So I go onto Amazon the other day and search cheap action camera and I find
Amazon's best seller to be this AKASO EK7000 with over 11,000 reviews most being
5 stars and it's only 50 bucks so of course I buy now and today we're gonna
pick this baby against my GoPro Hero 8 black is this $50 action camera any good
hey guys I'm Ben from authentech and to be honest after seeing the side-by-sides
I was very surprised with today's videos results and not necessarily in a good
way let me show you a cat so it's actually a pretty large brand in terms
of budget action cameras but GoPro is that name brands that everyone's heard
about this EK 7000 is 50 bucks on prime the GoPro 8 originally $400 now price
dropped down to 300 I purchased them both no sponsorship today and let me be
clear I am rooting for the underdog I usually prefer and like to recommend the
budget-friendly options if and when possible first let's start with side by
sides then we'll get into some of the specs and how the other features
compared jumping into video first the highest resolution the acaso can shoot
is 4k at 25 FPS so unfortunately it can't shoot 30 frames per second which
is a pretty major negative but his 4k quality looks pretty dang horrible
definitely looks like you shot on a potato its pixelated and muddy and I
even saw someone saying it was a 4 megapixel sensor inside so that 4k is
quote fake and probably just upscaled which I can sort of believe if you're
viewing this video on a tiny screen while you might not be able to see all
the clear differences but if we zoom in or you're viewing on a larger monitor
you'll definitely see what I'm talking about
the next thing to notice which is another repeating theme throughout these
tests the acaso does not have electronic image stabilization so it's producing
very shaky footage and just walking shots and getting pretty gnarly and my
jogging test now the GoPro of course is known for great stabilization and here a
4k 30 hyper smooth it's turned on it's keeping the horizon pretty dang smooth
and steady now funny enough when I showed you guys a little preview shot on
my Instagram some prefer the brighter exposure and more
natural colors on the acaso over the gopro and i can see where you're coming
from the hero 8 seems to consistently crush the shadows
it's very saturated and punchy contrast and even though it can be a tad
aggressive at times normally it looks pretty vibrant straight out of camera
now on that topic of exposure point number three the acaso has pretty bad
dynamic range we're either losing details and the dark
shadows or blowing out highlights and I think it's important to note I think
this ek 7000 is at least 4 years old which is pretty ancient in technology
years crazy that it still listed as Amazon's number one best seller in
action cameras funny though in my last GoPro Hero one versus eight video I bet
the 10 year old GoPro one might actually beat this AK a so in better video
footage what do you guys think switching over to 1080p 60fps on both this is
where I saw a lot of people saying the acaso shines and I can sort of agree
with this as it's 1080p footage scaled up might actually look better than its
4k video again we have some of that bad shakiness with no stabilization it's
pixelated and blocky poor contrast and dynamic range now one
thing that's nice is it has 170 degree wide angle field of view plus the
benefit of recording at 60 frames per second here we can have speed the
footage on a 30 P timeline it's a nice option to have audio test audio tests on
the acaso EK 7000 and this is audio on the GoPro Hero H black how does the
audio sound and compare how does the audio sound and compare audio test 1 2 3
4 audio test 1 2 3 4 and the GoPro clearly wins the audio tests as well now
they Casso sounded pretty muffled and I made sure to mount it in this open
housing for best audio recording possibilities the GoPro was a little out
of sync so - points there 1080p 30 frames per second pretty similar results
and I'll say it again if you playback this a Casso 1080p footage on a tiny
phone screen well it might not look terrible but it's far from great in my
opinion and you got to remember this is an ax
camera after all and going for a quick scooter ride on my cycle board while the
acaso has that nice wide angle lens I can't get over how rough that footage
looks it just looks super dated like it was captured on a VHS camera or
something and I'm trying hard to like it the acaso can also record at 2.7 k 30fps
which again I had high hopes for but it's more of the same old story
pixelated mushy shaky bad compression and artifacting if I freeze frame here
it's almost funny we can zoom in and count the large blocks of pixels it
looks like you a shot on a really old flip phone or something shooting a quick
slow-mo test in the acaso can shoot up to 720p 120 FPS which isn't bad and
here's the GoPro 1080p 240 FPS naturally though the castle looks pretty pixelated
and it has that tighter field of view the GoPro coming out ahead and in all
these tests in no way was I expecting this acaso to perform as good or even
half as good as the GoPro but it is 1/6 of the price and are you getting 1/6 of
the value I'm not sure I had to try a quick low-light tests and the acaso is
looking pretty soft and grainy of course GoPro is usually pretty bad as well in
low-light conditions but it's looking a little bit better with brighter exposure
easier to see some of the details and highlight control of those changing LED
lights and colors is looking pretty good the acaso supports time-lapse photo mode
but it's not time-lapse of video mode make sure you understand the differences
it's snapping interval photos JPEGs and
then you have to combine all those photos together into a video file in
post editing like I did here in QuickTime the process is pretty
old-school and slow the acaso time-lapse looks ok but still kind of soft and
blurry the GoPro is in hyperlapse mode and while it's contrast is a little too
punchy with crushed shadows for my taste of course it's looking way better in 4k
