GoPro’s dominance could be challenged by cheaper, better Xiaomi camera

2 Mar 2015

The Yi Action camera with cat mount. Image via Xiaomi

Xiaomi feels the GoPro Hero has been the dominant action camera for too long and has decided it’s to release its own cheaper Yi Action camera, but with more frame rate power.

At a cost of 399 yuan (€56), the Yi Action would be considerably cheaper than the GoPro Hero that currently retails at about US$130 (€116), and also has the added bonus of being able to shoot in 1080p quality at 60 frames per second (fps), 30fps more than GoPro Hero is capable of doing at hat resolution.

Also, according to The Verge, will also have a rather impressive in-built Exmor R CMOS camera sensor developed by their friends across the East China Sea at Sony with 64GB of internal storage which is twice as much video space as the GoPro Hero.

However, the two do compare when it comes to how much water depth it can handle with both coming in at around 40m, with the Yi Action having the ability to remote record through an app should the user wish to get some third-person footage.

Xiaomi are even offering the ability to rig up the Yi Action for some extreme cat videos with a harness that can be placed around the cat with the Yi Action placed on its own mount.

For everyone else who might not find a cat rigging so appealing, it does have the option of a Travel Edition which costs an extra 100 yuan (€14) for what is essentially a selfie stick.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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