But unfortunately it does narrow your field of view from wide to medium without any warning.īy default the camera records using the slightly less efficient H264. I’d recommend turning this on for any sort of action footage in decent light. The anti-shake or Electronic Image Stabilisation setting is disabled by default. The resulting files will be slowed down in camera which might be useful, but I’d recommend leaving this switched off and slowing down the footage yourself in post.
Turning Slowrec on will reduce your recording options to 60 fps at 1440p, 1080p and 720p and an additional true slow motion 120 fps 720p. But if you’re not going to use it as a dashcam I’d recommend turning this off. It is a true dashcam mode that will write over older recordings as the card fills up. You can choose from 3 minute to 15 minute loops. Loop recording is on by default which is useful if you want to use the camera as a dashcam. Timelapse mode lets you set intervals between 1s and 60s and will create the resulting video in camera. Surprisingly there’s no indication of space remaining whilst recording. But all the other framerates are multiples of the NTSC 30 fps standard which is confusing, and ideally you need to be careful mixing these two standards in one edit. I use PAL 25 or 50 fps with my other cameras here in the UK so this setting is preferable anyway. I will come back to quality but I’d recommend changing the default 4K 30 fps to 4K 50 fps – a new mode in this upgraded version of this camera. I won’t go through all the settings – most are pretty obvious. The settings are all in one long list which does make it quite slow adjusting many of the options. Use the record button to select an option and the mode button to go back. The power button cycles through the modes from video to photo to playback to settings. When you turn the camera on the first time you’ll go through the initial setup which you can get back to by selecting Default Settings from the menu. Unfortunately there’s no front LCD screen to show current settings.Ī firm press of the power button turns the camera on and a long press turns it off. f1.8, 170° field of view lensĪnd the front has the glass 170°, f1.8 lens and an LED that lights red when recording video. The back has the 5cm non-touch IPS screen with a red LED beside it that lights up when charging with the included microUSB cable. In recording mode, the up button turns on WiFi and the down button disables audio. The right of the camera has two buttons for moving up and down through menus. The top of the camera has the power button which also changes modes and the record button which is also the select button. There is a menu option to test the speed of your card. You’ll want at least a faster Class 10 card for 4K recording.
Cards are inserted with their contacts facing the front of the camera. The left side of the camera has a tethered flap revealing a microUSB charging port, a microHDMI output port and the microSD card slot. The battery’s inserted with its contacts facing the side of the camera.
The bottom of the camera has a sprung door opened with a small latch. This does make these budget cameras very versatile. If you want to mount it without the housing it comes with a lightweight frame with the standard GoPro two-fingered mount system that will fit to any included accessory as well as a massive amount of GoPro and third party accessories. Unlike recent GoPros it’s not waterproof without its housing and fortunately the housing is the most well built accessory included. It’s almost identical in size to the GoPro Hero 5, measuring 61mm x 45mm but shallower at 30mm. The camera without any housing looks quite smart but has a fairly cheap feel to it, which does at least make it very light at only 73g with its battery and a microSD card installed.
You’ll still need at least a fast microSD card and most likely some grip mount for general use. Unlike many of Apeman’s cheaper cameras in its lineup, it doesn’t come with a remote control. It comes nicely packaged with a huge amount of accessories including a waterproof housing and most notably two 1350mAh batteries. But is it any good, and how does it compare to the latest GoPro Hero 8 and more importantly an older GoPro Hero 5 which you can pick up second hand for not much more. It costs under £100 or $100, about a third of the latest GoPro. It has electronic image stabilization, WiFi control and comes with a generous bunch of accessories. The Apeman A100 or Trawo action camera is an affordable well featured action camera recently upgraded to support 4K 50 fps resolution.