Say no-no to Xiaomi’s GoPro (REVIEW)

The YiCamera received a wave of international attention last week when it debuted on Xiaomi’s official estore in China for just RMB 399 (US$64). And for good reason. GoPros and other sports cameras are exploding in popularity, but high price tags leave many would-be buyers wondering if it’s really worth it. At less than half the price of the least expensive GoPro model, the YiCamera could be the answer many people have been waiting for.

But let’s make one thing clear before we start talking about the YiCamera. This is not a Xiaomi product, despite the fact that even I constantly refer to it as “the Xiaomi GoPro.” It’s exclusively sold on Xiaomi’s website and probably gets a lot of support from the Chinese smartphone maker when it comes to marketing and supply chain resources, but no Xiaomi branding appears on the camera. The YiCamera is made by Xiaoyi, which also makes a webcam sold on Xiaomi’s store. It’s one of an increasing number of smart devices that Xiaomi is partnering with another company to sell.

Here’s a quick recap of the camera’s specs compared to the entry-level GoPro Hero.

Picture quality

Note: Due to some discrepancy between the video I shot and others posted online, we decided to re-review the YiCamera’s image quality. Find the updated review here.

In a word: crap. Under no shooting scenario did I review footage from the YiCamera and think, "That looks good." At some points, it struck me as average, but mostly it was crap. On paper, the 60 frames-per-second 1080p video should outdo the GoPro’s 30fps at 1080p, but cameras can’t be judged on frame speed and pixel count alone.

To give you an idea of where I’m coming from, I had a short-lived experience owning a GoPro Hero 3+ until it fell into a river, and I’ve shot video in amateur and professional environments with consumer handheld video cameras, professional cameras used in live TV, dSLRs, and, of course, mobile phones.

Most of the footage I shot on the YiCamera came from two outings: one to a dimly lit concert and one on a bike ride through my neighborhood in Shenzhen. Here’s a sample video I slapped together (sped up in spots to keep it short):

For starters, anything that isn’t in the center of the frame is totally out of focus, even at long distances. That indicates the lens is cheaply made, and can’t handle the ultra-wide 155-degree viewing angle. My GoPro never had this problem, and it has an even wider viewing angle.

Next, the YiCamera can’t handle bright lights or backlight. You can see in the bike ride video that, on an overcast day, the sky washes out heavily onto the rest of the photo. It looks as if the army of heaven is descending in a flood of bright light. Entire buildings appear out of thin air as the camera struggles to balance the exposure. The concert video, which has many flashing lights, has this problem as well. It’s difficult to even make out the band members standing on stage as they’re apparently being beamed up into the Starship Enterprise. Dimly lit video comes out very grainy.

And then there’s the lack of image stabilization which, on a sports and action camera, is a horrendous compromise. Every shake and bump is noticeable, making the details lost from the poor exposure and lens distortion even worse.

Much of these problems could have been improved if Xiaoyi had chosen to use a faster lens. Xiaoyi’s aperture is fixed at f/3.6 – too narrow in my opinion for shooting most video. In comparison, all GoPro models have f/2.8 lenses (the smaller the number, the wider the aperture). This would have helped curb motion blur and captured sharper details. Update: Xiaomi says the lens is in fact f/2.8, but the settings might be read incorrectly when importing the video. This will be fixed in a firmware update.