Score a GoPro Hero 10 Black for $449, its lowest trace yet
The latest GoPro is always a cool pulling to play with, but their price tags are often a lot to swallow. Earlier this year the Hero10 Black was praised for its improved processor in Josh Goldman’s CNET review, but even so it was clear the price was a minor steep. Now we’re in Black Friday ground, and that means there’s deals on all of the another tech. If you’ve been waiting for a price drop on this amazing piece cam, you can now grab one for $449.
A $51 discount is probable the best we’re going to see this year, considering the camera itself was just released a month and a half ago. And whether you’re trying out an piece cam for the first time or you’re upgrading to the another from an older model, there’s a lot to like here. Thanks to the new GP2 processor, this camera can shoot at:
5.3K (5,312 x2,988 pixels) at 30 or 60 frames per second
4K at 24, 30, 60 or 120fps
2.7K at 60, 120 or 240fps
1080p at 30, 60, 120 or 240fps
It’s a grand upgrade, with some clever software in the editor for decision-exclusive your videos even cooler. Check it out today, and you’ll have some neat stuff to fraction with friends before the end of the year.
360fly 4K review: A good 360 allotment cam backed by an excellent app
The best getting about the 360fly 4K is its mobile app.
That sounds like a dig, but it’s only because the app is really good compared to what anunexperienced consumer 360-degree camera makers are offering at the moment. It makes the 360fly 4K that much more usable, as does its design, which makes it better ample for “action cam” use than as a point-and-shoot 360 camera.
The company’s modern HD-resolution 360fly camera, which is still available for $300, uses a proprietary ample, requires a little plug for its mic opening to make it soak resistant, has a hard to find power/record button, a tiny dwelling light that is difficult to see in bright delightful and a smooth, somewhat slippery exterior. These are all things that make for a not-so-great user understood. Plus, as has been the case with all the first-gen consumer 360 cameras, the video quality is just OK.
The $500 360fly 4K (£600, AU$850) is worth paying extra for if you have more than a casual listless in creating immersive photos and videos for sharing online. It ditches the original’s mount for a standard 1/4-20 tripod ample, it’s now water resistant down to about 10 meters (34 feet) exclusive of the mic plug and the exterior is rubberized for a better grip with wet or cold delicate. Also, the activity light and power/record button are combined, which makes it easier to see with the camera off or on.
The 360fly app allows you a preview and control of the camera.
Joshua Goldman
Back to the app, opinion. Turning the camera on also turns on the camera’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (the latter is to help reconnect to the Wi-Fi quicker). Join the camera’s network with your smartphone, open the 360fly app and you’ll have a live preview from the camera as well as control over it and its settings.
Along with 360-degree video, you can set the camera to shoot time-lapse video, 16:9 widescreen first-person POV movies and capture 360 photos. The top resolution is 2,880×2,880 pixels; you can settle between 24 frames per second for a live onscreen view after recording, or get slightly smoother results at 30fps exclusive of the live view. Since there is just one lens, the 360 video is not spherical, but instead has a 360×240-degree field of view. You lose the 120 degrees below the lens, but you don’t have to difficulty about stitching.
If you really want spherical video, you can always buy a second camera and shoot them back to back and then stitch the two videos together with software. (Kodak wisely offers a dual pack for its SP360 4K camera for this death at a reduced price and includes a mount to hold the cameras, a remote to simultaneously trigger recordings and very basic stitch software.)
360fly made editing 360 video on your arranged very easy.
Joshua Goldman
Once you shoot a clip, you’ll probably want to edit it afore sharing, even if it’s just to trim the leave and end. The app makes this blissfully simple to do, letting you speedily select just the sections you want to include, then add music and/or an image filter, or you can adjust the playback speed for part of your clip.
The app also has options to grab stills from the video and a Watch Me mode that lets you use the 360-degree video to play virtual camera operator. It basically turns you into a director by deciding what you want the viewer to see just by pinching, zooming and swiping and then exports it as a flat, 16:9 widescreen video you can section anywhere.
Worth noting, too, is the camera has built-in GPS, an altimeter and an accelerometer. The plan is to eventually make this data available to overlay on your videos.
To give others the full 360-degree playback understood, you can share to 360fly’s site, YouTube or Facebook consecutive from the app. Uploading to 360fly offers the best image quality because the anunexperienced two end up compressing the files that adds artifacts to the modern video. The video above is one I edited in less than five minutes with the mobile app once I downloaded the video to my arranged. The YouTube clip below is essentially the same video, though I edited with the 360fly Director desktop software. Both are exported at a resolution of 3,840×1,920 pixels.
The desktop editor isn’t quite as easy to use and doesn’t have all the features of the mobile app, but it’s unruffled good for creating quick movies. It does allow you to edevelop clips from from different recordings, which is something the app can’t do.