plus we have stabilization here on the GoPro so you can't be expecting to shoot
any hyper lapses on it caso switching over to photos the acaso says it can
snap 12 megapixel images that's 4608 by 2592 pixels and here's how those
compared to gopro's 12-megapixel shots and it's
quite the difference again just because it says 12 megapixel on the acaso box
all pixels are not created the same crazy difference in clarity and details
colors and dynamic range even the GoPros ultra wide field-of-view is looking much
wider than the acaso when we zoom in and pixel peep we can clearly see the major
quality differences it's pretty night and day between these two cameras just
for fun I want to compare this a Casso photo to my 10 year old GoPro HD hero
one photo that I snapped a couple days ago and just look at the difference in
quality I just had to show this flower shot though it's like this one time a
castle beat out the GoPro at least in terms of the high light control the
GoPro here is blowing out some of those whites
whereas then we can see some of the flower petal detail on the acaso and
low-light photos well here you go I'll let you guys see the obvious differences
between these okay so these results really shocked me because truly going
into this video I thought the acaso is going to perform way better than it did
because not for that fifty dollar price tag but for the eleven thousand plus
Amazon reviews I thought this action camera was it gonna be at least
acceptable in some areas and I was really hoping it could be this fun cheap
budget action camera that I could recommend to you guys but it
underperformed in so many different ways and this video is not made to bash this
$50 action camera I honestly was hoping that it would perform much better than
it did and I don't think I can recommend it now I did see this one person say
that they bought this camera to mount under their Jeep for some offroading
shots because they didn't won't put their expensive GoPro under there so in
case if it got destroyed then it wasn't a big deal then I can almost see that as
a viable buy an option it's like a disposable camera so maybe if you know
you're gonna put in some precarious shot and it might get destroyed
well it's only fifty dollars and it's a lot cheaper than destroying an expensive
GoPro now let me show you guys one thing I did really appreciate and that's all
the accessories and mounting options and bonus goodies that were included in the
box all of this included at that fifty dollar price tag is pretty impressive
plenty of mounts and adapters waterproof housing tethers
two rechargeable batteries and a dual charging dock even the $300 GoPro
doesn't include barely any of this in its package I also kind of like this
wireless remote one button to snap a photo and the other to start and stop
recording the acaso has a two inch display on back it's non touchscreen
which is a major bummer navigating the menus and changing the system settings
were kind of annoying I was able to find this updated model out there called the
ek 7000 pro which has a touchscreen plus electronic image stabilization for about
10 bucks more let me know if you guys want me to check out that one after this
this acaso has a built-in HDMI port and Wi-Fi to wirelessly connect to your
phone their eye smarts Divi iPhone app is pretty janky but I actually got to
work and was able to live preview my shot snap photos or videos and change
resolution and settings I could even download and save locally to my phone my
gallery images and video now it sure wasn't fancy but it sort of got the job
done I tried seeing if I could connect the
camera to my computer for a cheap wide-angle webcam and I couldn't get to
work through the USB connection now some people suggested maybe it could be a
possible cheap dashcam and it might be viable but then I saw you have to
manually start and stop recording each time and these other hassles that
probably didn't make it worth it the camera froze on me on day one of
shooting so it's not without bugs and issues a nice example that GoPro isn't
the only one that freezes I tried to start recording a clip on the acaso
and it's frozen won't even start recording so I'd really hope that this
was gonna be a good budget camera option but it was lackluster in almost every
category and I want to make it clear I am not advocating that there's no good
budget cams out there and that you need to go spend hundreds of dollars on the
latest GoPro because that's not true do you remember the old you remember the
old Yee cameras I reviewed all these they were super budget-friendly and they
performed awesome or you guys remember this thing that I reviewed the insta 360
go it weighs only 20 grams it's super tiny and magnetic and records way better
quality and really impressive stabilization and it's only a couple
hundred bucks so make sure you guys stick around as I'm determined to find
the very best budget cameras for you guys now I'm also hung up on the idea
that even if you had a very old foam like the old galaxy s7 it was released
four plus years ago and it's photos and videos looked way better than this
camera or the LGV 30 it was one of the first wide-angle lenses in a phone and
it's like a hundred and fifty bucks on Amazon right now so I have this feeling
for just a little bit more money there's a tipping point where there's going to
be a lot more bang for your buck this guy just isn't it I tried really hard to
look for the positives on this $50 action camera but I just couldn't get
there and I think the comparisons the side-by-side speak for themselves its
quality of photos and videos are just really lackluster also coming up I'm
gonna show you guys what a one-inch sensor action camera looks like and as
5.3 K footage is on the opposite side of the spectrum
it's crazy sharp and good-looking any other budget action cams you want me to
check out leave a comment down below thank you guys so much first up and bye
and until I see you next week let's live Tech