The Kami Indoor Camera ($99.99) is the first offering from Yi Technology's newly launched Kami smart home division, which aims to provide AI-enabled home security devices at reasonable prices.
The Kami Indoor is a 1080p security camera packed with features including dual-band Wi-Fi, mechanical pan and tilt, motion tracking, and intelligent motion detection, and it installs in minutes.
However, it doesn't interact with other smart home devices or support Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands, nor does it support IFTTT applets.
For that you'll have to spend a bit more for our Editors' Choice, the iSmartAlarm iCamera Keep Pro.
Design and Features
Shaped like a cylinder with a slice taken out of the front, the matte white Kami Indoor Camera offers a pleasing design that will look at home in any room.
The enclosure stands 5 inches tall, 2.8 inches in diameter, and sits atop a base with a mechanical swivel that gives it 340 degrees of horizontal panning motion.
The mechanical camera head provides 95 degrees of vertical tilt.
The camera captures 1080p video at 20fps and has a 110-degree field of view, and it uses eight IR LEDs to deliver up to 30 feet of black-and-white night vision video.
There's a micro USB power port on the base, and at the rear of the enclosure are a small speaker grill and a reset button.
The front of the camera has a microphone and an LED indicator that's solid green when the camera is restarting, flashing green when attempting to connect to a network, solid blue when connected, and flashing red when recording video.
The Kami uses a dual-band Wi-Fi radio that lets you connect to either a 2.4GHz or 5GHz network.
The Kami will record video when it detects motion or sound and comes with 7 days of free rolling cloud storage for one year.
After your year is up, there are several subscription plans available.
The 7-day plan goes for $5 per month or $50 per year, the 15-day plan is $7 per month or $70 per year, and the 30-day plan costs $11 per month or $110 per year.
While not terribly expensive, the Kami plans are for one camera and are a bit pricier than the multi-camera plans that D-Link offers for its DCS-8525LH.
But whereas some cameras like the SpotCam Sense require a subscription to access human detection alerts, Kami gives you them for free, along with abnormal sound alerts.
The Kami Home mobile app opens to the home screen, which displays the name of your installed cameras with a recent still image.
Below the image panel are Alerts, Watch, and Settings buttons.
Tap Alerts to see a list of the day's activity alerts with time stamps, video thumbnails, and type of alert (human, motion tracking, abnormal sound).
Tap any thumbnail to play the video, delete it, or save it.
The Watch button opens a screen where you can view all of your cloud based video with thumbnails and a sliding timeline.
These clips can be viewed in succession at regular speed or be played at speeds of 4X, 8X, 16X, or 32X.
The Settings button opens a screen where you can create power on and power off schedules, enable motion tracking, rotate the image, and enable night vision.
Here you can also enable Auto-Cruise mode, which has the camera continually pan the room for a set period of time.
Other settings let you enable motion, human, and sound detection, set sensitivity levels, and create alert schedules.
Back at the home screen, tap the camera's image panel to launch a live stream with a round joystick control that's used to pan and tilt.
There's a bookmark button that lets you save various camera positions and return to them with the press of a button, as well as snapshot, video record, and microphone (two-way audio) buttons.
To view the stream in full-screen mode, tap the two arrows in the lower right corner.
At the very bottom of the live stream screen are buttons for viewing bookmark positions, recent alerts, the same previously mentioned settings, and cloud subscription information.
Installation and Performance
The Kami camera is easy to install.
I started by downloading the mobile app and creating an account.
I tapped the plus button on the app's home page to add the camera and followed the instructions to plug it in and wait for the Waiting to Connect voice prompt.
I confirmed that I had heard the voice prompt, entered my Wi-Fi SSID and password, and tapped Connect to Wi-Fi.
My phone displayed a QR code and I was prompted to hold the phone close to the camera so it could scan the code.
Within seconds the code was scanned and the voice prompt informed me that the pairing was successful.
To complete the setup I tapped Next and gave the camera a name.
The camera delivered sharp 1080p video in testing, with crisp colors during the day and well-lit black-and-white video at night.
There was no noticeable barrel or pincushion distortion, and two-way audio was adequately loud and distortion-free.
The mechanical pan and tilt actions were smooth and very quiet.
Human detection performance was hit or miss.
The Kami always sent a human alert when it identified motion from a person, but it also occasionally sent human alerts that were triggered by my dog.
At other times the dog would trigger a motion tracking alert.
Abnormal sound alerts from the dog barking and when my son's friends came over arrived instantly.
And motion tracking worked without a hitch: The camera did a great job of locking in on moving objects such as people, pets, and passing cars, and following them until they were out of the field of view.
Conclusions
A generous feature set and sharp image quality makes the Kami Indoor Camera a compelling choice for anyone who wants to keep tabs on their home while they're away.
The camera's motion tracking and abnormal sound detection worked well in our tests, and mechanical pan and tilt actions were smooth and quiet.
The human detection feature was disappointing, however.
And while you get free 24-hour cloud storage and dual-band Wi-Fi, the camera doesn't interact with other smart devices such as door locks and thermostats, you can't use IFTTT applets to make it react to other IFTTT devices and web services, and it lacks support for Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands.
If interoperability with third-party devices and voice control are must-have features, the $200 iSmartAlarm iCamera Keep Pro is a better choice, and remains our Editors' Choice for indoor home security cameras.
Cons
Doesn't support Alexa or Google voice commands.
No interaction with other smart devices or support for IFTTT applets.
Human detection is spotty.
The Bottom Line
The Kami Indoor security camera offers a handful of useful features including mechanical pan and tilt, motion tracking, and dual-band Wi-Fi.