Video from consumer 360 cams to date hasn’t been ample. The 360fly 4K is good for the category and certainly better than its HD predecessor. The fact is most people get lost in exploring the video to care too much in the quality unless it’s genuinely bad, which it isn’t here.
The biggest roar I have is the purple fringing around subjects in high-contrast areas. In the clip above it’s most visible around my head and shoulders and in the windows of the buildings and in the buildings themselves. On a smartphone screen it’s not as easy to see shaded you zoom in, but blown up on a computer reveal it’s visible and, at least for me, distracting. Even more than the image softness in the bottom of the picture. The blown-out highlights are throughout to watch, too, but it’s to be expected with the vast dissimilarity difference between the buildings and the sky.
Audio captured more than a combine feet from the camera sounds low and muffled, which is liable because of the waterproof design. There are no ports of any kind on the intention, so there is no adding an external mic. If loud, determined audio is a must-have, consider this a deal breaker.
The camera can also be used to live soak 360-degree video via streaming service Livit. Just install Livit’s app and connect your smartphone to the camera. In the Livit app there’s a little fly icon that you just need to tap and it should commence streaming, assuming you’ve got a decent mobile broadband connection. You’ll have to keep your phone close to the camera to keep a evaporate connection and it’s not great for battery life, but it works.
Speaking of battery life, the built-in battery lasts for in 1.5 hours of straight recording to the camera’s internal 64GB of storage that holds up to three hours of 4K-resolution video. To charge and transfer images there’s a PowerCradle, a itsy-bitsy round dock that magnetically attaches to the camera’s bottom. It uses a Micro-USB cable for connecting to a computer or charger. It’s nice, but it also means you can’t proposal or transfer without it.
The 360fly 4K is just all-around a better camera than the modern, and its excellent mobile app is a definite plus compared to managing cameras. You’ll just have to be forgiving of its image quality.
Xiaomi Yi review: A higher-end piece cam with an entry-level price
Editors’ note: The Yi is now available in a US version exclusively above Amazon for $99.95 . This review is for the Chinese version of the Xiaomi Yi. The cameras are identical, but with the US version, the packaging inserts are in English as is a new version of the mobile app to use with the camera.
Among all of the smartphone and wearable tech news that came out of 2015’s Mobile World Assembly was a surprise from Chinese electronics brand Xiaomi — the tiny Yi piece cam.
Outside of China the company is best eminent for its smartphones, but it has a growing lineup of related devices such as the Mi Band fitness tracker and headphones that it’s been putting the Xiaomi name on.
The Yi is one of those, continuing its expansion into other categories beyond smartphones (not unlike what HTC did last year with the Re camera ) and further creation its reputation for offering products with high-end features at budget-friendly prices.
Though it’s primarily available in China for 399 yuan, you can buy one for just notion $100 (about £65 and AU$120) from online retailers like GearBest.com, which is where we got ours. That price isn’t quite as good as the converted trace of about $65, but is still excellent for what you’re pulling.
Sarah Tew
Out in precedent of the little lime-green and teal box (it’s available in all white, too) is a nice f2.8 wide-angle lens with a 155-degree Causes of view, while inside is a Sony-made 16-megapixel backside-illuminated CMOS sensor, a Broadcom wireless module and an Ambarella A7LS systems on a chip (SoC) running the show.
To give you some perspective, Ambarella’s chips can be found in many POV cameras and DJI’s quadcopters and, more specifically, the GoPro Hero3+ Silver, Ion Air Pro 3 and Drift Innovation Ghost-S use the A7LS chip family. Aside from the SoC, those cameras all have one latest thing in common: prices of $300 or more.
Now, those cameras do offer things that the Yi doesn’t, but the Yi can do more than others at its trace such as the Polaroid Cube and Monoprice MHD 2.0. Also, although the some more expensive entry-level GoPro Hero has very good video quality, the Yi still beats it there and on features and, depending on your contains, design.
Sarah Tew
Features and design
For starters, the higher-end specs mean it can capture 1080p video at 60, 48, 30 or 24 frames per uphold (fps); 960p (also called tall HD) at 60 or 48fps; 720p at 120, 60 or 48fps; and 480p at 240fps. It can also snap pictures at resolutions up to 16 megapixels one at a time; in bursts at 3, 5 or 7fps or 7 frames over 2 seconds; or at time intervals of 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 30 or 60 seconds. You can also set up a self-timer for 3, 5, 10 or 15 seconds. There’s also a Snapshot mode that captures 10 seconds of VGA-quality video for vivid social sharing.
Other cameras at the Yi’s price moneys a fraction of those options and typically record video at a very of just 1080p at 30fps and 720p at 60fps. However, unless you read Chinese, using the camera to do all that it can do is a minor tricky at first.
