Andoer A360I Review – a budget 360° camera

In this review I will show you the only 360° camera branded Andoer. It has a dual lens system, which means it can capture scene at 360° front + rear, creating a Virtual Reality view.  To this end, the camera has two lenses, each composed of 6 glass elements; all that in an unusual shape, but with an easy-to-use menu.

Specifications

As I said before this camera is a 360° camera with double lens and with a peculiar shape. It is not your typical action cam, because due to its accessories, shape and FOV, it doesn’t quite suit its best performance in action scenes.

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Unboxing and accessories

As you can see this camera comes with a lot of accessories included, but the most important is this unique metal piece.

This screw adapter  allows you to mount the camera to other accessories. In fact its function is to adapt its unique bushing on the underside of the camera to the rest of accessories. My first question was:

Why is Andoer adding one little tiny bushing only needed for an adapter? Wouldn’t it be easier to simply build in a standard ¼” tripod bush like the rest of the World does?

Apparently not.

It is also very easy to lose this adapter. Luckily, there is always that roll of Duct Tape…

By the way, with this solution the “mounting space” becomes huge. This camera is not the smallest one on the market, but with this inconvenience one is forced to use a lot of pieces to mount the camera properly. This is what you need to mount it to your bike handlebar.

Design

The camera is designed to be used in your hands and not attached to your body, like with other cameras. Its best use would be by hanging it while walking, where it shows where you are in the center of its 360° field of view. So this is clearly not a real action cam in the usual sense of the term.

The camera shape helps to hold it, but due to its smooth surface, it feels a little bit slippery. Not that you really struggle to grip it, it makes you maybe just a tad apprehensive. Still, I like the position of the mere two buttons to use on this model: the Power/Rec button and the WiFi button. These are positioned in the center of the camera, easily reached and operated by your thumb.

Near to the lens and above the two buttons there is a mic hole and a small port where 3 LEDs are located.

The green light shows when the camera is On

The red light informs that the camera battery is low

The blue light is active when the camera is doing something

The only problem with these LEDs is that lights disappear in the daylight, becoming practically invisible. However, the lights are really nice during the night!

Menu and navigation

This camera has no screen, thus no visible menu. The only thing you can do without the App is switch between Video and Photo mode. How? Just by double clicking the power button. I have to warn you that the camera resets itself to photo mode every time it is switched off and on again it. The worst thing is the reaction speed of the camera and it’s not very fast. As its “beep” sound is not immediate, sometimes you’ll click repeatedly, creating an incredible mess with beeps, lights and mental sanity!

But it is just a minor problem. One of the biggest problems is that this camera can’t be directly connected to your computer. I mean, the USB plug is there, but does  not allow any data transfer. You can only use USB to recharge the camera and NOT to transfer the Photos/Videos – and this is just ridiculous.

Video Quality

The video quality is not as good as with other  cameras. The image quality is quite good for its price, almost comparable with the already reviewed Elecam 360.  In some situation the picture is way too bright, and the colors are just desaturated and flat.

In low light or during night hours it can capture everything. I didn’t expect this light sensitivity, but unfortunately the images are too noisy, so it is not very nice to watch.

Photo Quality

The photos are worse than videos. Images could be interesting to show thanks to camera specific FOV (field of view) but don’t expect details or particularly deep colors. Here are some of the photos I made:

1. Photo sample 1
2. Photo sample 2

Those are some photo samples. You can view them on Facebook by using  360° view.

Audio Quality

The audio is another flaw of this camera because it is so very low; nearly impossible to hear, and the quality is not on par. It lacks some frequencies, mostly lower ones, and it just doesn’t sound good.

Software

Compared to other 360° cameras, this one is not an exception. It can capture videos and photos only in the famous porthole style, but its record can be shown converted into something more “watchable” only via some special software.

This camera has no software of its own, because Andoer doesn’t develop anything like that. The only thing to do is to use some other program. The best solution I have found is a program called “SYMAX360 player” freely downlodable from HERE

It allows you to perform some basic editing like cutting the clips and choosing the quality. If you want to do anything more complex, you are forced to first render your recording with THIS program, and after that you can import the resulting video into any program you want. However, don’t forget to use this second program to let Youtube or Facebook understand that your file was made with 360° technology.

Wifi and App

WiFi can be turned on with its dedicated button and it is good and precise. In fact I never had any problem connecting the camera to my phone. WiFi range covers a distance of  9 or 10 meters, after that you can’t use the app. This camera App is different from the one used with the usual Andoer action cameras, it is called SL720 and you can always find it in the app store. As usual, the App has its first page consisting of the two modes (Video/Photo) and the Settings.

In the Settings you can choose between many different parameters but I wasn’t able to test those because of frustratingly incomplete translation –some are still written in Chinese! Talk about a half-baked job!

I hope they will add other languages in the future, at least translate it completely to English. I wonder why it was not done right away? After all, it’s not rocket science.

Battery

These are the results of my battery tests:

• 1920×960 30fps – 106 minutes (3,96Gb)
• 1472×736 60fps – 56 minutes (2,95Gb)
• 1472×736 30fps – 66 minutes (3,45Gb)
• 960×480 30fps – 56 minutes (2,35Gb)
• Recharging time – 120 minutes

Each test was made with the WiFi turned Off. Personally I was expecting it would have longer battery life with all the space this camera contains. I was wrong.

Summary

If you want to be creative with a 360° camera for the first time, this model could be a good start, because it will let you understand without too many problems how this kind of video recording works – and it is also quite cheap. Don’t even think of buying it to record some “epic shots” because there is not enough quality for that. Nevertheless, in some situations it could present a nicely different way to record things.

Pros

Cons