Sony Action Cam AS100V records your thrills and spills
Video Cameras
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Sony has had a couple of attempts at taking a slice of the action cam pie but maybe third times the charm.
I'm Lexy Savvides for CNET.
This is a review of the Sony Action Cam AS100V.
If you're familiar with any of the shotgun style action cameras from Sony, then the AS100V won't come as too much of a surprise.
Except that now it's in white.
The body is also splash proof.
And, of course, if you wanna have full waterproofing, you can get the optional deep dive case that goes down to 60 meters.
Or the standard five meter case that comes with the camera.
Operation is fairly simple.
There is a giant record button on the back of the camera, open up the flap and this reveals the battery compartment as well as the microSD slot.
At the front there is a previous and next button.
You can use these, in combination with the record button at the back to change between options.
With a firmware update you can also use this camera to live stream to Ustream.
And there's within the actual menus themselves, you can set the recording mode of video to be either a regular 28 megabit per second as is a standard kind of video.
Or if you wanna have what Sony's calling the Pro Mode, this ups your bit rate to 50 megabits per second.
And it should give you higher quality video as well.
You also now get a really useful little adapter.
Now you **** this in the bottom of the camera, and then you can use it without the optional casing.
If you wanna mount it on certain accessories, though not all.
Also with some of the configurations of the action cam, denoted by AS100VI, you get an included Live View remote.
Now this has a built-in battery charger over micro USB.
And you've got a power switch, a couple of buttons to change some settings, and a record button.
Now this attaches with velcro and it slips over your wrist.
And obviously, you can do a bunch of things with it.
But it's really quite limited because you can't review or playback any of the photos or videos you've taken.
Really only use this to control up to five cameras at a time.
That is five action cameras or, look at the live stream from recording.
So if you wanna actually have that full functionality of playback too, you wanna use the app.
Now speaking of the app there's Wi-Fi and GPS On Board in this camera as well as NFA for Android phones, easy one touch configuration.
Now, to the all important photo and video quality.
On the regular 28 megabits per second recording mode, that's probably what you're gonna be using at most of the time.
But either 60 or 30 frames a second in 1080p quality is decent.
You put it side by side with something like the GoPro Hero 3 plus.
You're gonna notice that exposures are probably a little bit more dynamic on the Sony.
That means it's a lot more contrasty, and there's a lot more areas where there are blown out highlights as well.
The GoPro is a little bit more even.
However if you change things to the 15 megabit per second recording mode.
Image quality becomes, a lot better as we would expect.
Compared to the GoPro, the trump card of the Sony is it's image stabilization.
Which makes all the difference especially when you're shooting moving subjects, shooting handheld when your walking, and so on.
The other thing with the Sony that is slightly problematic is that you have to use, micro-SDXC cards, in order to record that XABCS.
Or that 50 megabit per second high bitrate video.
As always, if you wanna see more text and video samples from this particular camera, you can head to the full review on CNET.
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