YI 4pc Security Home Camera, 1080p WiFi Smart Wireless Indoor Nanny IP Cam with Night Vision, 2-Way Audio, Motion Detection, Phone App, Pet Cat Dog Cam – Works with Alexa and Google, YYS.2016

Alright, so i’m a tech guy, love anything electronic! I have had cctv cameras in my house for years. I’ve been using swann wired cameras for the most part with mixed emotions. But running new wires to upgrade the system just didn’t excite me.

I had been looking at nest cams since i have the smart thermostats and smoke/carbon-monoxide detectors for a while, but the price is ridiculous! Plus your only option with them is cloud service (an additional cost). Then i spoke with a neighbor who sent me a screen shot from his yi camera. I must say, the quality was pretty impressive.

So i bought a four pack for $119.00 with moderate expectations. Let me tell you i’m super impressed with the picture quality of these cameras. Set up is quick and easy. When i purchased them i had no idea they had audio as well. The audio quality is incredible, plus it’s a two way speaker. Purchased 32 gb sd cards for all of them so i didn’t need to use cloud storage and it’s been working great! I have them set to record all motion and i usually have about 7 days of history on each camera.

Day and night vision are both spectacular imo. I have attached several photos so you can see the quality both day and night. Side note, i have a couple ‘indoor cams’ mounted outside. To do this i purchased a rubber sleeve/cover from amazon to make the drop cam weather resistant for outdoor application. It’s been through rain, sleet and snow with out issue so far. Link to cover: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/b07fd5xhmp/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=utf8&psc=1

a couple cons, the power cable is sooooooo short. I had to purchased longer cables for a couple of my installs. No biggie, they are only a few dollars here on amazon. The app for ios is very functional, but it has no multi camera view which would be a nice option.

So i have been using the yi 1080p indoor camera system for 2 weeks now and i love it! The camera’s are crystal clear during the day and are just as sharp in night mode. The added features of being able to hide any ‘lights’ such as the blue power light and the typical red ir lights for night vision makes ‘hiding’ these cameras a breeze. The playback function works great and give you the time in hours, minutes & seconds. The 2 way talk feature works great and has 2 modes, 1 is a push to talk feature where when you press the button you cannot hear what the person on the camera is saying and the 2nd is a continuous talk where you and the person on the camera can talk back and forth without pressing any buttons (love this feature) the 32gig on board storage is also a great bonus. Like i said i have been using the cameras for about 2 weeks and have barely used 3 gigs of space. (for an idea of the amount of traffic, it’s just me, my wife and our 2 pets) so the cameras don’t get a ton of action during the week. But are always recording on any motion. (i do not subscribe to the cloud storage as for i haven’t seen a need) anytime you get an alert it will store it on the app and you can upload it to your mobile device and share it with others. The initial motion detection clip is only 6 seconds, but if you wait till the end of the 6 seconds you will get an option to ‘view entire motion’ which will bring up that camera, rewind to when it first detected the motion and play it back until there is no longer any motion, great feature. All of the features seem to work as expected, you can set times for your camera to alert you when it detects motion and zones so that your dog walking around doesn’t keep triggering the alerts. I can say the motion detection is very sensitive. You can set the setting to low, medium or high but really i can’t tell a difference low to high. I have one camera facing out of my front window and it picks up shadows, car lights, leaves blowing, etc. Not a big deal, but on a windy day i can get a ton of alerts. The app works great, you can set a pin or use your fingerprint to log into the cameras so in the event your phone is stolen, unless they have your pin or fingerprint they will not be able to pull up your cameras. Connecting them was very simple and took less than 5 minutes per camera. Plug them in, scan the ur code and they will automatically connect to the network your phone is connected to. The packaging was very nice, didn’t feel cheap. All cameras were individually wrapped along with all of the accessories. Comes with instruction booklet for assistance with installing/setup. The camera (black part) can be removed from the white base and mounted in different areas. They also sell (separately) wall mounts for the cameras. (cheap, like $10-$15 for a 4 pack) or you can stand them up anywhere you like (they have a round rubber grip on the bottom to help keep them from sliding around. All 4 cameras come with a usb cord and power brick. The usb cord is about 10-12 feet long so you should be able to place these cameras wherever you’d like. Ok so i hope this rant…i mean review was helpful. If you’re anything like me, i read all the reviews on a product before i make a purchase. Thanks for reading!
***(i am not affiliated with yi or any of there products, this was simple a consumer review, please purchase these at your own risk)***

Very good camera quality very easy to set up. Too me 10 minutes and they where working clear color. Wish they where cordless and had memory cards with them make sure and purchase them.

