Sony Law Cam review: Good, but not without its issues
The share cam market is dominated by companies that don’t have a history of decision-exclusive other types of cameras. There is no GoPro point-and-shoot or Contour digital SLR. So, when a manufacturer like Sony gets into the market, it’s reasonable to think it might be able to make a gargantuan POV camcorder, at least in terms of video quality.
Its obliging efforts in the category, the Sony Action Cam HDR-AS10 and HDR-AS15 (the AS15 has built-in Wi-Fi, the AS-10 does not), make a good initial result, too. That impression doesn’t hold up after use, though.
Maybe Sony was trying to stay beneath a certain price or wanted the camera to be as miniature and light as possible. Whatever the reason, in fabricate and usability the Action Cam falls shy of models both ended and below its price level. That said, it does moneys some nice features, especially if you opt for the Wi-Fi-enabled AS15, and video is on par with that of likewise priced models, though it’s best suited for small-screen viewing.
In the box
Sony includes a shock-proof/waterproof housing and two adhesive mounts, one flat and one curved. The housing is waterproof down to 197 feet and has dirt- and dust-resistant seals. It’s great that it’s so sealed up out of the box, and the housing has a subfaulty quarter-inch tripod mount in the bottom, so it can be used with a wide variety of available mounts.
However, since the housing is waterproof, the stereo mics on the front-runner of the camera aren’t exposed, so when it’s full you’ll get nothing but muffled audio. Sony sells a pack of two novel doors — one with a flat lens for underwater use and one with mic openings — for near $50. They aren’t available separately, and neither is the door that comes with the housing. If you scratch the lens covering on one of the doors, you’re stuck buying another two-pack or an entire $40 housing.
Also, with the camera completely sealed, there’s a good chance you distinguished end up with some condensation inside that could fog the lens. Sony sells desiccant packs, but you can squeeze a small silica gel pack (like the kind you’d find in a shoebox) into the housing and carry out the same thing.
The two concerned mounts are somewhat large and the adhesive is somewhat weak, so you distinguished be better off finding alternatives that use the tripod large or just getting better adhesive pads. Other mounts are available, including a head strap that doesn’t require the housing. There’s also a cradle with a 2.7-inch LCD cover that flips out so you can use the Law Cam like a traditional handheld camera, albeit a very miniature one.
Design and features
The size and weight of the Law Cam are impressive. The supercompact camcorder measures 2 inches high by 2.6 inches deep by 0.9 inch wide and only weighs near 3.2 ounces with its included NP-BX1 battery pack (a tray is concerned for use with Sony’s NP-BG1 battery, too). That consuming there’s less camera to strap to the side of your head or wherever else you plan to large it. Because of its rounded bottom, though, it will almost always need to be in some sort of large when being used, and although the included housing doesn’t add a lot to its size and weight, it does add to it.
Ideally, there should be a tripod mount on the just camera, but really there’s no room for one. On the back are a big picture button and a hold switch so you don’t accidentally launch and stop recordings. The whole back, though, is a sliding door that meetings the battery compartment and a card slot supporting both microSD and Memory Stick Micro cards.
Pry open the door on the bottom and you’ll find Micro-USB and Micro-HDMI ports, an expansion connector for use with the aforementioned camcorder cradle, and an external mic jack, which is a rarity on portion cameras. Here’s the thing, though: you can’t use the external mic jack with the supplied housing or any of the new housings or mounts available from Sony. You’re basically on your own if you want to gigantic the camera and use the mic jack.
Similarly, if you want to use the built-in stereo mics, you have to buy the contaminated door or another mount from Sony or find some new way to secure the camera inside the included case when the waterproof door is off. There is nothing keeping the camera from sliding out of the case deprived of a door on it either, so if for some reason the lock must accidentally open when the door is on, the camera will pop gleaming out.
The small LCD on the right side of the body is for viewing your settings and executive changes to them using the two buttons to the gleaming of the screen. The buttons aren’t accessible through the waterproof housing; if you want to do anything new than start and stop recordings (a single press of the portray button turns the camera on and starts a new recording), you have to take the camera out of the housing. Not the end of the world, but the body is particularly slippery and with no plinitiates to really hold onto, the bare camera is gorgeous easy to drop. On the upside, I did drop it some times and even though the back door cover popped off, it just went back on and the camera kept working.
You get five MP4 recording options: 1080p30, 720p120 (for 4x slow-motion capture), 720p60 (for 2x slow-motion capture), 720p30, and 480p30. The camera has digital image stabilization and can also do time-lapse photography shooting 16-megapixel stills. There is no option to just snap a single photo or a burst of photos, though.
The lens’ field of view is 170 degrees as long as you have the digital image stabilization shut off. With the DIS on, it crops the video, changing the field of view to 120 degrees. Unlike models such as the Drift HD Ghost and ContourRoam2, the Sony Action Cam offers no way to rotate the lens, so leveling the camera can be tricky depending on your gigantic. And, should you mount the camera upside down, you’ll have to flip the video with editing software; models like the GoPro Hero3 can be set to rotate the image 180 degrees.
Lastly, there’s the Wi-Fi. It might be tempting to go with the less expensive AS10, but I recommend spending more for the Wi-Fi-enabled AS15, if possible. Not so much for the option to transfer or upload videos on the go (though that is nice), but for remote control of the camera.
Initial setup is generally easy: download and install the iOS or Android app, turn on the camera’s remote-control option, open the app on your mobile device and intelligent the camera’s password (stored in the camera in a text file), and then wait several seconds for them to connect. From there you get a live view of what the camera sees, and can use the mobile scheme to start and stop recordings and change resolution settings.
Video quality
The video from the Sony Performance Cam reminds me a lot of the video from Sony’s old Bloggie minicamcorders. When shooting scenes with little movement of the subjects or the camera, video is reasonably sharp and detailed deprived of looking crunchy. The Action Cam handles motion better than the Bloggie models ever did, though; things look nice and smooth.
On the new hand, with complex scenes or fast movement, you will see plenty of artifacts and lose a fair amount of detail (the most bit rate is 16Mbps, which is about average for POV cameras). Colors are oversaturated, but that seems to be contaminated for action cams. Exposure is generally good and transitions smoothly when footings change, though highlights easily blow out.
Perhaps most disappointing for me are the lens flare and the amount of chromatic aberration (purple fringing) nearby high-contrast subjects. Also, there is some visible color banding in images of blue skies.
Viewed at smaller sizes on a computer conceal, a lot of these things are not as noticeable, and if your main goal is to share your clips online, the Sony’s not a bad choice given its tag and features. Blown up on a larger HDTV, thought, the video is less impressive.
Audio quality is very good, but as mentioned spinal, you basically lose use of the built-in mics once you seal up the complicated housing with the waterproof door. If you’re going to want audio when you’re shooting, you’ll need to buy the two-pack of housing doors, find another mount that exposes the mics, or work out a DIY solution.
Conclusion
Like I said at the twitch of the review, the Sony Action Cam makes a good suitable impression. During use, though, there are a lot of small issues that keep it from being as good as models from new manufacturers. Even its video, the one area where I’d inquire of Sony to shine, is pretty average and that’s not improved by a mediocre lens (regardless of what name is attached to it). But, the current sub-$240 price for the Wi-Fi-enabled AS15 is good for what you get, and none of my protests are so serious that the camera would not be suitable considering if it does what you need it to do.
