Security cameras have become commonplace in our modern lives and this has led to a drop in their prices as technology continues to advance and today, there are countless options for you if you’re in the market for n inexpensive solution.
We have already looked at a number of solid home security camera solutions but most of these are dominated by one company, Xiaomi. You might want to check out our coverage of the Yi 1090p Home Camera and the Xiaomi Mi Home Security Camera 360 1080P.
Read More: Best Affordable Smart Home Cameras to Choose From
Read More:
- Mi 360 Home security camera 2K Pro features and Price
- How to set up the Mi 360 Home Security Camera 2K Pro
Night sight
The Mi 360 2K Pro comes with the ability to see in the dark…literally. When the light is low, the camera switches to an Infrared camera that allows you to see in through the veil of darkness. Of course, the resolution isn’t as crisp as we’d have hoped but it works well enough.
Below is a side-by-side comparison of the camera view with the security lights turned on and the save view in pitch darkness.
Tracking
The camera swivels around, hence the 360 in the name, and in the app, you can set the camera to track people as soon as they come into frame. In the testing, the tracking worked pretty well for the most part but sometimes it would be a little erratic, especially in cases where multiple persons are in the frame.
The app also allows you to set notifications for when the camera detects movement or a person. These notifications can be many on busy days but I found the scheduling feature super handy.
Essentially, I set the camera to send me notifications of Persons in the frame or movement detection between 8pm and 6 am. This way, I’d get notified whenever there was significant movement overnight.
Of course, there are a bunch of false positives like say a bug flying across the camera’s field but these can probably be fixed when the algorithm gets better.
Storage
The Mi 360° Home Security Camera 2K Pro has an SD Card slot that, according to specification, can take up to 32GB. I used a 64GB card in my setup and this worked well. After formatting the card using the Mi Home app, it will be available to store your footage.
Worth noting is that this storage only saves the activities that you have selected and doesn’t save continuously, otherwise this would need a NAS. The saved video footage can span anywhere between 9 seconds and 30 seconds.
This can then be offloaded to your device by downloading it using the Mi Home app. You can also just eject the SD Card and copy the video files to a PC. Worth noting is that these videos are not encrypted.
Resolution
From within the Mi Home app, you are able to toggle between 360p and 2K resolution. For bandwidth, of course, you’d wanna stick to 360p and in most instances, I found this pretty adequate. But for this, you might as well get the 1080p version
The Mi 360 2K Pro also has the ability to record footage in 2K. This, in my testing, resulted in crispy-looking footage. However, there are still dynamic range issues but these are easily forgivable.
Summary
For anyone in the market for a Home Security camera, there are often a bunch of questions that you must ask yourself before picking on one.
- What do I want my security camera to do?
- Wired or wireless camera system?
- Will my internet speed affect the quality?
- Do I want 24/7 recording?
- Will climate affect my exterior cameras?
- How do I want my camera system installed?
- What is my budget?
This is how the Mi 360° Home Security Camera 2K Pro fairs.
So, What do you want the security camera to do? Well, the Mi 360° Home Security Camera 2K Pro is ideal for someone with a small home or an office. It can be mounted indoors on a desk, up on a wall and as such, can also be easily mounted outdoors and its 360 nature allows it to cover a surprisingly large area.
If you need a camera system that is lightweight and flexible, can notify you about movement in your space, the Mi 360° Home Security Camera 2K Pro is your device.
Wired or wireless camera system? Mi 360° Home Security Camera 2K Pro needs to be plugged into power but that is the only required connection. Everything else is handled over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth low energy.
Will my internet speed affect the quality? Well, yes it will. But the Mi 360° Home Security Camera 2K Pro supports both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wi-Fi bands so you have that flexibility to choose whichever networks fastest for you.
Do I want 24/7 recording? Well, you don’t get this with the Mi 360° Home Security Camera 2K Pro, at least not in my testing. Of course, this could change in a future update so cross your fingers.
Will climate affect my exterior cameras? The Mi 360° Home Security Camera 2K Pro comes in a pretty robust plastic housing. However, we can’t really speak to its durability outdoors so stay tuned for our observations after a few weeks but if the wall-mounting parts included in the packaging is anything to go by, this should be fine.
How do I want my camera system installed? The setup process is pretty straightforward and painless. As such, you don’t need a whole crew to set it up.
What is my budget? So the Mi 360° Home Security Camera 2K Pro comes in at a rather reasonable KES 7200 ($70). This is well within the budget of anyone in the market for one of these.
You said you use a 64GB MicroSD card, did it recognize and use as a 64GB or just 32GB?
It does recognize and uses all the 64GB. Well, around 58GB but that’s all of it. Also, it auto-deletes the oldest footage so you never really deal with low storage issues.