YI Home Security Camera, 1080p 2.4G WiFi IP Indoor Surveillance Camera with Night Vision, Motion Detection, Phone App, Pet Cat Dog Cam Works with Alexa and Google Assistance

Good system//1.5 year update. 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.

Short review:I bought this camera as a baby monitor device and got so dissapointed by the (lack of) detection, both of motion and baby crying. I made several tests, placed it in differents rooms, with differents lights, but only got motion detection in one out of six tries. Crying dection never worked, neither far from nor close to the camera. To be sure it was not a faulty device I bought a second one and had the same problem: several tests and it rarely detcted motion and never got the baby crying.Still I give it 2 stars because the good overal quality of the product: the image and sound are great for its price, the installation is extremely easy and the app is really friendly and intuitive. I do recommend it for general surveillance, but for baby care simply avoid it.Full Review:I was looking for a baby care device but thinking about how my wife and I are always connected with our smartphones I though that a wifi camera would do the job: no need for a new device to manage, charge and take with us around the house. Just connect the camera to ours phones and since we’re with them all the time we would be ready to go.I did several resarches for a not too expensive model (I would not give 500$ in a camera if I can buy a decent baby monitor for 150$ or even less), so I found this Yi for a reasonable price of 50$. I read many reviews and the overal score of the product picked my attention. More resarch and videos later and I decided gave it a try.Bought one from one seller but mistakenly bought a second one from another seller. “It’s not a problem” I thought, “I will just return the second one upon arrival”. Got the first in a week and the next day got the second one. So I proceed to test the thing myself.I got impressed by the quality of the packaging. For an obscure china brand the box is really neat. Got the cam, quickly read the instructions and downloaded the android app. The installation is easy peasy, give the wifi name and password in the app, it will genrate a QR Code and once scanned by the camera it will log itself into the network. The app is ready to interact with the camera. Even a kid who can read can do it by himself.Cammera configured into the app let’s launch it. Again I got impressed by the quality of the image. The IR function was also great, even in a pitch black room I could clearly see everyting. The two way sound channel also amazing, its built in microphone was strong enough to capture the slightest sound in a room and the speaker also had a good volume level. Until then I was amazed.So I tried the motion detection and then I got dissapointed. Tried several times, moving, passing, even dancing (yeah, seriously) in front of the camera. Like I said, only one in about six tries it correctly detected the motion. I tried changing room, turning the lights off and on again, but it did not help, the motion detection failed most of the time. Already down by this I lose all my hopes for the baby crying detection and as I already expected it wasn’t any better. Tried several sounds and videos of babies crying, and the camera not even once detected it. Didn’t matter the distance, near or far, I could rear well and clear the baby crying on the phone app, so the camera was able to capture it as well, but it never triggered an alert.The few times the motion detection worked the app registered an alert but the phone did not get any notification. Manually viewing the alert log on the app I saw the notification alerts of the few times it got the motion. It was supposed to send a notification to the phone by push, as a new text, but this feature never worked. Read everywhere on the manufacture’s site and the very few info there simply did not help. It looks like those who visited the site didn’t solve theirs problem either as we can see by the opinion pool of each solution proposed: most of the people were dissatisfied with the solutions given.Maybe that was a faulty product, So I decided to open and try the secod one I had mistakenly bought (I had not yet returned it). Did the exactly same scenarios, with lights on, lights off, near, far, differents rooms, and had the very same results: about one out of five or six times I saw the alert for motion detection on the app only (and never got any push notification) and baby cry detection never raised an alert either. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app, delete and reconfiguring the camera, changed all the possible options in the settings, followed every instruction on the manufacturer site, but it simply did not work on any of the cameras.This was a major dissapointement because, like I said, I was looking for a baby monitor and motion and crying detection is a must. Still, although dissapointed with the product I have say that it’s overal quality is impressive. The easy setup, the image and sound, the IR option, the application, everything is really well built. It’s just a shame that the two main features which I bought it for did not work; I had high expectations for it. Looks like I will go for a traditional baby monitor anyway.This camera might serves as a single and not expensive surveillance system, but don’t expect too much from it’s detection and alert system, you will be dissapointed – like me.

Good, but. 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 awayOriginal 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.

Muy muy bien para checar tu hogar desde tu celular está muy bien, además que puedes hablar y se escucha desde ahí

Great quality and cheap. I was astounded by how good these cameras are I needed to get a camera asap to monitor and elderly relative and these are perfect. Picture is clear, connects easily, set up is even easier One mark against this cameras are the speaker quality is not that great. If there is no other noise around you can hear them perfect but any interference cancels them out. Also it doesn’t have any type of volume adjustment.These don’t come with any storage and unless you want to pay for a subscription to use the cloud , but a few cheap micro SD cards for storage.Another thing to consider. If you are going to want outside cameras in the future. This brand is not currently making anything. So when I also purchased outdoor camera, I got suck with jumping between 2 apps. Which for some can be a positive.

Forget the rest these are the best. Cheap. Long lasting (they survived the destruction of my home by a category 4 hurricane). Easy to set up with an app on your phone. No subscription fee. When we are away and our puppies get up to no good not only can we check in on them and see them misbehaving, we can yell No! Stop it! And they hear and understand us though they do get a puzzled look on their face and start searching the room for where we could possibly be.

Great cameras. Bought these indoor security cameras to keep an eye on my dog, Cujo, and my cat, Clarice, while we’re away. Little did I know, I’d be tuning into the most chaotic reality show ever. One minute, Cujo’s snoozing like an angel, and the next, he’s swiping socks off the counter while Clarice watches from her throne, probably plotting world domination. The cameras work great—clear picture, easy setup, and now I have hours of footage of my pets living their best lives while ignoring all my rules. It’s like Animal Planet, but with more attitude. Worth every penny!

Affordable and worth it. For the price, its truly amazing and I use this to just check on my cat when im not home and so far havent had any problems with it. Highly recommended!