A detailed review of the Yi Ultra Dash dashcam: a smart gadget for security

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DVRs belong to that extremely rare category of gadgets that they buy with the hope that they

never, never come in handy. That is, this is a kind of insurance in case "suddenly", but each car owner always sincerely hopes that this "suddenly" does not happen. But if some kind of accident happens, then there will be a video on hand that allows you to at least somehow prove your case in the situation. Well, these devices are usually as simple as the Soviet three kopeks: you put it on a suction cup, plug it into a car outlet and that's it - the device writes video to the memory card in a circle, overwriting previous files and automatically saving video from deletion, activating this function with any shake. And today we will talk about a smart DVR company Yi Technology, part of the Xiaomi ecosystem called Ultra Dash, interesting for its price, bundling and the ability to work with the application (read: it's easy to upload photos or videos to your smartphone and publish them on the Internet).

What is in the box

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Before that I used a younger modelThe Yi Smart Dash dashcam, which costs about $ 40 and was completely fine with me. It is distinguished by support for ADAS (advanced driver-assistance systems) - a voice assistant that I turned off almost immediately, because it does not work correctly on our roads. They are too uneven for delicate electronics, so he constantly believed that I did not keep my distance and went beyond the markings of the strip. As a result, I was tired of hearing every 3 minutes on the track “keep the distance” on it and I turned it off. The Ultra Dash model lacks an ADAS system, and it also has a slightly smaller viewing angle - 140.6 ° versus 165 °. But a richer grade, which someone would think worthy of the extra 15 dollars. So, in the box with Yi Ultra Dash are:

DVR
3 meters long cable for laying it inside the car
power adapter plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter with 2 USB ports
suction cup
one more tripod with 3M double-sided tape (on the previous recorder it was like that and 3 years reliably sagged “without a single break”)
microSD memory card (SanDisk, among other things) with a capacity of 16 GB
instruction in 5 languages (no Russian, there is English)
warranty card
square sticker for brand fans (well, all of a sudden)
(not immediately and guess what it is, I just didn’t guess) a special tool for laying cable

The suction cup was quite reliable, by the way, shethere is still an additional latch, but from time to time it fell away. For a month I tried to find a pattern, as a result I realized that it was in the summer heat - on very hot days (+30 degrees and above) it can fall off a few hours after installation. The rest of the time it hangs securely. But the second tripod with adhesive tape is always ready to help - 3M adhesive tape will never let you down.

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The car power supply produces 5 volts andif the marking is believed, 2.4A delivers on one port and 1A on the second. Which one I didn’t really understand, but I was not interested in the quick charge of the smartphone in the car, so I didn’t get into the details.

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Yi Ultra Dash from all sides

Externally, YI Ultra Dash looks like any otherthe DVR, but it has a pleasant moment in the form of a metal tripod ring, which immediately pleased me - the previous registrar had its own not-so-easy-to-use mount, which was badly worn out over 3 years of life (I remove the DVR if I park in dumb places True, in Kiev there are few of these). The usual thread is right there, you can easily screw it onto a tripod without even looking. On the front panel of the registrar there is a decorative insert “under carbon”. At the lower and upper ends there are ventilation holes, the speaker was placed under the protruding part of the lens. The microphone is located on the rear panel, in the lower left part, under a pair of LEDs. The top red LED is used during charging, the bottom, orange, indicates that the camera is recording (it flashes once per second). In general, the recording is already visible, but suddenly you want, unlike me, to turn off the display during recording.

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What the application can do

For comfortable work with the registrar (in generalyou don’t have to bother - there is a display and an on-screen menu, everything works without the help of a smartphone) you need to install the proprietary Yi Dash Cam application (it, of course, is also for iOS). In the registrar’s menu, you need to activate Wi-Fi, after which the smartphone will connect to the registrar’s network and gain access to the settings and contents of the memory card.

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There are three folders on the memory card: Movie, Photo and EMR (videos marked as “disturbing” are moved there). The application has three tabs - camera (live broadcast mode), microSD (the contents of the memory card with two presentation options - in the form of large and smaller icons). And the settings tab.

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Clicking on the “hamburger” opens other sectionsmenu, but there is nothing particularly interesting there - modest data about the model and manufacturer and links to the YI website and accounts on social networks (by the way, there is Instagram in Russian).

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In the settings, you can control the video resolution(the maximum is 2688x1520, but the recorder has a Hi3556 V100 processor that supports resolutions up to 1440P at 30 fps, so there is a feeling that this is interpolation), by the sensitivity of the sensor that activates the protected recording. You can adjust the brightness of the screen or turn it off. It is possible to add YI watermark and time stamps to the recording. There is a function “driving report” and “voice control”, but the entire report comes down to the statistics of sensor responses after a trip (if it was longer than 10 minutes), and voice control allows you to take a picture or send the current video to a protected area by voice, without using hands , which, of course, is convenient while driving, but there are nuances. By the way, a voice command is generally the only way to take a picture, there are no buttons for this. Video, on the contrary, can be saved by clicking on the red button on the recorder.

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Any video can be saved on your smartphone. It's great that there is a small video editor that allows you to select the desired fragment from the minute recording. Similarly, a smartphone saves a photo.

