Your pet has wandered out of frame, but you’re nowhere near home to turn the camera. With the Xiaomi Smart Camera C401, you can move the lens from your phone instead. It pairs 2.5K video with 360° horizontal pan and 101° vertical movement, letting you look around the room through Xiaomi Home.
Price: £45.99 ($62)
Where to Buy: Xiaomi
There’s infrared night vision for checking in after dark, two-way audio for talking through the app, and detection for people, cats and dogs. If you’d rather skip a cloud plan, you can save recordings to a separately purchased microSD card. You’ll need a nearby power outlet and a few minutes to enable the AI alerts, which are off by default.
Turn the Camera Toward the Action
The C401’s 4MP camera records at 2560 × 1440 pixels. Its dual-motor mechanism provides 360° horizontal pan and 101° vertical movement, controlled through Xiaomi Home. If your pet moves out of view or you want to check another corner, you can change the camera’s direction without moving the whole unit. The lens faces one direction at a time; the 360° figure describes its horizontal movement, not an all-around live image.
At night, 940nm infrared illumination lets the camera monitor a dark room without a visible red glow from the infrared LEDs. That keeps the night-vision lighting less distracting in a bedroom or beside a pet’s sleeping spot.
Set Up Alerts for People, Pets and Sounds
Human detection supports automatic movement tracking. Pet detection covers cats and dogs, while crying and loud-noise detection add alerts for sounds such as breaking glass or a child screaming. You can use those notifications to decide when to open the app and check the room.
You’ll need to enable the AI functions in Xiaomi Home first, since they’re off by default. Check the Home Security Assistant settings, too: its default notification push interval is 10 minutes, and you can adjust it. Choosing your detection modes and notification interval is part of setup, rather than something to leave until after you’ve installed the camera.
Talk Through the App and Choose Your Wi-Fi Band
Dual-band Wi-Fi 6 supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, so you can choose the band that suits the camera’s location. A microphone and speaker let you talk through Xiaomi Home. Calls start in the app, not from the camera, and audio pickup is specified at up to five metres under test conditions; the room and surrounding noise can affect that range.
Alexa and Google Assistant support adds voice-controlled live viewing with a compatible device. Availability depends on your language and region.
Keep Recordings Local or Add Cloud Storage
Local recording is the straightforward option if you don’t want an ongoing cloud plan. The C401 accepts separately purchased microSD cards from 8GB to 512GB. Choose a card designed for video recording, rated Class 10 or higher, and formatted as FAT32. NAS backup is also supported, but it requires a microSD card. Both the card and NAS equipment are sold separately.
The cloud offer provides seven-day rolling video storage for three months. Extended cloud-video storage requires a paid subscription, and the terms vary by country and region. Check the service details in Xiaomi Home before choosing a plan.
Plan the Placement
The C401 needs wired power, so choose a spot near an outlet. It supports upright and inverted mounting, with image rotation available in Xiaomi Home for ceiling installation.
Its privacy feature set includes an MJA1 security chipset, local AI processing and encrypted cloud transmission. Those describe the security design, not the results of an independent security audit.
Who Is the C401 For?
The C401 is a fit if you want to check on cats or dogs, look around a room from your phone, or talk to someone at home through the app. Remote pan-and-tilt lets you change the view as needed, while microSD recording gives you a way to keep footage without an ongoing cloud plan. Budget for a compatible memory card if that’s how you’ll record.
Price: £45.99 ($62)
Where to Buy: Xiaomi, Previous Model
Choose it for an indoor spot with a nearby power outlet. If you need cordless placement or want to record several directions at once, look for a battery-powered camera or a multi-camera setup instead. Before you finish setup, enable the detection modes you want and adjust the notification interval to suit how often you’d like alerts.
