The Xiaoyi dashcam review
Finally, the review is here…
…Sort of.
OK, here’s the thing. Over the past few weeks, I have been compiling the recordings and trying to make sure they are within similar conditions (weather, lighting during that time, etc).
The thing is… Xiaoyi team is really hard at work. During the past few weeks I have been using the dashcam, there have been like 2-3 firmware and apps updates. You can say this makes the data I have collected useless. We want to really make a fair comparison, right? 🙂
Does that mean there will not be an actual review? Not really…
I love the dashcam. Video is actually quite clear. The basic functions like emergency recording, etc are all there. It feels solid. And you know you’re in good hands if the apps and firmware is being constantly updated.
It does feel like a beta product though. I say that because the apps itself still feel unpolished, with lots of “weird” terminology. Plus, it’s not featured on the Xiaoyi website. OK, it seems there is now a new website and the dashcam is featured there: http://www.yitechnology.com/
But do bear in mind though — This cam is not one of those mini-cams. It is big and very obvious. In Malaysia, this is not necessarily a good thing and may attract ‘unwanted attention’.
Video recording does not seem to be “optimised”. A 3 minute 1080p video at 30fps (frames per second) will take up about 330MB of space whereas an 1080p video at 60fp will take up 450MB. To put it into perspective, it means a movie-length video (say 120 minutes) will take up a whopping 13.2GB! If you have any “bluray quality” movie files, go compare the size.
I would have expected the file size to be smaller. Anyway, it could be a software thing and might be improved later on.
In the meantime, if you do get this dashcam, I suggest you get a big microSD card. I was using a 16GB card but I think a 32GB card would be much better.
The dashcam itself has got built-in wifi. So, once you have installed the apps on your smartphone, you can actually connect to the dashcam via wifi. From here, you can make changes to the settings or even download the recordings.
Here’s a video by Techmoan. They do really good reviews of dashcams and just check out what they have to say about this one, which will cover all the basic things you might want to know about this dashcam.