Question: Can you buy a 4K action camera for under USD $40? Answer: Camera yes, 4K no.
This is the XDV 4K Sports Camera. It’s sold by the Chinese online seller GearBest as the V3 4K WiFi Sport Camera. Both “XDV” and “V3” are simply convenient names for a generic action camera whose true company name is unknown. V3 is the model name of the image processor. It’s just another of the many generic Chinese action cameras sold online.
This review is broken down into several sections. Click on the title below to go to that page.
SJCAM M20 action camera review
What happened to the Graava – A self-editing action camera?
SJCAM SJ4000 WiFi Action Camera Review
SJCAM released their first car camera -SJ DASH
cost for a true 4k camera is now $110 (thieye t5e)
Hi amanieux
You’re quite right. It seems that the ThiEYE T5e is indeed on Flash Sale at GearBest for USD $109.99. Perhaps others have it on sale as well. My colleague reviewed the camera here on Pevly and was favorably impressed. At $110 it’s an excellent buy whereas the XDV I tested in this article isn’t even worth its $35.99 price.
Thanks for pointing out the ThiEYE’s reduced price.
Cheers
and firmware is specific to manufacturer and cpu installed and can be tweaked to provide any number of setting in the gui/
The IMX 179 specs are as you said, 8mp 1080p 60fps but interpolation and different cpu’s allwinner v3 and such are capable of handling 2.7 k 30 fps and 4k 30fps interpolated. The sony imx 179 is a very widely used sensor in alot of action cams and cam corders i own 3 of them and it seems as though the cpu plays a large part in capturing 2.7 k interpolated to 4k . I agree that many sellers should disclose this information in descriptions.
All the time the camera turn onn by itself and return off by itself !!! How to solved !!
Hi Zaher. I’ve never heard of this happening before. I regret to say that given the camera’s overall poor quality it might simply be defective. I can’t offer you any suggestions beyond that. If you get it sorted out please let me know how you did it. Cheers!
Have you at all explored the availability and potential for improvement in quality using alternate / updated firmware? Also, could you please post your firmware version for reference?
From the little that I know Imx179 was a successful 1080p sensor in one of the earlier nexus phones, so it should do better than the results suggest. If this is the sensor used, why does it not perform better at native res? And why does it perform better in 2.7 and 4k modes?
Perhaps the answers are in the firmware?
I got one of the knockoffs with these specs and will tinker to see if I can dig anything up.
Hi pruchase. The firmware is listed in Note 3 at the end of the article. It’s X20161216V03. I didn’t explore other firmware, reviewing only the product as I received it. It’s certainly possible that other firmware could improve the performance. However, it’s also possible that it might brick the camera. You can have a look at the website mentioned in another comment here for some interesting discussion about these cheap cameras.
I don’t know why it performs good or bad at any particular resolution. It isn’t the first time I’ve seen interpolated video and images that look better than the native resolutions. I suppose it depends in part on the algorithm. 2.7K video is within the Sony sensor’s size but remember, on my camera it popped in and out of focus in 2.7K at random. I truly don’t know why it performed as it did. Cheers!
FYI, here you can find a community discussion of this type of cameras, backing up, modding and updating firmware. See if there are ways to improve yours.
It’s clearly a crapshoot whether or not your v3 “4k” camera will work well or not so much, but it likely can be updated to not be as bad as with the original firmware.
Thanks LexK. I just had a look at the site and there’s lots of good information there. Cheers!
Shoot, forgot the link: https://www.goprawn.com/forum/allwinner-cams/25-allwinner-v3-s-imx179-s-ov4689-and-gc2023-action-cameras
This camera now is sold from tomtop.com for $19.99 (black)
Very nice for this price 🙂
UHD is 3840×2160, but 30fps = 2x 15fps
Hi erwin. I hope you’ve had better luck with your XDV than I did with mine. To me it’s not very nice at any price. Please also keep in mind that the UHD is interpolated because the image sensor and processor aren’t capable of native 3840 x 2160 resolution and as you mentioned the frame rate is doubled.
I have discovered that there are several different ‘iterations’ of the exact same-appearing camera out there. Mine has excellent video and photo quality, good sound, but useless wi-fi capability.; I already returned one that was defective on some areas and the replacement was better than the first one and had minimally different graphics printed on the outside of the camera; suspect they are being churned out in very large numbers and being updated on the fly. I can also see what appears to be the identical camera for sale at 3 different prices from the same store.
Hi, all I can add is that you’re right on all points. We feel there might be some revolutionary change a-coming, seeing how many models of basically same-same type of cams appear lately. Personally, I think there will be a high tech jump, ever since SONY created the RX0 large sensor cam, and maybe everyone is preparing to follow suit. We’ll see soon.
In the meantime, enjoy whatever cam you’re using – have a Good Light and one successful, active year!
I have found a company that sells real 4k at full resolution but only 30fps. They are the manufacturer and I am sure they are building the higher dollar models. They sell them for around $40. but you have to buy 10 minimum. Maybe this is where the “myth” came from.