These cameras work so well in my home. The quality is great day and night. It alerts me with the motion sensor. I definitely recommend this product.

We’ve had other cameras but these are easy to set up. Takes seconds to pair and see the picture. Would highly recommend.

Had a ring camera cuádruple the price same quality image and night vision. Same motion function and hear or speak features.

Even the speaker and microphone are better on this camarera. You can buy 4 of this for the price of one of the other cameras.

Much better value on this camaras for sure.

Works good! Night vision isn’t the best but it works. Motion detection is very sensitive and goes off if a fly goes through sunlight.. So i mean if a robber was to come in, they’d definitely set off a motion detection alert on your phone at least ! They didn’t come with anything to connect them to the wall so you will need to buy that individually. Also buy micro sd cards otherwise you need to pay a monthly fee for a membership to record.

I have purchased dozens of security cams over the years and finally, someone got it right. These little guys do the job and for the money it’s a no-brainer. I have purchased over 15 of these cameras for 3 different properties. I also use ‘frienda wall mount bracket’ for outdoor use with direct rain exposure with no failures. I have several mounted outside under the eave of the roof so that it does not get rained on and they work great with no housing whatsoever. I also use the fuji 32gb card so that i have full playback surrounding any alert (or can record continuously). The app is very intuitive and easy to review the highlights.

In the attached video from house we have on the market, this scumbag actually broke in and stole all 5 cameras (1 inside and 4 outside), so i did not have access to the detailed footage. However, this is the 6 second clip from the alert, which is the free cloud service that comes with the camera. Given the price of the cameras, it was very inexpensive to replace them all and i have. This time, with the 24×7 cloud service so that the video is preserved even if the cameras are taken.

The video quality of the alert is not hd, but the live view and the recorded view on the card is full hd. Also, the sound is surprisingly clear for such an inexpensive camera. Some of the units are better than others and there is some interference in the sound on some of them. But generally pretty good. The night vision is pretty good considering the price point. The motion detection is my only complaint. I get a lot of false alarms for even a small bug flying by, even with sensitivity set at the lowest level. But this is manageable. The sound detection is not much use to me since i have no crying babies in my application. It would be nice if they had an option for other sound detection.

The installation is quick and easy and i have installed on several configurations of wifi and routers without a problem. The app is better than any i have worked with in the past. This is a big deal. If it is cumbersome or time consuming to look at the footage, then you won’t do it. The way they implemented the app is very intuitive and easy to navigate. I also have the app installed on my mac and

finally, i give yi high marks for the business model. A lot of companies try to gouge you on the cloud service by providing an inferior non-cloud service. Yi gives you a choice. You get a free ‘alert only for 7 day look-back’ at no charge. So you don’t even need a memory card for this. If you want to upgrade to a cloud service, they have a lot of options so you can pick what you want at a reasonable price. Or, you can use the card solution with up to 32gb capacity, which, depending motion settings and the amount of motion, could last for days or even months. I get about 2 weeks in most of my applications. But, as in the case of my video example, this comes at a risk of losing footage if the scumbag makes off with the cam. But the user has the choice, which is what i like.

Bottom line: i highly recommend this product.

Clear vision, night & day. I can check and see if anyone is at the house while i’m away or in bed. I have these cameras all around the house and i love the fact that you don’t have to buy the subscription you can buy a pack of sd cards and insert them and it will automatically start saving footage you can go back on and replay,save and share

I have had these cameras since 2016. What i loved about them was the sd card and being able to go back 7 days! At the time, my neighborhood had changed, nightmare neighbors etc. It was fantastic and made me feel safe. I started with 4 cameras then added much more. And i have had many family and friends also buy this. Then things started to change. They go in and change your settings so no motion sensor, no recording 7 days. Think i’m nuts? Just wait! Then they updated the cameras and you no longer could go back 7 days only 2 or 3. Now the latest update was even worse. Before you could watch a 6 second clip, then go and watch the complete moment. No more! I invested in these cameras for what they sold them to me as, sd card, go back 7 days. Now they are competing hard with ring. And this is wrong! I am stuck with all these cameras that don’t work as they once did. Now i have moved into a better neighborhood but i have a sick parent and i need these cameras so i can check in and back. I’m seriously considering switching them out to ring and selling these. They are so focused on “kami” now. And everything is different. This company, the cameras, the apps were a work in progress, then seamless but slowly things changed. When you keep the app open too long on a pc, they will disconnect cameras etc. You then have to log off, and log on again. Which i will do every time so why bother doing this? These cameras were a dream to start. If i bought an sd card separate and you advertised i should do that so i can go back 7 days, i should be able to do that. You can’t. It was 2 days last few months now it’s only 6 second clips. What a scam. They should refund all of our money for those of us who bought these cameras under these terms because they are not honoring that. I’m contacting amazon also and i will update here what they say. If you need a camera with sd card, or the ability to go back, this no longer is the camera to buy.
Don’t be fooled by update! This company is sneaky! They go in and change your settings so it doesn’t record continually on sd card, you’ll stop getting alerts then go into your settings and look- no updates just all your settings changed! I bought these cameras under the terms i could go back 7 days no more! They made an update to make people think they restored everything. No way. Total frauds! Keep checking your settings. I’m not staying with this dishonest company. But amazon only shows great reviews from 2018. Shady!

