Xiaomi's Smart Camera 5 Pro shoots full-color 4K video in the dark — and keeps the AI on-device
Xiaomi has unveiled the Smart Camera 5 Pro Full-Color Night Vision, a home security camera that records in full color around the clock — without switching to grainy black-and-white at night. It pairs two sensors (8MP and 4MP) to produce 4K footage even in near-darkness, and all the AI analysis runs locally on the device rather than on a remote server.
The hardware
The dual-sensor system works alongside built-in soft fill lighting and Xiaomi's image-processing algorithms to avoid the monochrome fallback that most budget cameras default to after dark. The previous Xiaomi Smart Camera C500 Pro topped out at a single 5MP sensor, so the step up to dual 4K sensors is meaningful.
Pan-tilt coverage is handled by two motors: 360° horizontal and 174° vertical. That essentially eliminates blind spots in a standard room. Connectivity runs over dual-band Wi-Fi 6, which Xiaomi says delivers around 60% faster throughput than Wi-Fi 5 — relevant when you're streaming uncompressed 4K footage to a phone or NAS drive.
The Smart Camera 5 Pro's dual-motor pan-tilt mechanism covers 360° horizontally and 174° vertically.
The privacy angle
The on-device AI chip runs at 1.5 TOPS and handles person detection, pet recognition, and even baby-cry alerts without uploading footage to the cloud. That puts it in a different category from Ring and Wyze, both of which rely heavily on cloud processing and have drawn scrutiny over data practices. Fewer cloud round-trips also means fewer false alerts triggered by a curtain moving in the breeze.
Storage options cover microSD cards, cloud, and local NAS. For anyone who wants a hard cutoff, there's a physical lens shutter — a mechanical privacy cover that blocks the camera entirely when closed.
Storage options include microSD, NAS, and cloud; a physical shutter blocks the lens when privacy mode is needed.
Availability and price
The Smart Camera 5 Pro is currently in a crowdfunding phase in China at 429 yuan — roughly $65. As Notebookcheck notes, Xiaomi's C701, a comparable color-night camera, launched globally at €59.99, suggesting a similar retail band is plausible if the 5 Pro reaches Western markets. The Gadgeteer reported that the C500 quietly appeared on the UK Mi Store in December 2025 at £38.99 with almost no marketing — Xiaomi's typical soft-launch playbook before a broader rollout.
No US or UK retail date has been announced for the 5 Pro. At $65–$80, it would undercut the Reolink RLC-410W (£100+) and sit neck-and-neck with the Eufy 4K on features. Worth watching if you're in the market for a budget indoor camera that doesn't phone home with every alert.
