Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

So let me start this by saying, this is not a bad camera at all for the money. That said, the aforementioned says it all. I learned at a very early age that you get what you pay for, and this stands absolutely true. This is an 85 camera once you factor in the cost of batteries/mounts etc. It's nothing more than that. So with that out of the way, let's talk specifics. This camera is built to compete with GoPro, of that there is no question; And for the cost, on paper anyways, it seems like a formidable competitor. That aside though, the picture and video quality just isn't that good. It's not bad, but it's not $400 GoPro good. Now, when you take the specs of various GoPros, this camera is nearest comparable to the Hero 3+ Black Edition of which I have 5. I admittedly bought this camera as I wanted a cheap Dash Cam I wouldn't fret about leaving in my daily driver, as opposed to one of my more expensive GoPros. Thus far, the camera performs that task well enough, but I'll talk about the cons briefly. 1. The audio quality of this thing is simply put, garbage. The mic is absolute trash and completely distorts with any sudden change in volume/low hz sounds. ie.) In a car listening to volume at a normal level of volume, any time the bass drum is played, the mic distorts. Hit a bump in the road? Mic distortion, and so on. 2. The video quality is mediocre. Is it better than any dash cam in the sub $100 range? Absolutely. Does it even begin to come close to a Hero 3+ Black Edition? Not even in the same galaxy. License plates are difficult to make out beyond what I would consider a unreasonable distance and it struggles with changes in lighting among other things. Again, it'll get the job done, but don't expect to be picking up every last detail. It also has a habit of trying to compensate for it's lack of detail by oversharpening everything, resulting in a slightly grainy video/picture quality. When I go through various video editing tools and grab a single frame from a 1080/60P video, this becomes extremely evident. A frame grab from the more expensive Hero 3+ Black for example, looks like a nicely captured still image. In addition to that, dropped frames are indeed a part of life you must accept with the Akaso EK7000. This is not at all the case with a GoPro Hero 3+ Black (A few generations old, mind you.) 3. The build quality is rubbish. I mean seriously, it feels like a piece of garbage in the hands. If you grip it with your index finger and thumb on one side, and give a light tap on the other, you can feel vibrations resonating from inside the device of the various little components vibrating inside the camera. It also weighs what I would estimate to me 50% less than the GoPro. For an FPV/QuadCopter setup, this may be desirable as weight is a very real thing; Just realize that you'll be forsaking video quality on behalf of weight. 4. Battery life, per my initial tests indicate it's subpar at best. With my GoPro on a full charge (using a 2 year old battery), I can usually net somewhere around 1:45 - 2 hours of video recording (depending on how often I turn the camera on/off etc.) Today, day one, out of the box, the EK7000 on a full charge netted me about 35 minutes of video recording on my drive home, not even enough to record the entire drive. I'll continue to cycle the batteries to see if this is a consistent thing or if it was merely a fluke, but if this is indeed the sort of battery life I should expect, then the camera is little more than a paper weight to me. In conclusion, if you want something that matches a GoPro, get a GoPro. If however, you're in the market for a cheaper knock-off, then this isn't a terrible device. Truth be told, with it's flaws I'll likely pick up a few more to mount on my Jeep for disposable angles ie.) interior shots, under carriage shots to show suspension cycling etc. as firstly, I don't need spectacular quality in that sort of footage, and secondly, if I smash an EK7000 on a boulder when wheeling, I'll only be out $85 instead of the $400 it cost me back in the day for my Hero 3+ Blacks. Expect nothing more than a relatively disposable, decent-at-best 1080/4k "action" cam. As a parting piece, it's nice that it is compatible with the GoPro mounting system, and the mounts are very comparable in quality (not quite as refined, but close) to the ones you get from GoPro. I attached two photos as a side-by-side comparison. Just to give the Akaso the benefit of the doubt, I recorded at 1080/60P. With the Hero 3+ I recorded at 1080/30P (essentially meaning a higher potential for a blurred picture on the GoPro due to lateral movement etc. as a result of fewer frames being captured per second) I then took a screen grab from a point at which I was focused on some items that have varying amounts of detail on them. Both cameras were beside each other recording simultaneously. As you can tell, the GoPro is capturing a much wider FOV with a much greater level of detail evident in the photo. The window blinds are smooth, whereas with the Akaso they appear blurry and grainy. The same can be said with my cat, the texture on the wall, as well as the mesh backing on my chair. Additionally, the colors on the GoPro appear to be much more natural. Again, this isn't to knock the EK7000 but instead to point out that this camera is in no way whatsoever, a replacement for a GoPro. Will update this as I test and use this device more. Update: 01/17/16 Today I tested the batteries a bit more thoroughly and got better performance than I did yesterday, though time will tell if this is a consistent thing or not. Still, the battery life is pretty poor compared to a GoPro Hero 3+ Black. Today with the screen set to turn off after 1 minute, I was able to record 58:03 seconds of video before the battery died. In short, it seems like an hour per full charge is what you should expect when recording at 1080/60P. This is noticeably worse than the hour and a half - hour and 45 minutes I receive with my GoPro Batteries that hold only 130mAH more capacity (and given how old they are, they're likely holding less of charge than the 1180mAH printed on the outside of said battery.) So far, battery life is tolerable, but definitely less than ideal. I'm also a bit sketched out by the fact that AKASO lacks any driver/software/firmware support on their site. This is odd since based on reviews I've read and features people have or don't have compared to what I have on my EK7000 would imply I'm on a newer firmware version than some other reviewers. So how do these other people upgrade their firmware? Simple. They don't. Update: 01/23/17 So in the past few days of usage, it's become undeniably obvious that the right 1/4 of the recording area is extremely blurry compared to the rest of the recorded area in both videos and pictures indicating something wrong with the picture/image sensor. Of course, the company doesn't do exchanges so my only option is to either refund it completely, or order another one and then refund this one. I've chosen the latter to see if the new one will suffer the same issues. If it does, I'll be simply refunding and going to a different camera (Likely a GoPro Hero+ because while it costs about 55ish more, I can be damn sure it'll work and work well.) Additionally, the USB port on this thing hardly works after only 1 week of use. It requires me to wriggle the cable in the port until it begins charging a battery/powers up from my computer for data transfer etc. I've tried multiple cables including the one it came with as well as a brand new cable, freshly out of it's sealed packaging. In short, this thing is pretty poorly made. As such, until AKASO can prove otherwise, this is going from 3 stars to 2. Pending the status of its replacement, it will likely end up being a 1 star review. Very simply put, this thing is junk.