So my old logitech cameras finally died, and i wanted a comparable replacement that was a bit cheaper. I think these cameras fit what i was looking for.
Packaging: well packaged for delivery. Cameras appear to be good quality and were easy to find plug in to get started.
Setup: fairly easy. The app is pretty easy to use. Make sure you have your wifi password handy. My husband has an android and i have an iphone. It was a bit trickier on the iphone to get the cameras set up, but that could have just been me trying to figure the cameras out.
Use: i’d strongly urge you to get mini sd cards. The cloud is expensive and to my way of thinking unnecessary, unless you want the extra features. The cameras have a good picture quality. This not a sleek system, but for under 100 bucks i didn’t expect it to be.
Quirks: make sure you go into each location you have a camera on the app and select sd if you have an sd card otherwise you may not get the feed saved to your sd card.
Overall i’m happy. I miss my logitech cameras, but they’re also a lore more expensive. These are an okay substitute.

Pros…i ordered one of these cameras and was impressed mainly bc it worked right out of the box, by following a pretty simple instruction booklet. It is for inside but will shoot through a window to outside if set on regular settings and the camera light is turned off. The ir and other lights reflect in the window but can be turned off. W an outside light on it works fine. In nice weather it can be shot through a screen pretty well. The app will let you flip the screen 180 degrees. Comes w a wall plug that goes in a usb hole on the receiving side. Pretty long cord.
Tilts up and down and the camera swivels 360 dergees. (manually.) sturdy base that hasn’t fallen over yet.
The night vision will only work inside your house, but it’s clear black and white. For the price, yi cameras seem to be a value. I would suggest a 64 gb sd card right off the bat so you don’t have to use the cloud system. It fits in the rim of the black round piece behind. It comes w a piece of tape over the hole. This will definitely increase battery drain but not enormously, and you can remotely turn it on or off and see whats crack’in outside or inside. Pretty cool.
The motion detection has a slight lag and the ‘person detected’ will have to be on screen for a few seconds for it to kick in. It takes clear shots once it starts and doesn’t cut right off. Keeps taping for awhile. Once motion/human is detected, you can go back and review the segment and take snap shots or small chunks of footage to store on your card. Some of these still shots will go right to a folder on your camera. Once the sd card fills and it rolls over, some stuff will be lost unless it’s saved. I still haven’t quite figured that all out. It’s a process like evrything else. The instructions only are for set-up. Little on anything else. It works off a 2gb internet signal. If you don’t have every high speeds it can drag down your other devices. Not sure how several cameras would do.
Now the cons. Unfortunately the customer service is by email and buddy it can get tedious. And the return to credit card takes awfully long if you need to return them. Like 2 weeks if you use ups. I hate to say bad things but, it’s true. Maybe yi can learn from this? I don’t know. It’s absolutely true though. This is listed as a 3rd party seller even though it’s amazons choice. Camera-wise i can see why it’s a great bargain. It is. Just don’t screw up your order, or the frustration levels will accrue…. Quickly. Heh heh.
Another draw back is the permissions on the app. Pretty steep. I suggest plugging this in and unplugging it so it doesn’t sit and gather info all day, but, that’s just me. I’d say to download the app from your store and not to use the convenient ‘scan-to-app- from the booklet. Either way it’s a third party app.
Too bad these few things are apparent bc this camera could be a best seller i think. And still may be. As a buyer i think it was fair to say honestly what i think. Really to bad there wasn’t a tech support phone number. The emails are endless and generally unsatisfying, if you are used to quick and responsive on point help. Just be ready if things go bad. If you do everything right, you may never have to deal w them anyway. I had a bad experience but the camera was nice, and i think it’s fair to cover all the bases. It’s not being malicious, it’s just being honest. That’s all.
Anyhow,
that’s what i think. I’d say buy one first and see how you like it. Best camera i’ve had for this so far.

