Hi all,

I am thinking of an Action Cam as a pressie…. not even really sure what for but my Wife is keen for family trips and it would be interesting to mess around with on the bike. They seem a bit like Chinese lights in that there are some great option for a fraction of the Go Pro type money but it takes a fair bit of digging to get the “best”.

So what would be the best Action Cam around the £50-100 mark? If a few more pennies gets something significantly “better” then we can consider it too 😀

Any thoughts appreciated, ta!

DanW

I would stretch out the budget a little and have a look at the Veho Muvi on Sports Pursuit £129

ion cameras, or a rollie both from staples, and they price match, dont forget an micro sd card as well.

got both 70 quid for an ion and about 30 quid for an ion both waterproof and easy to use

Check out techmoan , he reviews all the cameras here the git1 looks good

What about the entry gopro for £100, supposed to be very good

I bought a savfy action cam from Amazon, reviewed on tech moan site above. Works well, hd and comes with all the mounts too so no extra cost for those, don’t put a cheap sd card in though, doesn’t work.

Sainsbury’s are selling a waterproof gopro look alike for £70 as one of their black Friday offers. Fits my gopro mounts. I grabbed one to replace my very old broken gopro and playing at the weekend seems good

Aagh, was all set to order an SJ4000 having deliberated for ages and now I’m not sure any more. Not really helped by the majority of my use likely to be to capture evidence when road riding for which I’d really like a low-profile bullet style cam, which none of the decent cheapish ones seem to come in.

Stretch a bit to the Argos Hero3+ Silver deal? £150 includes the extra life battery pack too. Even a Silver 3+ will still beat pretty much anything else on the market. Its less than 2 years ‘old’

SJ4000 was the one to have when I bought mine a year or so ago, but things have probably moved on since then. That said I’m still happy with mine for the little use it gets.

Thanks for the help guys. I’ve browsed the reviews and watched a ton of youtube videos but it seems most are pretty good and there are only a few duds out there nowadays. I’ll check out the Hero deal and work down from there 😀

Edit: The Argos deal seems to be £200 now… bit too much for me. I’ll keep browsing the suggestions

I’ve got the basic go pro and it’s great. Footage is crystal clear and if you don’t have it running all day I battery charge will do you the day. I’ve used it boarding and biking..

^ The reviews of this one always seem to mention image stabilisation (lack of) being a big issue but the videos I’ve watched seem fine. Anything you’ve noticed or are the reviews over critical for the casual user?

Has anyone got any videos of their own taken with any of this stuff? My early Hero 3 Black is only 7mp and not especially good quality so I’m thinking about chopping it in for a budget thing if the newest ones produce clearer footage.

The tricky thing looking at videos is they all seem very variable. The Muvi for example looks generally great then awful in others. Perhaps it is just settings, maybe they’ve been edited…. who knows

That’s why I thought I’d ask on here- it means people can say what they have/haven’t done to them.

I bought a Garmin Virb on sale for 89 quid a few months ago and am very happy with it so far. I got mine from Sport pursuit but they are on sale for similar price elsewhere.

The verb is a good option if sub £100 – the screen is useful, it’s well built and the footage is ready to go vibrancy wise (as is iON) – GoPro can be great but needs ‘post’ fiddling. TomTom is great to use and has the best app but footage a bit pasty.

I’ve just finished a review of 6 action cams so it’s all fresh

The one I really wanted to test was the Sony, high end ones look great on YouTube but they wouldn’t send me one.

michael- got any footage from that? Looks ideal and a relatively known quantity compared to the gitcam.

Yeah ive got some from Forest of Dean i’ll try dig out!

[video]http://youtu.be/T-seJcVlb7U[/video]

and this

[video]http://youtu.be/bhKrWTL8Ewc[/video]

both filmed on a £45 hitachi gopro copy bought from argos.

I keep thinking of a gopro but it wouldnt make the content, subject or my riding any better so I’d look to get a reliable decent one with a warranty.

The xiamo camera gets good reviews but I dodn’t know how good the back up might be.