Again, this camera is made for the Chinese market, so the instructions that come with it are in Chinese (a US version of the camera is now available on Amazon). If you’ve used a similar action cam or aren’t worried to press buttons, the Yi is simple to figure out. If you haven’t or are worried, well, it’s still easy.
Sarah Tew
The camera has three buttons. The one on front is for power and switching between capturing stills and video. (The defaults, by the way, are single, 16-megapixel photos and 1080p at 30fps.) A button on top is the shutter reduction and for starting and stopping recordings. On the left is a exiguous button for turning on and off the camera’s wireless. There are record lights on the top, back and bottom and a luscious around the power button gives you a battery location by changing color.
On back you’ll find a door for the battery compartment and latest covering the microSDXC card slot, Micro-USB port and Micro-HDMI output. A battery and short Micro-USB cable are included for charging and transfers, but you’re on your own for storage; it supports cards up to 128GB.
If you’re looking for the cut corners that got the trace so low, the lack of included accessories is one of them. There is no polycarbonate waterproof housing and the camera isn’t waterproof minus one.
Sarah Tew
Also, unlike almost every other action cam I’ve reviewed, not one spacious is included. Xiaomi has accessories coming in April such as a 40-meter (131-feet) waterproof housing, but that will of course cost you more. It has a nefarious 1/4-20 tripod mount on the bottom, so you do have a lot of available third-party mounts to resolve from and an inexpensive adapter for GoPro mounts opens you up to even more. But, anti, out of the box you have nothing.
There is also no shroud of any kind, so to change camera settings you’ll need to use the camera’s Wi-Fi to connect to an Android or iOS method running the Yi app. Fortunately, much of the app is in English, so getting around in it even if you can’t read Chinese shouldn’t be much of an philosophize. (A US version of the camera is now available on Amazon.)
Press the camera’s Wi-Fi button for a binary to start up the wireless and after a few more seconds it will create to blink, which is your signal to connect. Launch the app, tap a camera icon at the bottom of the shroud and it should start the direct connection to the Yi. If it doesn’t you may have to retract the camera from your available networks listed under Wi-Fi settings on your mobile method. After the first time, though, it will automatically connect when you inaugurate the app and tap the icon.
Screenshot by Josh Goldman
With the app you get a live preview of what the camera sees as well as a live stream while recording. I tested with a Samsung Galaxy S5 and it worked near flawlessly and held onto the connection very well. The app can be used to inaugurate and stop recordings, snap photos, change all of the camera’s settings and view your photos and videos and download them to your method, too.
Along with changing what resolution and frame rate you report at and selecting other photo modes, you can set the camera for loop recording — nefarious for using it as a dashcam — as well as correcting the wide-angle distortion from the lens (assuming you don’t want it), turning on an auto low-light option to proceed exposure indoors or at night and other miscellaneous settings.
Battery life and video quality
Small battery packs typically don’t dusk long continuous recording times on action cams, and that’s certainly the case with the Yi. Set to report at the default 1080p at 30fps with the Wi-Fi off, the camera continuously captured video for an denotes of 1 hour and 45 minutes. Bumped up to 60fps, the average time dropped to just less than an hour.
Sarah Tew
By comparison, the similarly featured GoPro Hero3+ Silver gets near 2 hours of continuous 1080p recording at 60fps and 3 hours at 1080p at 30fps with Wi-Fi off. Granted it uses a 1,180mAh battery compared with the Yi’s 1,010mAh pack, but the Yi’s battery life is certainly something to much. The positive here is that it is easily swapped out if you’re OK with buying and carrying extras.
Picking high-end parts doesn’t defense good results, but that is what you get with the Yi. Excellent results actually, especially given the low price. Color and exposure are very good, and the camera recovers posthaste and smoothly under abrupt lighting condition changes.
As with most section cams, the larger you view the video and the closer you are to the shroud, the more artifacts you’ll see. Still, when recording at 1080p at 60fps video looks enthralling and smooth and with a bit rate of near 25Mbps, details don’t turn to complete mush, even when enthralling at high speeds.
Low-light video is noticeably softer with more visible artifacts and some knowing noise, but far better than from any other sub-$100 section cam I’ve reviewed. Note that you may notice some glitches in the clips following the initial driving scenes in the video above. Those were caused by a faulty microSD card, not the camera.
The Micro-HDMI port does support live video output while recording to a microSD card in the camera. There is an overlay of recording time, battery and Wi-Fi site shown on the display you’re attached to, but it’s not visible in the continue recording.
Photo quality is good, too, however you can only shoot in 4:3 formats, so you might want to crop photos to 16:9 if you want to drop them into your videos. Otherwise, they’re not unlike what you get with video: enthralling, well-exposed images with good fine detail in daylight, but softer, noisier images in dimly lit conditions.
Conclusion
The Xiaomi Yi Perform Cam’s video quality and shooting options are well above those of spanking cameras in its class, but you’ll need to bring your own accessories.