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Video recording example

Strictly speaking, in the afternoon any DVRRecords normal quality video. All models have long ago mastered the resolution of FullHD, so now only recording at night is of interest - it is important that the license plate of the car ahead is clearly visible. This is all good. By the way, the video shows that the voice command “Yi, take photo” did not work right away. In the process, I tried to understand the pattern - why in one case it works the first time, in the other - from the tenth. As a result, the whole thing turned out to be external noise: if a car radio is playing and ventilation is working loudly, the chances of correct recognition of a voice command are reduced. In the video you can hear how I first muffled the radio, then turned off the blower, and now the third time the picture turned out. To record a video, you need to say “Yi, begin recording”, but somehow I inattentively memorized the instructions and my record even worked on the phrase “Yi, begin record”.

Here is the picture taken in the last secondsvideo above. Of course, in a critical situation, the driver will not have time for radio and ventilation, but, firstly, with the slightest shake, the video is immediately sent to the protected section. Secondly, you can always press the red button and make a forced recording. In this case, however, the camera, as a rule, will swing. With a voice command, of course, this does not happen.

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How the automation sensor works

The sensor at the camera is very sensitive (I setto maximum sensitivity in the settings), so it works even on a simple not very smooth road. Here, the speed was about 40 kilometers per hour. At 7 seconds, a squeak is heard - it worked automatic recording (more precisely, the video is saved - the recording is constantly ongoing). When you press the emergency recording button, the camera saves the video 10 seconds before pressing and writes up to 3 minutes of video. If the video file at the time the button was pressed was less than 20 seconds, then the previous minute file is saved until the conditional collision.

Yi Dash vs Yi Ultra Dash Video Comparison

For the sake of experiment, I recorded simultaneously the work of both recorders for comparison. By the way, ordinary Dash writes in 3-minute time intervals, Ultra writes in minute ones, which, in my opinion, is more correct.

Video from Yi Dash:

Video from Yi Ultra Dash:

Until the DVR, thank God, was not usefulfor its intended purpose, but you can get all sorts of funny videos to entertain yourself, your loved one, and friends and relatives. Here, for example, I shot a hare at night in the forest (night shooting is not in the city - the visibility is minimal, you don’t have to wait from the registrar of miracles, but you can still see a hare of several meters):

Or here’s an accident on the highway during the day (the camera is shaking for 17 seconds - I pressed the save record button forcibly):

Video sample in resolution 2688 x1520

The picture in this resolution seems soapy to me, so I switched to FullHD, which saves a little more space on the memory card:

Sample Pictures

Here are a few more shots taken by the cameraregistrar for understanding quality. You can remove all sorts of repairs, accidents, sports cars in the center of Kiev or, for example, a pre-storm sky. Flagship smartphones will not reach, of course, but a smartphone for $ 55 will hardly remove better.

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And here is the trip report: travel time and not very clear numbers. What ACC and DEC mean, I really didn’t catch it, there is nothing in the instructions about this. One of these numbers should definitely be the number of incidents and files saved. As I understand it, some new features may appear in updated firmware, but so far there has been nothing.

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In the dry residue

Overall Yi Ultra Dash DVR to meI liked my price-performance ratio. He shoots well enough for his purposes in the dark. It has excellent equipment (3.5 meters cable, two mounting options, a memory card also costs some money - this may well affect the decision to purchase if, for example, you do not have an extra microSD card). I liked the mount on a standard tripod socket, which allows you to quickly (and often) remove the recorder. Usually I do not suffer from paranoia, but I heard about cases of theft of car registrars, and to hell with him, the registrar, but they will break the glass again. A convenient and simple application that allows you to immediately post a curious video or photo on Facebook right after the trip (which I regularly use regularly). Probably, for complete happiness some other data on the record is still missing - GPS-tags or something, the speed of movement, but these are the real "little things" that you can do without. As a result, we have a good registrar model created by a company that you can trust. Especially, given the fact that there are no strong brands in this category.

5 reasons to buy a YI Ultra Dash dashcam:

additional insurance in case of accident;
two types of fastening - suction cup and adhesive tape;
simple and convenient application;
video recording in resolution 2688x1520
memory card included.

2 reasons not to buy a YI Ultra Dash dashcam:

I want a larger viewing angle (write to me - why, in the comments, I'm interested);
there are registrar models cheaper.

Specifications dvr YI Ultra Dash

Dimensions
85 × 55x35 mm

Weight
96 g

Display
TFT, 2.7 ″ (960 × 240)

CPU
HiSilicon Hi3556 V100 (A17 1.25 GHz + A7 800 MHz), 28 nm

Lens
f / 1.9, linear viewing angle 140.6 °

Video
H.264 (MP4), 2688x1520 30 fps, 1920x1080 60 fps, 1280x720 30 fps

Nutrition
5V / 2A, microUSB

Battery
400 mAh

Contents of delivery
car charger with 2 USB (2.4 and 1 A), cable 3.5 meters, 2 types of mounting: with 3M tape and suction cup, cable management tool, 16 GB memory card

YI Ultra Dash Camera

Trusted DVR

Not the cheapest (but not at all expensive)A DVR with excellent equipment (3.5 meters cable for installation inside the machine, two types of mounts, a charger with two USB ports, a 16 GB card included). It has a convenient metal tripod socket that allows you to quickly and often remove the device. The ability to work with a smartphone, which allows you to easily download the selected video clip to your phone, will also be great.

Buy in branded store on AliExpress