The Yi Dome Camera 1080p packs a lot of home security camera into a small package.
For $59.99, it offers mechanical pan and tilt, motion and sound detection, motion tracking, and local and cloud-based event recording.
It also takes panoramic photos and has a Baby Crying alert feature (though we were unable to get the latter to work in testing).
It offers lots of value for per dollar, though it doesn't interact with other smart devices like our Editors' Choice for affordable security cams, the D-Link Full HD Wi-Fi Camera DCS-8300LH.
Design and Plans
The Yi Dome Camera can be mounted on a ceiling, a wall, or be placed on any flat surface.
The pear-shaped black enclosure stands 4.3 inches high and measures 3.6 inches in diameter at the base and 2.5 inches in diameter at the top.
The top portion holds the circular camera, which captures video at 1080p and has a 4x zoom with a 112-degree field view at its widest setting.
The camera is attached to a mechanical hinge mechanism that gives you 115 degrees of vertical (tilt) rotation, and the top half of the enclosure is attached to the bottom half using a mechanical mechanism that gives you 345 degrees of horizontal (pan) rotation.
Black-and-white night video comes by way of eight infrared LEDs.
The base of the camera has a USB power jack, a reset button, and a microSD card slot for storing event-triggered video locally, but you'll have to supply your own media.
If you'd rather store video in the cloud, Yi offers several Standard and Premium storage plans.
For $54.90 per year, the Standard plan offers storage for motion-triggered video for up to seven days and supports five cameras.
For $89.10 per year, you get 15 days of storage, and for $134.10 per year, you get 30 days of storage.
The seven-day Premium plan gives you access to continuous video recording (CVR) for one camera for $59.40 per year.
For $89.10 per year, you get access to 15 days of CVR video, and $134.10 per year gets you 30 days of CVR video.
Features and App
The Dome Camera contains a motion sensor and will record video when it detects movement.
As with the more expensive iSmart iCamera Keep Pro, it also offers a neat motion tracking feature that follows a moving object around the room while recording motion.
It has a built-in microphone and speaker for two-way audio, and offers a Baby Crying feature that is supposed to send an alert when the camera hears an infant crying, but I wasn't able to get this feature to work in testing.
The mobile app (available for Android and iOS) opens to a home screen that shows all installed Yi cameras by name with a still image.
Beneath the image are buttons labeled Alerts, Settings, and Subscribe.
The Alerts button takes you to a screen that displays a list of activity alerts (All Activities, Motion, Baby Crying, Motion Tracking) with a time stamp and thumbnail of the recorded video.
Tap any thumbnail to play the video, save it to your phone, share it with friends, or delete it.
The Subscribe button takes you to a screen where you can subscribe to a storage plan.
At the very bottom of the screen is a Camera button that takes you back to the home screen, an Alerts button that does the same thing as the above-mentioned Alerts button, a Cloud Service button that displays your current cloud service plan, and a Profile button that takes you to a screen where you can access your photo and video albums, check notifications from Yi Technology, visit the Yi online store, and access FAQs and leave product feedback.
Back at the home screen, tap the image to launch a live feed on the top half of the screen and controls on the bottom for muting the speaker, manual recording, two-way audio, taking a snapshot, and reorienting the stream sideways for full-screen mode.
There's a plus icon that lets you create up to eight bookmarks for camera position.
Just tap a bookmark to activate the pan and tilt functions and return the camera to your predetermined viewing position.
There's also a button that launches the panoramic photo process that pans the camera while taking snapshots and renders them into a single 360-degree panoramic photo.
The bottom half of the screen contains a four-way dial for panning and tilting the camera, a bookmark icon that displays all of your preset camera views, a camera icon that lets you enable/disable motion tracking, and yet another icon that displays all activity alerts.
To access the camera settings, tap the gear icon in the upper right corner of the live stream panel.
Here you can turn the camera on and off, turn the microphone on and off, enable the Lens Distortion Correction to reduce barrel distortion, rotate the image if you've mounted the camera on a ceiling, and enable hands-free two-way audio.
You can also enable notifications, adjust motion sensitivity, and adjust alert frequency to reduce unnecessary notifications.
Installation and Performance
To install the Dome Camera, I downloaded the mobile app and created an account.
I plugged the camera into an outlet close to my router for the initial setup, at which point I heard a voice prompt inform me that the camera was waiting to connect.
I opened the app, tapped the plus icon to add a camera, and selected the Dome Camera from the list.
Next, I tapped the "I heard waiting to connect" button, select a Wi-Fi SSID to connect to, and entered my Wi-Fi password to generate a QR code on my phone.
