Xiaomi BW400 Pro Set review: a solar surveillance camera that shines without its AI

Xiaomi has equipped its camera with a 4 Mpx sensor and wide-angle optics which allow it to film up to 2K (2560 x 1440 pixels) with a diagonal field of view of 132°. The app allows you to reduce the definition to 720p and 480p to watch live broadcasts with a poor connection, activate an HDR mode to combat backlighting, as well as infrared vision or the projector in the dark. The brightness of the latter can also be adjusted.

By day

The BW400 Pro offers good image quality in daylight, better than that of the eufyCam 3 (S330), also equipped with a solar panel, but with an 8 Mpx sensor. Just compare the rendering of our column of portraits on the left. The curls of the young woman in the middle are much better drawn in the images from the Xiaomi camera. Color rendering is also more realistic with the BW400 Pro, which also manages to offer higher contrast without affecting the readability of light and dark areas of the image.

At night

After turning off our projectors to simulate nighttime, the BW400 Pro knows how to turn on its infrared vision or its projectors within 2 seconds after detecting movement using its PIR sensor.

Infrared vision is far from exceptional. Just like with the Eufy camera, our scene appears almost blurry and underexposed to boot. The Xiaomi camera nevertheless catches up when you activate its color night vision. She then turns on her projector and her images take on much more than just colors. Our scene is captured down to the smallest details and, if the center of the image is burned, remember that the power of the projector can be reduced.

Conversely, we can also increase the power to extend its range. The maximum power allowed us to identify a face up to 4.50 m away. This is a little more than the 4 m recorded for infrared vision, as well as with the eufyCam 3 S330 and its two night vision modes. Unfortunately, it is better to use infrared vision to benefit from motion detection in the dark, or at least intelligent detection. As mentioned earlier, we were unable to use motion detection without activating artificial intelligence and it performed less well with the projector. People are not detected beyond 4.5 m, compared to 7 m with infrared vision.