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| SOOCOO S60B Action Camera |
Action cameras are tiny video cameras built to capture outdoor activities from unique angles using a variety of mounts and housings.
Action cameras are tiny video cameras built to capture outdoor activities from your point of view or other unique angles (such as from the nose of your surfboard, or looking down from a kite) using a variety of mounts and housings. They’re typically small, light, waterproof, and shockproof, so they can handle whatever activity you throw at them. A good action camera should be capable of recording at high frame rates at a variety of resolutions; it should produce sharp images and accurate colors; and it should have myriad mounting options that are as tough as (or, preferably, tougher than) the camera itself.
A camera like this, which we recommend as a stellar all-around waterproof camera, may seem like a competitor to an action camera like the GoPro, but there are a few key differences to consider. An action camera is usually smaller, lighter, and focused on video rather than stills. Most importantly, action cameras are made to mount equally well on a surfboard, rollbar, or your own forehead; that ability to keep your hands free is the main appeal of an action camera.
Who should buy one?
Action cameras are, as the name suggests, designed for people who live active lifestyles and want to capture their experiences, whether they be underwater, on top of a mountain, or in a cave somewhere. If any of this sounds like your ideal weekend, an action camera is exactly what you’ll need to make a digital copy of your memories. But while that’s the main demographic, we’ve seen a lot of amazing video as a result of people strapping these tiny cameras to their babies, dogs, airplanes, racecars,motorcycles, or even eagles.
Also, like we brought up earlier, action cameras are meant for extreme sports and video recording, so if you’re mainly concerned about taking impressive shallow underwater stills you’d be better served with a waterproof camera like this one. Basically, if video isn’t a priority and whatever activity you’re looking to record affords you a free hand for your camera, then the Hero4 Silver won’t be for you.
Other sport cameras from other makers are usually a combination of lesser performance, size, mounting options, or all three.
Should I upgrade?
The most obvious change to the GoPro Hero4 Silver from previous generations is the introduction of a touchscreen that you can use to navigate menus, control settings, frame shots, and review footage. Other GoPro models have been criticized for having an obtuse menu system that requires you to cycle all the way around through listing again if you accidentally miss what you’re looking for. The whole Hero4 line has significantly improved UI and menu navigation even without the touchscreen, though, thanks to repurposing the Wi-Fi button on the side of the camera.
With or without the touchscreen, the Hero4 is significantly easier to use than previous generations, and it’s way ahead of the Sony. Reports put the video quality of the new Silver edition on par with the 3+ Black, and notably above other models—so if you have any camera that’s not the GoPro Hero3+ Black, you’ll see a very noticeable improvement in video quality with our new pick. Video quality on the Hero4 Black is the current gold-standard for action cameras, and even Sony’s new high-end 4K Action Cam can’t touch it.
How we picked?
The GoPro Hero3+ Black edition was our favorite action camera in late 2013, which made it a natural decision to call in the Hero4 models when they were announced. We also called in all cameras from the brands we knew to be reputable (such as Sony, Garmin, Drift, Ion, JVC) and checked them out, unless there was a very clear reason for us to dismiss them, like specs that are way behind the curve. Over the years, we’ve put roughly 30 cameras through their paces.
We also checked out cameras that looked interesting or unique in some way, and we investigated reader favorites, too. We looked at reviews from sites we trust (such as Reviewed.com, Gizmodo, Engadget, and Videomaker) and considered user reviews. Typically, though, we’ve receiving the camera at the same time as the other top tech blogs (sometimes earlier), so this is one of the categories where we give a lot of weight to our own testing.
How we tested?
Testing the GoPro in real world situations. It’s a hard life.
In addition to factoring in what others think, we take the time to do exhaustive testing on land and on sea: surfing, snowboarding, diving, and more. It’s a great excuse to get outdoors on a workday, and so I do as much testing as possible, until I feel confident that I have the footage I need and that I have a good feel for how each camera operates.
For previous iterations of this article I built a rig that could accommodate all of the cameras at once, thus ensuring they would all be pointed in the right direction and shooting the same thing at (approximately) the same angle. Then I strapped this rig to the nose of a 9-foot longboard and paddled out and then to a bike helmet for trail rides. We also tested it in low-light and night situations. Again, image quality was at the forefront of what we looked for, followed closely by ease of use, audio quality, features, ruggedness, options, and battery life (not necessarily in that order). We then evaluated the video on a professionally-calibrated monitor as well as several others and analyzed audio through several sets of speakers and headphones ranging from high-end to low-end.
For the final stage of testing in this last round, I pitted the Hero4 Silver against three other action cams while surfing and freediving in Hawaii, then I took the Hero4 Black and Sony’s 4K Action Cam snowboarding and surfing for a high-end head-to-head comparison. Most recently, I brought the Hero4 Silver to the French Alps to test it against TomTom’s new Bandit camera while snowboarding and mountain biking.
If you’re the sort of person who wants to strap a camera to your head and then go jump off a mountain, the $100 SOOCOO C10 Silver is the camera you want. It takes everything that we loved about the SOOCOO S60 Black from last year—the excellent image and video quality, superb durability, great audio, and a huge ecosystem of mounts and accessories—and overhauls the control system with a new touchscreen that makes the camera far easier to use.
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| SOOCOO C10 Action Camera |
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| SOOCOO C10 Action Camera |
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| SOOCOO S60 Action Camera |
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