Why You Can Trust CNET Dimika Action Cam review: Good full-HD video in ultrasmall package
It's a full-HD action cam, a Webcam, a car DVR, and more in a body that's about the size of a pack of mints and costs less than $70.
- More than two decades experience writing about PCs and accessories, and 15 years writing about cameras of all kinds.
Show anyone the little black box that is the Dimika Action Cam and that person's first words are likely to be, "That's a camera?"
Dimika Action Cam
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The entire thing is smaller than a pack of Tic Tacs and measures just 2.5 inches deep by 1.5 inches wide by 0.6-inch high (64x38x16mm) and weighs 1.3 ounces (38g). At that size and weight, you can attach it to a lot of things, including quadcopters, or to a windshield without blocking your view. And if you put it on a helmet, you'd barely notice a difference.
On the left side are a Micro-USB port for charging, a microSDHC card slot supporting cards of up to 32GB, and a pinhole for resetting the camera should it lock up on you (which only happened to me once while testing, and really, that's not unusual for these little cameras).
The only controls are power and record buttons on top, so as you might imagine the Dimika is easy enough to use. Turn it on and a minuscule LED on top lights up: green for video mode 1, blue for video mode 2, and red for photo and time-lapse photo modes. Giving the power button a quick press once the camera is on changes the modes. The LED, by the way, is very difficult to see in bright sun.
Buying the Dimika by itself will set you back $69 if purchased direct from the maker, Innotrends. (For $5 more you can get one with an 8GB microSD card.) The camera has a tripod mount in the bottom, so you can easily find mounts for it. However, Innotrends sells a mini tripod and belt, tube, adhesive, and suction cup mounts for around $5 apiece, and there's a GoPro mount adapter as well, for $3.
A waterproof pouch is also available for $10, though it's a bit awkward to use. The camera itself probably couldn't take too much abuse, so it would be nice to have a small polycarbonate housing as an option, but that doesn't exist right now.
The camera's default video recording resolutions are 1080p (12.4Mbps) and 720p at 30 frames per second (MOV), and the native photo resolution is 3 megapixels. It's also set to loop-record out of the box, which is odd. That means instead of recording one continuous video, it will record videos 1 minute in length until the card fills up or the battery dies, whichever comes first.
Configuration software (Windows only) that lets you change the camera's settings is available from the Dimika support page. The software is about as basic as you can get, with just a list of options with drop-down menus for each. In the settings you can increase the bit rate (15.4Mbps at 1080p) as well as change the second video mode to record at 720p at 60fps.
You may have also noticed in the screenshot of the settings menu above that there's a Motion Detection setting in this camera, as well as a G-sensor. Turn on the former and the camera will start recording whenever it senses movement within 10 feet (3 meters) of the lens. With the latter on, you can turn the camera upside down and start recording, and your video will be right-side up when you play it back.
The built-in battery can record video for up to an hour and takes about 2 hours to fully charge. Again, considering its size, that's pretty good, but it means the fun ends when the battery dies. However, if you plug it into a USB wall adapter, the camera can record while charging.
As far as video quality goes, it's actually better than you might expect from a low-cost camera, and I'd say it's better than what you'd get from Monoprice's MHD camera (though that camera has other things going for it).