The Kami Indoor Camera ($99.99) is the first offering from Yi Technology's newly launched Kami smart home division, which aims to provide AI-enabled home security devices at reasonable prices.
The Kami Indoor is a 1080p security camera packed with features including dual-band Wi-Fi, mechanical pan and tilt, motion tracking, and intelligent motion detection, and it installs in minutes.
However, it doesn't interact with other smart home devices or support Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands, nor does it support IFTTT applets.
For that you'll have to spend a bit more for our Editors' Choice, the iSmartAlarm iCamera Keep Pro.
Design and Features
Shaped like a cylinder with a slice taken out of the front, the matte white Kami Indoor Camera offers a pleasing design that will look at home in any room.
The enclosure stands 5 inches tall, 2.8 inches in diameter, and sits atop a base with a mechanical swivel that gives it 340 degrees of horizontal panning motion.
The mechanical camera head provides 95 degrees of vertical tilt.
The camera captures 1080p video at 20fps and has a 110-degree field of view, and it uses eight IR LEDs to deliver up to 30 feet of black-and-white night vision video.
There's a micro USB power port on the base, and at the rear of the enclosure are a small speaker grill and a reset button.
The front of the camera has a microphone and an LED indicator that's solid green when the camera is restarting, flashing green when attempting to connect to a network, solid blue when connected, and flashing red when recording video.
The Kami uses a dual-band Wi-Fi radio that lets you connect to either a 2.4GHz or 5GHz network.
The Kami will record video when it detects motion or sound and comes with 7 days of free rolling cloud storage for one year.
After your year is up, there are several subscription plans available.
The 7-day plan goes for $5 per month or $50 per year, the 15-day plan is $7 per month or $70 per year, and the 30-day plan costs $11 per month or $110 per year.
While not terribly expensive, the Kami plans are for one camera and are a bit pricier than the multi-camera plans that D-Link offers for its DCS-8525LH.
But whereas some cameras like the SpotCam Sense require a subscription to access human detection alerts, Kami gives you them for free, along with abnormal sound alerts.
The Kami Home mobile app opens to the home screen, which displays the name of your installed cameras with a recent still image.
Below the image panel are Alerts, Watch, and Settings buttons.
Tap Alerts to see a list of the day's activity alerts with time stamps, video thumbnails, and type of alert (human, motion tracking, abnormal sound).
Tap any thumbnail to play the video, delete it, or save it.
The Watch button opens a screen where you can view all of your cloud based video with thumbnails and a sliding timeline.
These clips can be viewed in succession at regular speed or be played at speeds of 4X, 8X, 16X, or 32X.
The Settings button opens a screen where you can create power on and power off schedules, enable motion tracking, rotate the image, and enable night vision.
Here you can also enable Auto-Cruise mode, which has the camera continually pan the room for a set period of time.
Other settings let you enable motion, human, and sound detection, set sensitivity levels, and create alert schedules.
Back at the home screen, tap the camera's image panel to launch a live stream with a round joystick control that's used to pan and tilt.
There's a bookmark button that lets you save various camera positions and return to them with the press of a button, as well as snapshot, video record, and microphone (two-way audio) buttons.
To view the stream in full-screen mode, tap the two arrows in the lower right corner.
At the very bottom of the live stream screen are buttons for viewing bookmark positions, recent alerts, the same previously mentioned settings, and cloud subscription information.
Installation and Performance
The Kami camera is easy to install.
I started by downloading the mobile app and creating an account.
I tapped the plus button on the app's home page to add the camera and followed the instructions to plug it in and wait for the Waiting to Connect voice prompt.
I confirmed that I had heard the voice prompt, entered my Wi-Fi SSID and password, and tapped Connect to Wi-Fi.
My phone displayed a QR code and I was prompted to hold the phone close to the camera so it could scan the code.
Within seconds the code was scanned and the voice prompt informed me that the pairing was successful.
To complete the setup I tapped Next and gave the camera a name.
The camera delivered sharp 1080p video in testing, with crisp colors during the day and well-lit black-and-white video at night.
There was no noticeable barrel or pincushion distortion, and two-way audio was adequately loud and distortion-free.
The mechanical pan and tilt actions were smooth and very quiet.
Human detection performance was hit or miss.
The Kami always sent a human alert when it identified motion from a person, but it also occasionally sent human alerts that were triggered by my dog.
At other times the dog would trigger a motion tracking alert.
Abnormal sound alerts from the dog barking and when my son's friends came over arrived instantly.
And motion tracking worked without a hitch: The camera did a great job of locking in on moving objects such as people, pets, and passing cars, and following them until they were out of the field of view.
Conclusions
A generous feature set and sharp image quality makes the Kami Indoor Camera a compelling choice for anyone who wants to keep tabs on their home while they're away.
The camera's motion tracking and abnormal sound detection worked well in our tests, and mechanical pan and tilt actions were smooth and quiet.
The human detection feature was disappointing, however.
And while you get free 24-hour cloud storage and dual-band Wi-Fi, the camera doesn't interact with other smart devices such as door locks and thermostats, you can't use IFTTT applets to make it react to other IFTTT devices and web services, and it lacks support for Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands.
If interoperability with third-party devices and voice control are must-have features, the $200 iSmartAlarm iCamera Keep Pro is a better choice, and remains our Editors' Choice for indoor home security cameras.
Cons
Doesn't support Alexa or Google voice commands.
No interaction with other smart devices or support for IFTTT applets.
Human detection is spotty.
The Bottom Line
The Kami Indoor security camera offers a handful of useful features including mechanical pan and tilt, motion tracking, and dual-band Wi-Fi.