I held the phone around eight inches from the camera and waited a few seconds for the voice prompt to tell me that the QR code was successfully scanned.
This was followed by a voice prompt informing me that the camera has been successfully installed.
After a quick firmware update, I was ready to go.
The Yi Dome Camera provided sharp 1080p video in my tests.
Daytime video was colorful, with no noticeable distortion, and night video remained sharp out to around 20 feet with good illumination and contrast.
Motion detection worked well with the sensitivity level set to Medium—the Low setting missed some events and the High setting triggered too many insignificant motion alerts from passing cards and wind-blown branches.
Motion tracking also worked quite well, and the pan and tilt feature was very responsive.
Two-way audio was crisp, but as mentioned, I was unable to get the camera to react to the sound of a crying baby.
That said, motion alerts arrived immediately, and the panoramic photo feature worked like a charm.
Conclusions
If you're looking for a home security camera that will give you a 360-degree view of any room in your house, the Yi Technology Dome Camera 1080p is a solid choice.
For $60 you get sharp 1080p video, responsive mechanical pan and tilt, motion tracking, panoramic photo capabilities, and local storage for motion-triggered video recordings.
You can also subscribe to a cloud storage plan if you prefer.
Video quality was solid in my testing, as was motion detection and motion tracking, and panoramic photos came out great.
That said, I was unable to get the camera to react to the sounds of a crying baby.
Additionally, it would be nice if the camera worked with other with other smart home devices.
You'll pay twice as much for the iSmartAlarm iCamera Keep Pro, but it works with other devices that are connected to the iSmartAlarm hub, as well as devices that support IFTTT applets, and it supports Alexa voice commands.
It also offers free cloud storage, as well as local storage for recorded video, time-lapse recording, motion and sound alerts, and it will send a push notification if it hears a smoke or CO alarm.
The D-Link DCS-8300LH doesn't do quite as much as the iCamera Keep Pro, but it supports Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands, as well as IFTTT applets, for $30 more than the Yi Dome Camera.
Cons
Doesn't support Alexa, Google Assistant, or IFTTT.
Crying Baby alerts didn't work in testing.
The Bottom Line
The Yi Dome Camera 1080p is a reasonably priced high-definition security camera that offers mechanical pan, tilt, and zoom, and motion- and sound-triggered recording, along with panoramic photo capture.
The Yi Dome Camera 1080p packs a lot of home security camera into a small package.
For $59.99, it offers mechanical pan and tilt, motion and sound detection, motion tracking, and local and cloud-based event recording.
It also takes panoramic photos and has a Baby Crying alert feature (though we were unable to get the latter to work in testing).
It offers lots of value for per dollar, though it doesn't interact with other smart devices like our Editors' Choice for affordable security cams, the D-Link Full HD Wi-Fi Camera DCS-8300LH.
Design and Plans
The Yi Dome Camera can be mounted on a ceiling, a wall, or be placed on any flat surface.
The pear-shaped black enclosure stands 4.3 inches high and measures 3.6 inches in diameter at the base and 2.5 inches in diameter at the top.
The top portion holds the circular camera, which captures video at 1080p and has a 4x zoom with a 112-degree field view at its widest setting.
The camera is attached to a mechanical hinge mechanism that gives you 115 degrees of vertical (tilt) rotation, and the top half of the enclosure is attached to the bottom half using a mechanical mechanism that gives you 345 degrees of horizontal (pan) rotation.
Black-and-white night video comes by way of eight infrared LEDs.
The base of the camera has a USB power jack, a reset button, and a microSD card slot for storing event-triggered video locally, but you'll have to supply your own media.
If you'd rather store video in the cloud, Yi offers several Standard and Premium storage plans.
For $54.90 per year, the Standard plan offers storage for motion-triggered video for up to seven days and supports five cameras.
For $89.10 per year, you get 15 days of storage, and for $134.10 per year, you get 30 days of storage.
The seven-day Premium plan gives you access to continuous video recording (CVR) for one camera for $59.40 per year.
For $89.10 per year, you get access to 15 days of CVR video, and $134.10 per year gets you 30 days of CVR video.
Features and App
The Dome Camera contains a motion sensor and will record video when it detects movement.
As with the more expensive iSmart iCamera Keep Pro, it also offers a neat motion tracking feature that follows a moving object around the room while recording motion.
It has a built-in microphone and speaker for two-way audio, and offers a Baby Crying feature that is supposed to send an alert when the camera hears an infant crying, but I wasn't able to get this feature to work in testing.
The mobile app (available for Android and iOS) opens to a home screen that shows all installed Yi cameras by name with a still image.
