Yi M1 Review: $330, Better than some DSLRs
Hey whats up, zi here this is the yi m1, a
$330 mirrorless camera It that didn’t mean anything to you, basically
this is a Digital camera takes better photos than entry level dslrs but is as small and
simple to use as a point and shoot At least that’s what the company claims,
the specs on paper seem to back that up but let’s see whether that is true in practice. So for comparison I have with me my entry
level DSLR the rebel T3 as well as my main camera the Panasonic G7 which is much more
expensive. I tried to film as much of this review on
the M1 camera itself, so anytime you don’t see the camera on screen, its being used to
film footage.
Camera comes in classy black box, open up
the box and you find the camera and two lenses in foam
Putting all those aside the camera body is made of high quality plastic and it doesn’t
feel cheap in the hand The M1 is very small, much smaller than the
canon or Panasonic, about the same size as regular point and shoots
The lens that comes with the cam is a zoom lens and is pretty dece quality, there is
a slider on the side to prevent the lens from zooming while in your backpack to keep it
compact The prime lens is optional and costs about
$100 more, but I got it anyway, and its also decent quality but the focus ring doesn’t
actually turn, its just cosmetic. The m1 is very simple and does’nt look intimidating,
on the top is the hotshoe, power switch, selector dial and toggle
And on the right side is the charging port you charge the battery through the camera,
the sd card slot and a microhdmi port as well On the back is the touchscreen and just two
buttons.
The Yi M1 is built around the Micro 4/3 platform,
meaning that if you have other micro 4/3 lenses like I do, they are compatible So unlike DSLRs with a lot of intimidating
buttons and switches and dials, almost everything is controlled through the touchscreen. You can change each setting on the main screen
by selecting and then rolling the dial on top
Swipe left to change scenes, and swipe right for settings. The one thing I don’t like is that ISO is
in settings and not in the main screen, so it takes a long time to change it
The camera saves JPEG photos by default, and you can change that to RAW if you want, but
sadly you can’t save both, just one or the other.
There is also an included app for android
and iOS and pairing the camera to the phone is super simple. All you have to do is hit connect on the app
and the camera automatically connects. Once you connect you can download photos off
the camera onto your phone for sharing. So actually using the camera is easy as well. in automatic mode just point and shoot. Well its almost that simple, so autofocus
isn’t the greatest, sometimes it has trouble focusing on what you wanna take a photo of
so you have to refocus before snapping a photo. This also means that its going to be difficult
to take photos of fast moving objects as well. But when the camera does focus properly, photos
are nice, there is a ton of detail, way more than any smartphone and many point and shoot
cameras, and colours look natural as well.
Photos are sharp but there is virtually no
Bokeh or blurred background in any photo because of the high f stop. Moving on to the optional prime lens, and
there the photo quality immediately jumps higher, there is even more detail and sharpness
and there is a ton of Bokeh because of the low f stop. This lens also performs much better in low
light conditions than the kit lens. The camera is capable of taking 4K video but
the huge downside is that there is no manual mode, only auto. And every time the lighting changes the camera
tries to compensate and it looks like it flickers, hopefully they add manual mode in a new software
update. But when the lighting stays constant, you
can take some pretty crispy 4K video that looks good and is honestly quite close in
quality to my Panasonic G7. But one huge downside is that there is no
optical image stabilization in the body or the camera lens, so you should probably use
a tripod.
To conclude this review, the M1 takes good
photos and video, better than my rebel T3 DSLR but not as good as my Panasonic G7. The autofocusing isn’t the best so it’s
not very well suited for fast moving objects either, but it is very cheap for a mirrorless
camera and in my opinion it’s a perfect bridge camera for those people who want something
better than smartphone cameras but aren’t ready to go for an entry level DSLR just yet. There are other older mirrorless cameras as
well, but if you buy this one it definitely takes good photos..
