Mike Street
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"HD" cheap action cam - you get what you pay for

Posted on 12th December 2016. 1 mins reading time

Recently, a friend and I purchased a cheap action camera from eBay. To give you a rundown, it was a go-pro look-alike for £14. Boasting full 1080p HD video recording (plus 720p if desired), this action cam was unbelievably good value.

We weren't expecting anything amazing, but we weren't expecting it to be this bad. The picture quality is terrible and the resulting resolution is exactly the same whether you record it in 1080p or 720p. The resolution is neither of these. The resolution the video is recorded in comes out at the classic size of 1280 x 960. This size isn't even recognised as a standard resolution. From that web page:

There is a less common 1280×960 resolution that preserves the common 4:3 aspect ratio. It is sometimes unofficially called SXGA− to avoid confusion with the "standard" SXGA. Elsewhere this 4:3 resolution was also called UVGA (Ultra VGA): Since both sides are doubled from VGA the term Quad VGA would be a systematic one, but it is hardly ever used

Hardly ever used! Anyway, enough of my rambling. Below are a couple of videos shot with it. The jumping in the video occurs when there is too much movement. Not very good for an "action cam".

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Mike Street

Written by Mike Street

Mike is a CTO and Lead Developer from Brighton, UK. He spends his time writing, cycling and coding. You can find Mike on Mastodon.