Beneath the image are buttons labeled Alerts, Settings, and Subscribe.
The Alerts button takes you to a screen that displays a list of activity alerts (All Activities, Motion, Baby Crying, Motion Tracking) with a time stamp and thumbnail of the recorded video.
Tap any thumbnail to play the video, save it to your phone, share it with friends, or delete it.
The Subscribe button takes you to a screen where you can subscribe to a storage plan.
At the very bottom of the screen is a Camera button that takes you back to the home screen, an Alerts button that does the same thing as the above-mentioned Alerts button, a Cloud Service button that displays your current cloud service plan, and a Profile button that takes you to a screen where you can access your photo and video albums, check notifications from Yi Technology, visit the Yi online store, and access FAQs and leave product feedback.
Back at the home screen, tap the image to launch a live feed on the top half of the screen and controls on the bottom for muting the speaker, manual recording, two-way audio, taking a snapshot, and reorienting the stream sideways for full-screen mode.
There's a plus icon that lets you create up to eight bookmarks for camera position.
Just tap a bookmark to activate the pan and tilt functions and return the camera to your predetermined viewing position.
There's also a button that launches the panoramic photo process that pans the camera while taking snapshots and renders them into a single 360-degree panoramic photo.
The bottom half of the screen contains a four-way dial for panning and tilting the camera, a bookmark icon that displays all of your preset camera views, a camera icon that lets you enable/disable motion tracking, and yet another icon that displays all activity alerts.
To access the camera settings, tap the gear icon in the upper right corner of the live stream panel.
Here you can turn the camera on and off, turn the microphone on and off, enable the Lens Distortion Correction to reduce barrel distortion, rotate the image if you've mounted the camera on a ceiling, and enable hands-free two-way audio.
You can also enable notifications, adjust motion sensitivity, and adjust alert frequency to reduce unnecessary notifications.
Installation and Performance
To install the Dome Camera, I downloaded the mobile app and created an account.
I plugged the camera into an outlet close to my router for the initial setup, at which point I heard a voice prompt inform me that the camera was waiting to connect.
I opened the app, tapped the plus icon to add a camera, and selected the Dome Camera from the list.
Next, I tapped the "I heard waiting to connect" button, select a Wi-Fi SSID to connect to, and entered my Wi-Fi password to generate a QR code on my phone.
I held the phone around eight inches from the camera and waited a few seconds for the voice prompt to tell me that the QR code was successfully scanned.
This was followed by a voice prompt informing me that the camera has been successfully installed.
After a quick firmware update, I was ready to go.
The Yi Dome Camera provided sharp 1080p video in my tests.
Daytime video was colorful, with no noticeable distortion, and night video remained sharp out to around 20 feet with good illumination and contrast.
Motion detection worked well with the sensitivity level set to Medium—the Low setting missed some events and the High setting triggered too many insignificant motion alerts from passing cards and wind-blown branches.
Motion tracking also worked quite well, and the pan and tilt feature was very responsive.
Two-way audio was crisp, but as mentioned, I was unable to get the camera to react to the sound of a crying baby.
That said, motion alerts arrived immediately, and the panoramic photo feature worked like a charm.
Conclusions
If you're looking for a home security camera that will give you a 360-degree view of any room in your house, the Yi Technology Dome Camera 1080p is a solid choice.
For $60 you get sharp 1080p video, responsive mechanical pan and tilt, motion tracking, panoramic photo capabilities, and local storage for motion-triggered video recordings.
You can also subscribe to a cloud storage plan if you prefer.
Video quality was solid in my testing, as was motion detection and motion tracking, and panoramic photos came out great.
That said, I was unable to get the camera to react to the sounds of a crying baby.
Additionally, it would be nice if the camera worked with other with other smart home devices.
You'll pay twice as much for the iSmartAlarm iCamera Keep Pro, but it works with other devices that are connected to the iSmartAlarm hub, as well as devices that support IFTTT applets, and it supports Alexa voice commands.
It also offers free cloud storage, as well as local storage for recorded video, time-lapse recording, motion and sound alerts, and it will send a push notification if it hears a smoke or CO alarm.
The D-Link DCS-8300LH doesn't do quite as much as the iCamera Keep Pro, but it supports Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands, as well as IFTTT applets, for $30 more than the Yi Dome Camera.
Cons
Doesn't support Alexa, Google Assistant, or IFTTT.
Crying Baby alerts didn't work in testing.
The Bottom Line
The Yi Dome Camera 1080p is a reasonably priced high-definition security camera that offers mechanical pan, tilt, and zoom, and motion- and sound-triggered recording, along with panoramic photo capture.