From an SJ4000 (possibly fake – was ~£35)

As always it looks fanatically better ‘in real life’ before YouTube add a shedload of compression.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hhsz6DP55M[/video]

Easypix goxtreme view received as a present. Seems ok to me, and quality seems ok too.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEYVVXaC9lE[/video]

Virb is going for £75 on Sport Pursuit till the end of today:

Garmin Virb

Got one myself but haven’t given it a run out yet.

Ooh just got my Virb from Amazon yesterday for £76.90

This is footage all filmed at the same time for a magazine. I taped them all to an old handlebar, so it’s all a bit shaky but good for comparisons…

Garmin virb – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0pxwWwnEyo
tomtom bandit – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO9G1yj_Egs
iON air pro 3 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p01virE9lZk
panasonic – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzcZvBOx5Oo
GpPro silver – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT5mu8kmkW0

iON on handlebars – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6n5VUBh9I4

My Virb in FOD. Vented helmet mount used here. It moves around a bit, I have since got a handlebar mount which I think will be better. Clear picture quality though.

[video]https://youtu.be/JOaE5PQl5L0[/video]

Seems to get worse quality once uploaded though??

[video]https://youtu.be/BT9ANQN2XY0[/video]

SJ4000 here , cost £65ish + chest mount cost under a tenner from Ebay . Not the greatest editing by me but[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhWfGTBvXhU[/video] the quality seems OK , very happy with mine .

Thanks for those Michaelmcc- the results to me are much more what I’m after than my gopro, which ends up looking similar to the SJ4000 footage above. I’ll get a Virb I think.

That Garmin is very tempting, especially for the price.
Any drawbacks?

Virb is £75 on sportpursuit atm

Thanks to all for the example footage and comparisons. I also get the impression that the Virb is looking hard to beat…

Eken H9, only cheapish one I’ve seen that does proper 1080p60.

Any drawbacks?

Yes, in my humble opinion, one massive one – it’s the wrong shape for chest mounting. With non-GoPro shaped cameras you either have to helmet mount, which makes the terrain look flat as a pancake and footage as boring as hell, or bar mount it which means the footage is ridiculously shaky.

But is the quality of the footage actually any good, or is that just a worthless headline figure? Presumably there’s pretty much zero advantage to the higher frame rate unless you’re going to slomo stuff.

Which is where I have a dilemna with my requirements. I know I’ll want to chest mount for nice footage off-road, but still want something discreet for helmet mounting on road (though a Virb doesn’t seem to manage that either having checked). I suppose maybe I just need to buy two, with a really cheap bullet cam for road use where I don’t care much about the quality.

Aracer, video footage is excellent. Better than my old contour HD that only did 1080p30.

Even with you tubes compression,

utube

Only paid £40 for mine.

or bar mount it which means the footage is ridiculously shaky.

From what Ive read, this issue seems to be largely solved by mounting the camera UNDER the bars and not over them, and also putting in a small bit of foam between the camera and the mounting bracket.

just got an SJCam 4000+ this week after much deliberation and a few threads on her asking for advise

It seems great, is genuine and has updated to latest firmware no problems (update to something like v2.1 first then to v2.6 rather than going straight from the 1.6 mine came with to v2.6 as it doesn’t like that very much), image quality seems nice, shifting the settings around a bit has improved it no end

Has all features of the GoPro including wifi and screen, 2k recording, rotation, image stabilisation etc plus it can be used as a dashcam (has instant on and record when connected to a power source and cyclic recording) which a GoPro cant which was the decider for me as it gives it another use and I drive quite a bit for work

I paid a bit more to ensure UK stock and reduce risk of getting a fake off one but was still only £81 at Amazon here – http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01236R1X2?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00
Forfilled by Amazon so easy returns if not satisfied

Avoid the SJ5000 series but if you want something like the newer smaller GoPro look at the M10 (or wifi version) still around £100

Cheap set of mounts including car and chest mounts which also seem fine (not used in anger yet though) here – http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00V4584GW?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00