Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360° in India Review 2021- 10 Things You Must Know
Smart home security camera in Indian security camera market is taking its pace. In my Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360° Review, I found it is one of the feature rich security cameras with perfect 360° viewing area.
I have also written on Xiaomi smart security camera in the list of the 10 Best Smart Home Security Camera in India, that I have compiled in my another article.
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
The smart security camera has talkback feature | Offers AI motion detection alert | Allows to capture 360° horizontal view | Features infrared night vision | Comes with Alexa | MicroSD storage of 16GB-64GB | Offers Full HD dynamic range
The Xiaomi produces a wide range of smart home devices. These smart home products start from washing machines to smart cameras.
The Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360° comes under the category of smart cameras.
Though majority of products Xiaomi produces are sold in China, Mi home security camera 360° is one of a few products that has set up a strong footmark in the Indian smart devices market.
Before, I deep dive into the design features and everything of the security camera, let me also pen down why the smart security cameras are important.
Installation and application of these cameras help you keep a watch on rising hostile elements and unwanted activities in or around your house or business places.
Not only that the security camera also let you in total control. You can get live view of activities of your home on your mobile when you are away.
You can also talk to your baby and loved ones back home with their smart talk-back features. There are other interesting features also, like the cameras raise alarm when they detect suspicious object.
Xiaomi’s Mi security camera is integrated with Wi-Fi and 1080p Full HD display and has attractive design and great features.
I know, by now you must be curious to understand whether the Mi security camera 360° is worth buying. Does it excel the end user’s expectation?
In this column, I will deep dive into the nitty gritty of the security camera and find out the answer for you. I will also uncover how it does score in day-to-day usage. Read on Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360° Review.
1. Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360° Review-Design and Build
The Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360° looks very clean and appealing. The camera is made up of solid plastic material that feels strong and durable.
The dome shaped camera has pill-shaped cutout at the middle. This allows the camera to tilt up and down and rotate 360°. The device is designed to also give 96° vertical view.
The Mi home security camera has microSD card slot on its base. This is hidden on the opposite site of base of the camera. You got to turn it upside down to see and insert the microSD card.
The base of the camera has solid matt finish, while on the back of the body, you will find speaker grill.
You will also find Micro USB port and reset button at the back of the base. And the base also has mounting slot. This ensures that you can mount your security camera on the wall.
The dimension of the camera is 78x78x118mm and weighs 239gms. Movement of the camera appears to be smooth and I didn’t notice any noise at start up or daily use.
The solid and sturdy build quality gives assurance of durability to the end users.
Therefore, it doesn’t take me by surprise to say the security camera sets a very good score in design and build landscape.
2. Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360° Review-Night Vision
I found the design and build of the Mi home security is pretty solid and promising for longevity.
Now, it’s the turn to look at the quality of night vision. Let’s see how it does fair in this department. The good, fair or bad!
Well, the Xaomi’s Mi home security camera 360° is equipped with 8 bulbs 940nm infrared LEDs. This increases illumination and make the subject more visible in the darkness.
The video footage recorded and captured in the dark are sharp and produced with decent details. This means viewing in the dark is much easier with 940nm infrared illuminator.
The pictures and video footage the camera has captured at night are in black white. But I could notice the textured of the footage is decently smooth.
Your Mi smart home security camera also offers automatic night and daytime modes. This ensures the camera can automatically switch between day and night when there is a need,
While I am talking of the night vision feature of the camera, it also worth mentioning the night mode works best within the range of about 8-10meters.
Thus, I found one of the greatest strengths of the Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360° is it can capture image and record videos in the darkness.
3. Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360° Review-Camera and Picture Quality
Speaking of the camera and its picture quality, the Mi smart home security camera is Fully High Definition (FHD) with 1080 pixels resolution. It has f/2.1 aperture.
The quality of the pictures the 2 megapixels camera can captures is really good. It took me by surprise when I saw the footage at my colleague’s house.
I am sure, you will appreciate the video and picture quality. This is definitely better than the quality the security camera of other brands produce in the similar price range.
The video footage captured in brighter light has good colour in detailed clarity. This applies to both indoor as well as outdoor recording conditions.
The security camera gives you 360° horizontal and 96° vertical viewing area. I really don’t have any adverse point to make on its sharpness of the image quality either.
There is another popular feature attached with the device. This is called “Wide Dynamic Range (WDR)”. This feature is very useful when you want to adjust the quality of image or video recording.
I know, you must be anxious now to know how this is beneficial to you. The Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) puts the object in frame and helps to produce better and clearer videos and images.
The home security camera also has another interesting feature called “Full Color in Low Light”. Application of low light true color technology retails maximum light in your videos and images.
You can see a full color palette in the low light conditions. This feature works perfectly fine before the camera switches over to infrared illuminator based black and white mode.
