Home » Yi Lite Action Camera hands-on, first impressions

Yi Lite Action Camera hands-on, first impressions

Written By Zen Estacio
Published • August 24th, 2018
CamerasHands-on
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Yi Technology is slowly becoming a renowned brand for action cameras. Their Yi Action Camera line, in particular, is enjoying quite the following thanks to their quality and price. Today, we’ll be looking at one of those Yi Action Cams — the Yi Lite. Is it a promising budget action cam? Let’s find out in our quick hands-on.

The Yi Lite comes in three color variants but what we have on hand is the black one. Personally, we love the other two colors more as the green one has a lot of funk while the blue one is cool and classy.

Either way, the camera itself is your typical box type small action cam with a protruding lens. It does have a little more flavor in its design thanks to the sand-blasted like overall finish. We were only given the unit, though retail packages normally come with a waterproof case.

Up top we have a loudspeaker, two microphones, and the shutter button that also doubles as the power button.

Yi Technology went with a very minimalist approach here and only gave the Yi Lite an SD card slot, a mount slot, and a microUSB. We don’t blame them though after all, it is called “Lite”.

You can easily miss the microSD slot since it’s tucked under the battery area, which is located down below.

The camera has a very straightforward UI, you have a menu for the different modes which consists of Photo, Timer, Burst, Video, Lapse Video, Slow Motion, Lapse Photo, Loop, and Video + Photo. It comes with a 16MP Sony IMX306 sensor that can shoot 10MP or 16MP photos and a maximum of 4k/20fps videos.

We opted to keep photos at 16MPs though to test out the max capabilities of the lens. Shots surprisingly have good clarity, dynamic range, sharpness and color reproduction. Check out some of our sample shots below.

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As for video, again it maxes out at 4k/20fps but we opted to take our sample footage in 1080p/60fps as we felt this is the best resolution it can offer. Again, we were surprised with the quality as the focus was great, quality was impressive, and even the mic picked up audio quite well. Check out our sample video below.

The Yi Lite is shaping up to be a treat for those looking for a budget action camera. It has a good amount of modes, impressive photo quality, and amazing video performance. It might be a bit lacking on ports though by only offering microUSB and microSD. The camera is priced at Php 6,174 at Yi Technology’s official Lazada store (see listing here).

Xiaoyi Yi Lite Action Camera specifications:

2-inch LCD screen
HiSilicon Hi3556V100 chip
1GB RAM
4GB internal storage
expandable via microSD card up to 128GB
16MP f/2.8 Sony Exmor R CMOS BSI camera with EIS
150-degree ultra wide angle glass lens
4k Video @ 15fps
1440p Video @ 30/25fps
1080p Video @ 60/50/30/25fps
720p Video @ 30/60/120fps
WiFi
Bluetooth 4.1 LE
1200mAh battery
65mm x 30mm x 42mm
72g

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Zen Estacio

Zen Estacio is a Multimedia Producer for YugaTech. He is the team's laptop guru and one of their resident gamers. He has a monthly column compiling the latest and greatest the Nintendo Switch has to offer. Aside from that, he regularly writes gaming news, reviews, and impressions. You can hit him up at @papanZEN