Yi home was one of the first wifi cameras i bought several years ago. I have since used no less than 4 or 5 other brands. They all worked but i decided to go back to yi home when we bought a new house.

The good aspects of yi home are:
1. Quickest to see video, live and recorded.
2. Although rated for indoor only i have used one under a covered area outside for years.
3. Allows for selecting an area to detect motion (better if more than one area can be added).
4. Slick and simple design.

There are a couple of bad aspects to this camera:
1. Getting a camera to work properly is inconsistent and tedious. One camera came up working flawlessly to where i can record motion. Two of the cameras required several resets to update firmware and several tries to get them to record motion.
2. It is difficult to find a setting where the camera records just what you want to see. I had to keep shrinking the detection area and sensitivity so that it is not recording phantom movements every few minutes all day long.

If one can get through these issues the yi home 4 camera bundle is a lot of bang for the bucks. It did burn up a lot of time un-necessarily.

Update 6/3/2022
while these are indoor rated cameras i have used them outside under eaves for quite a long time. My previous comment about the camera being tedious to set up was wrong. I am coming to the conclusion that strong and gusty winds triggered much of the false detections. The thin flat white plastic that the camera snaps in perhaps is the weak point. I have hot melt glued some braces on two cameras and they are now better in the wind. I will continue to experiment and report if i found anything significant.

Easy to set up. Motion detection is good. I like the fact that i can turn off the on light do i don’t have the blue light on all the time.

Good cameras but they don’t make them like they use to.

Update 2: about 2 months in and still loving these. They’re very clear, and the thing i love most is that if you have an sd card in there it will record 24-7 and just loop about a weeks worth of video so you never miss anything. You can scroll back through the day, and it flags where motion was sensed so you don’t have to try to find it. Very nice feature. The only thing negative i’ll say is that that if you’re using the motion sensing for out a window like i am, it’s very sensitive, even on the lowest setting. A plant blows in the wind and you get a notification.

Update 1: see the last picture. I found out that in both the app and on the pc it has a button to change the quality to 1080p hd. None of the other pictrues are in hd besides that 1 in this review. This feature makes it great for seeing people walking up, and reading licence plates if you have sd cards in it to record. All the motion and sd recording seems to work like a charm. The only thing i will say is that the 2 way audio is choppy. Lastly, i only have an sd card in 1 of the 5 cameras i have, and without an sd card or ‘cloud subscription’ it only records for about 6 seconds when motion is detected. (so you miss a lot of the action.) my solution is to just buy 4 more $5 micro sd cards for the other cameras. Once the sd card is in it, it will record as long as there’s something to record. *minutes at a time when someone pulls in the drive and walks up to the house. I’ve had 3 other sets of cameras before i bought these, and yi is the best yet. My other brands were:
d-link
foscam
arlo

original post:
this is day 1. I’ll for sure update with changes. But they we’re super easy to set up. (took me maybe 10 minutes to set up all 4 cameras) the picture seems very good, i believe normal viewing is on 720p and sd recording is on 1080p. But it’s definitely clear enough to make out who and what is going on. The other thing i like is it’s responsiveness. Unlike the arlo cameras i just returned, these things have a great refresh rate, don’t lag, and don’t cut out or lose connection. So far they are very responsive and work perfect. I haven’t tried any features yet, so i’ll update this when i dig into it.

Pro’s;
-easy easy easy install/set up
-can watch on desktop or on phone/tablet
-good video quality and nice quick refresh rate.
-no lagging or digital flickers so far
-no problem connecting to my home router. (which arlo would be ‘in & out’ all day)
-2 way audio seems to work pretty good for me. (not super great, but yet to find one that is.)
-record on demand and store on sd card or pay $66 for a year of 7day loop storage. *no contracts*nice options*

cons;
-as far as i can tell, you can only watch one live feed at a time. (i have these in 4 different rooms…play room, baby room etc. It would be nice to be able to watch them side by side.)

that’s about it so far. The pictures are looking through a pretty dirty front window.

Not to shabby for the price. I already had 4 of these cameras form 2018 and wanted to add more security. I placed a few in the windows on the inside of the house until i can get some outside cameras. I always get alerts. You can adjust the level of sensitivity inside the settings which allows you notifications when there is motion..
There are a lot of options inside settings for different things you can adjust with the cameras. I use them to supervise my teenagers while i’m working.