My colleague has installed these cameras in his farm house. I am quite happy to see the videos and images captured have good clarity and enough details.
4. Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360° Review-Video Recording
I have partially covered the quality of camera and picture in the foregoing sections. But it is also interesting to look at how the Mi smart home security camera scores in video recording.
The security camera can record Full HD, 1920×1080 pixels resolution videos.
As I said under the subheadings above, the security camera comes with eight infrared illuminators with f/2.1 aperture.
The wider aperture of the camera allows more light leading to more brightness. This results in greater video recording quality.
I spoke up of the night vision feature of the security camera. This is a very interesting and good feature. This feature lets the camera automatically shift to night vision mode when there is no light.
The video recording at night time too is pretty impressive. I do feel some noise into the footage when the camera is switched to night vision mode. But this is not major flaw and is negligible.
All in all, the video recording is quite impressive in daylight as well as night vision mode.
Only downside I found is that some part of the footages get blurred when the camera is repositioned with D-pad.
5. Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360° Review-To Way Communication
Well M S, what is the two-way communication in security camera?
In fact it’s smart home security camera. Right! Basically it’s a talkback feature the security camera offers you.
Talkback or two-way communication is one of the best features your Mi smart home security camera brings to you.
With Xaomi’s Mi security camera 360° installed at your home, you can stay worry free. You can always stay connected and never are away from your home.
The talkback features is also excellently executed. This allows you to speak with your family members back home from anywhere via smartphone.
If you are a pet lover and miss your pet, there no better option to stay connected and talk with him/her when you are away from home.
I understand now, it’s increasing your curiosity to know how you can talk to your loved ones at home when you are miles away.
Well, it’s very interesting. The security camera is connected on your mobile phone or tablet via Mi Home App. All you got to do is just tap the call button on the live feed screen on your smartphone.
And now you are ready to go and talkback at home. The voice quality during calling is good and the audio on both sides is clearly audible.
I didn’t find any flaw at speaker also. But I could hear slight noise on the background in the camera’s microphone. That’s fine because it’s not too disturbing.
6. Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360° Review-Data Storage
So, videos and images recorded with the security camera must be stored somewhere.
For the storage of video footage and images, the Mi 360° home security camera provides up to 64GB of microSD card storage.
This is how you can store our data locally. That’s not all. You can also transfer recordings and images to other devices on the network for future reference.
More importantly the data transmission is encrypted to ensure utmost security.
On the other hand, the downside of the camera in terms of storage is that it doesn’t give an option of cloud service to backup and store your data.
But these are not the major drawbacks that may have direct impact on the performance of the security camera.
However, I still thought it would have been greatly beneficial to the end users.
7. Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360° Review-Set Up and Installation
So, now you bought your Mi smart home security camera. The next task you got to do is to install and set up your camera.
Your home security camera provides flat bed with circular grips. These are spread within the boundary of the base of the camera.
The base is very stable. You can also place it on the table or mount it on the wall, wherever you want.
To facilitate the wall mounting, the security camera comes with base plate, screws, and plastic screw caps.
Once the home security camera is put up in a place where you wanted, you got to get it running.
For that, go to the Xaomi Mi Home App and download it. The App is compatible with Android as well iOS smartphones.
Once the Xaomi Home App download is complete, fill up your Wi-Fi details to get it synced.
The Mi Home App will configure your security camera and verify it through a QR code generated during the process. I didn’t find ay issues in this process. Your Mi home security camera is ready.
8. Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360° Review-Overall Performance
Talking of the performance of the Mi smart home security camera, the device works quite well.
The security camera comes with AI motion detection feature. This feature lets the camera record 10-second video clips when the sensors are triggered.
Therefore, the motion detection sends instant alerts on your mobile phone when there is some sort of activity at your place.
The camera captures clean and clear videos and images even when there is pitch dark.
The sensitivity of motion detection alert could be configured on Mi Home App. The camera detects even the slightest movement of an object.
This shows a great efficiency and responsiveness of the camera that detects motion on the frame. The device does a fantastic job in this department.
The talkback feature is extraordinarily great performer. You can even broadcast audio through the camera and keep away unwanted guests who may otherwise break into your house.
9. Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360° -Final Take
The Mi Smart home security camera 360° is feature rich device available at an affordable price in the Indian security camera market.
This is a very good option to invest on your smart home security.
The camera is very easy and simple to use. Its installation and set up is also very simple. You don’t need to be very tech savvy person to get it going.
With all these rich features in your budget, why not secure your home with Mi home security camera?
10. Mi Smart Home Security Camera 360-Pros and Cons
Like any other device, the Mi smart home security camera also has its strengths and weaknesses. Let’s find out what these are
