Sjcam is one of the biggest action camera manufacturers from China and they have quite an extensive line-up of cameras.
The SJCAM SJ5000X Elite was introduced a few months ago but i only got to check it out recently.
This camera is using the Novatek 96660 CPU and the Sony IMX078, and this is a very similar setup with a lot of other budget friendly cameras. Luckily, this camera can be bought for around $100 now and this makes it more competitive in an already saturated market.
You can find this at the following retailers:
Amazon: http://geni.us/9pVlLc
Gearbest: http://bit.ly/2zsQgb5
Banggood: http://fas.st/hVI0Z
Aliexpress: http://geni.us/uOdUvEn
First things first, the camera comes in a box packed with a lot of mounts and accessories and this way you can attach it to pretty much anything and place it anywhere.
We even get a waterproof case that works good and allows you to take the camera on more adventures.
Speaking of adventures, the camera also features Gyro image stabilization and that helps in shaky situations. However the stabilization is not the best that i’ve seen but overall is better than not having any.
The camera can take SD cards up to 64GB and you will need a class 10 card in order to record 4K files. You can even get cheaper Chinese SD cards and those will work great as well.
Even though the SJ5000X Elite can’t take an external microphone, the built in microphone does a decent job and you can even select the sound level for the recordings and that’s a great feature to have as it helps depending where you are.
The camera is powered by a 900mAh battery that takes about an hour to fully charge. The battery life is not spectacular and you will only be able to get about 45min of 4K recordings or about an hour of 1080P recordings. You can however connect this to a powerbank if you want lan on doing longer recordings and it can record while it’s charging and since that ia possible this can also be used as a car dash camera and works great for that.
On the back of it there is a 2″ screen that has a somewhat better resolution than other cheaper cameras that i have seen in the past but it’s far from great. The viewing angles aren’t that good and the brightness leaves a lot to be desired, but ince again it is somewhat better than a lot of action cameras that i have seen in the past.
If you move to some more expensive SJCAM models you can get better looking screens that are also touch screens, but you will have to spend $50-100 more.
Moving in to the most important thing about any action camera, the quality of the recordings. For daytime the image looks great, good sharpness and decend dynamic range, but to get a better idea you will have to check out the video review below where there are a lot of sample recordings. Night time recordings are a bit too dark for my taste and if you plan on doing a lot of night time recordings you should probably skip this camera and move to something more expensive. Once again, you can find sample recordings in the review video.
To conclude this; the camera offers good value if you can get it for $100 or less. More than that you might as well spend some more money and get something better.
Make sure you check out the full video review below for more detailed information.