It will take about 30 seconds to turn itself on and it will begin talking. Click on the app that you've heard the camera speak and your phone will display a barcode. Simply show this barcode to the camera and it will log into the network. That simple. Then you simply set up the preferences I spoke about in the features area above. It's so simple that a child could do it. Value. Here it is. If you've read this far, you know what's coming. This system represents a value that cannot be ignored. I bought it figuring that if I didn't like it, I'd force Amazon to take it back. At $60 a camera, I figured I'd either get a great deal or return it to get something else. Luckily, I got a fantastic deal. For two cameras and two micro SD cards I'm well under the cost of a single Nest/Piper camera or the dual camera Arlo system. The features and hardware quality are a serious contender against nearly any other system on the market. Look, I know how it appears; cheap Chinese made cameras with an app system that can't be good, with features that probably don't really work. All of that is wrong except for the "cheap" part, and that doesn't apply to the camera build quality. This system WILL impress you. It is however a more basic system in terms of its compatability with other things you may have in your home already. I doubt that it will integrate with Alexa or any other system. It's its own thing, and that's not bad. The value is clearly there though and is easily seen once you directly compare this system to just about any other system on the market. There is no reason to take my word for it, so go and view a couple of youtube videos and watch for yourself. You can read any of my other reviews, and I think you'll find a common theme; value. I always look for the value in something, especially in lower priced options. Sure, the Nest cameras are nice. Yes, the Piper system is good. But at $60 a camera, are those systems worth $x more? No, not to me they aren't. I bought two cameras and the only thing I regret is not buying another one. Maybe I'll remedy that right now.... 1.5 year update!!! So what's life been like with this camera system over the past year and a half? Well, the road is bumpy and there are some faults, but overall, for the price you pay, it's a decent system. Let's start with the good. The software seems to receive updates every few months, so that shows that the developers continue to work on the system. The overall quality of the equipment is still good, no complaints here. I did try out their premium service by paying for a subscription, and it worked well, but I didn't continue it as I just didn't think it added any value. The bad stuff. Well, interacting with the system while away from home is mixed. Occasionally I just can't access the cameras, and it isn't like I don't have good signal. The system is laggy and it can take quite a while to get a live image to show up on the phone. Sometimes you simply can't get one no matter how hard you try. I usually just wait a few minutes and try again. There was a period of time a while back where no notifications would show up about movement detected. I'd randomly open the app and see a pile of movement notifications that the system never let me know about....that angered me a great deal. So I unplugged the cameras and logged out of the system to try to reboot the whole setup and it didn't work. It took a whole update from the company to finally get notifications back. And the last problem I have with this system, is that sometimes it will tell me that there was movement on one of the cameras and when I go to look at the video, it gives me an error that simply says the video isn't playable. This doesn't happen often, maybe around 5% of the time or so, but still, that shouldn't happen, ever. I deducted two stars from the review because of these failures. I'm still using the system and I do think it's worth the money you pay for it, but it's far from perfect. It's a great way to get into home security for low cost, but if you want something with more stability, look to higher priced options.

We bought this camera as an alternative to installing a CCTV system and running wires. Camera was easy to set up and app easy to use. Have only had it installed for 4 days, but all good so far. I was impressed with the clarity in daytime and nighttime. I set the camera up in a garage window, facing outside to catch vehicles and people approaching the house. I had to turn off the night vision emitters because they caused too much glare on the window. That was not a problem, as we have a mercury light on another building and motion sensor lights on the garage that provide sufficient illumination. We have a mid-level DSL internet/wifi and it works better than expected. I have not yet checked the SD card, but the video clips provided by the alerts are sufficient to see who triggered the alert. With our slower DSL, the video clips can appear in "slow motion" though. I have been out hunting all week (at home), and seem to have received all alerts. Some appear immediately and some take several minutes, but being a couple hundred yards away from the house, in the woods...I am not complaining! I will note that the motion sensor is very sensitive. Our house is over 125 yards from the road, and the sensor was picking up some passing cars at night. I had to lower the sensitivity and narrow the detection region (which is an awesome feature) in order to stop recording every other car that went past our house at night. Another very useful feature is the zoom ability in the video clip. When you receive the alert, view the 6 second clip. The app also gives you an option to view the entire video clip. While viewing that clip, you can zoom in as needed...impressive. For a $40 camera and $10 SD card, I am very pleased. I will most likely add a second camera soon.

كاميرا ممتازه عندي منها ٣ كاميرات تكشف الحركة وتسجل لكن عيبها غلاء الاشتراك للتخزين السحابي وتغلبت على هالمشكله وشريت لها ذاكرة صارت تسجل سبت ايام

I pay for your cloud service, and I want your AI features. Yet, every time I try to view CCTV footage, I’m bombarded with intrusive pop-ups promoting AI. This is completely unacceptable. I use this system for security. not to be harassed with ads. Really shameful to obstruct use of the key feature for your ads.

I was a bit hesistant to buy the Yi camera device (i eventually bought the 3-pack one) because of all the negative reviews. But after a week with the devices installed, i can honestly say that most of the negative reviews are unwarranted! In summary, this is one fantastic product! PROS: >> It was absolutely easy to install, and this is enough reason to buy the Cam! >> The app is a joy to use; although you cannot view all 3 cams at once, it is just as easy to access one camera at a time. Fair enough >> Contrary to popular comments, YOU CAN VIEW ARCHIVE/HISTORICAL FOOTAGE ON THE Yi CAM ONCE YOU HAVE AN SDCard IN THE CAMERA! Very useful feature. >> I had no issues with Wifi stability, even with the 3 cameras are on different floors >> The motion sensor is an absolute JOY! It works seamlessy and effectively CONS >> It keeps annoying you with prompts to upgrade to the Cloud version. That is the only part i find annoying. >> You absolutely need a memory/SDcard to enable you download and review footage. I would advice a 32Gb memory card (Amazon has many budget options), but NOTE THAT THIS WILL ONLY BACKUP A FEW/6 HOURS OF footage. If you really want more, then opt for a 256GB card. >> I was not able to use the “share feature” to give people access to the cameras… it just never shared to their emails. Best way is to share the newly created email/password details, just rememer NOT TO USE THE SAME PASSWORD as your general email! All in, this is a wonderful device by the YI guys; absolute easy to use, very clear 2k camera video quality, and the motion sensor feature just makes this the BEST VALUE FOR MONEY among home security CCTV cameras. a solid 5/5.

Excelente camara para la oficina, muy buena calidad de imagen y interface para el celular. Actualmente tengo 3 cámaras y estoy muy contento con la calidad y precio de estas cámaras. Se le pone una micro SD para grabar todos los movimientos y también los puedes ver desde el celular.

Good camera very good items is obligation and easy to use