It works by connecting into your home wi-fi connection. Cameras will stop working only if you lose power and internet connection. S.d cards do not come included. I bought mine at walmart. . Show a sales associate your camera and they can tell you which card will fit. I set mine up to record consistently.
You do not have to buy the icloud plan. All of my videos go into each s.d card. I can go into the app on my phone and replay the video. 32gig holds about 7 days or so of film.
You can record a playback video onto your phone if you need to in play back mode, or while it’s live. Then store it into your phone for later. Or take out the s.d card to view the videos on your computer.

It does have sound, and there is a microphone that if you’re not home you can talk through the cameras and communicate. . The speakers are not that great and the person on the other end sometimes will have trouble hearing you. I give the two way talk a star of 2. The cameras a 9, video 8.

I like them because there is no monthly fee.
This works great if you want something cheap with no monthly plan. Just connect to your yfi. It does use an electrical outlet to run the he cameras. I hid a few of mine around the house.
I used black electrical tape to cover up the indication light. My teens informed me when i use the playback mode they can tell when i’m watching. And when i’m watching the live feed. So i covered it up.
These cameras also work great for babysitting. Kids are easy to catch if you walk out of the room for a short bit. If they decide to lie to you. The child’s reaction when showing them watching themselves on playback mode is priceless when you catch them lying. I even added some creativity. I let this child know that the cameras were connected to santa. Also added that i can send the videos to him at anytime. This is how he’s able to watch you if you’re naughty or nice.
It worked like a charm to get him to confess. Especially when i used the playback mode and let him watch himself get caught in his own lie.

I love how great the motion detection works. I bought these to put in my elderly mothers apartment and love how when she walks from room to room i get a notification. They only down fall is no mater how i position the camera pointing out the window (towards her mail box) only when it’s dark out all i see is a bright white light as shown in the attached picture. There really isn’t anything i need to see out there at night so it really doesn’t matter but its advertised as it should work in this manner and it doesn’t. The app sometimes is slow to responding but over all i am very satisfied of my purchase. It works good for how i needed it yo work.

I use these occasionally to keep an eye on the puppy boys when i leave them out in the house. The app and ui (user interface) is the goofy chinese experience that comes with most affordable electronics, but it is usable. I’m not a cyber security expert or anything but i would imagine there are some security flaws and shortcomings. If you don’t care about that, they are perfectly good cameras.

…there is no way to link the cameras to external storage outside of their cloud servers, and the cloud servers cost money to operate. The storage plans they offered at the time of my purchase limit you to 5 cameras, and i didn’t see any option to add cameras with an additional charge. My house has 5 rooms and i wanted 2 additional cameras pointing outside, so i had to choose 2 rooms not to have coverage. The software supports additional cameras for live feed and sd storage but the plans offer 7 days-1 month of stored footage. I wish there was a way to store the motion capture videos on my local pc (videos can be viewed and downloaded but not automatically saved) and not use their paid service because i would preferably like to save footage for a year. You can use microsd for storage locally on the cameras and while this means that they are not entirely useless when offline, it’s added cost for the sd card and more hassle having to remove and view them on a local machine if you want to use them somewhere without a wifi connection. If they added support to save videos locally without having to use the cloud storage these cameras would have a 5 star rating for sure.

The video capture is 1080p with around 30fps and the motion capture works very well. They can be tweaked to your liking and i like that my cameras are sensitive enough to capture my cats walking around my house. Setup is also very simple and i had them up and running in about an hour (mostly waiting on setup/updates to firmware). The night vision works extremely well and i can clearly about 50 feet to the end of my driveway. The only issue is that the infrared lights (which can be disabled) with the camera positioned at a window the lights reflect back into the camera blocking the view, however this is not a fault with the camera and would be fixed by purchasing the outdoor version and mouting it outside; just something to consider if you plan to use them in a similar fashion. As well the camera’s standard night vision is more than sufficient with the ambient lighting from street lights to see just fine in the dark, and can be alleviated with the use of motion activated flood lights.

The only real downside with these cameras, aside from the limited options for external storage, is that if you’re not an electrician and able to install outlets near the ceiling, you will have cables running up and down your walls to power them. They do provide cable management options with the cameras like wire hooks and stick pads for the cameras to help them to not be such an eyesore, which is appreciated. And of course you can set them on a shelf or mount them near the floor/outlet to avoid this problem.

All in all, these cameras do everything that i want them to do, and being able to view cameras remotely from my phone is a huge plus. They are able to record locally on the device and so even if the cloud service becomes unavailable they won’t become obsolete.