Geniune Xiaomi Yi Action Camera

There are so many incredible things you can do with an action camera, from exploring the great outdoors, like hiking, to active recreational activities, like sailing, to extreme sports, like trail mountain biking with it strapped to your chest, or plain simple fun as in POV shots of your dog playing fetch or recording with a flying drone.

Coming in two colour combinations, lime-aqua-marine and pure white, the Xiaomi Yi Action Camera is an innovative, unique and excellent value-for-money offer geared towards more of a recreational type of use, rather than extreme sports due to the absence of optical image stabilisation. Having said that, car enthusiasts have nothing to worry. We've driven around with the Yi camera and the resulting video does not feel shaky.

Keep in mind that the Travel Edition of the camera comes with a high quality selfie stick. Should you intend to get wet, you don't need to trouble yourself looking for a separate waterproof housing as your ShopJoy purchase already includes one. Likewise, a suction cup mount - just as essential as a housing case - is also bundled in your purchase.

The Yi Camera sensor and associated image processing are top notch and produce good results whether used in photo or video mode. Notably, the camera has an option of angle rectification/correction, reducing the effect of fish-eye, associated with wide lens.

Speaking of options, the camera uses LEDs for communicating feedback to the user. Most of the settings, though, are accessible through a dedicated app for your smartphone, which connects with the camera directly over Wi-Fi (no you don't need a Wi-Fi router or access point for this to work). Once your favourite options are set, you probably won't need to adjust them too often.

Based on a modern image processing chip from Sony, Xiaomi Yi produces a range of fabulous, yet true to life colours for a price that can't be beaten if your intended use is casual, travelling or recreational type of activities.

As the video demo below clearly shows, the Yi adjusts automatically to changing lighting conditions admirably. It has no problem going from normal outdoor brightness, to bright, and finally dark.

Beautifully designed, Xiaomi Yi is rightfully considered the best alternative to a GoPro Hero.

The comparative rundown of the camera's specs is as follows. The Yi can record in 1080p at 60 fps, although 30 fps feels a bit more natural for the camera. The photos are taken at a high resolution of 16 MP.

Time lapse intervals are extended to include not only 0.5, as in the GoPro Hero, but also 1, 2, 5, 10, 30, 60 second intervals. The camera can record in loop mode and be used for a bit of surveillance, accepting SD cards of 64 and even 128 GB capacity. The burst mode offers a selection of 3, 5 and 7 shots per second, as well as 7 shots every 2 seconds for taking pictures of those fast-paces or sporting events.

Video Demo/Review

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