Today we’re taking a look at a budget action camera called the Vantop Moment 3.
VanTop Amazon Link: amzn.to/3jIMFtM
This camera was sent to me by Vantop in exchange for a review, so let’s see what a $50 4K action camera gets you. Is this a serious contender in the action camera marketplace? Stick around to find out!
We’ll start with a quick unboxing. I’m actually quite impressed with the packaging/case this comes in. It feels sturdy and it’s a nice option to hold the thousands of mounts you get. It also comes with two batteries, a 32gb sd card, a remote, a classic waterproof housing, and the camera itself. Here it is side by side with the GoPro hero 4. Nearly identical in size, but the vantop feels much lighter and less durable. This package includes everything you need to start capturing your moment. Please enjoy as I recreate a radical moment from the amazon product page!
Let’s hit the trails and see some footage shall we? For this test I’m filming in 4k at 30fps with everything else set to auto. I also added a wind screen to try and salvage the audio. For comparison purposes I set my gopro to auto as well, but am filming in 2.7k 30fps because my hero 4 silver can only do 4k at 15fps and I didn’t want to mess with different frame rates.
I’ll let the footage speak for itself, but it’s pretty much on par with what I expected for $50. The image looks pixelated, the colors seem off a bit, the audio is muffled, and movement seems jittery. The vantop also doesn’t have an option to adjust your field of view. It’s narrower than the gopro. Let’s compare the same lines at flat rock ranch between the vantop and the gopro. Let’s now try out some static shots to see if that’s any better. Since it isn’t moving it gets rid of that shaky jittery feeling, and it almost provides usable footage...almost.
Now before this all sounds completely negative let’s do a recap of the pros and cons.
Pros:
It’s 50 bucks. If you are on a budget and want to dabble in action cameras this may be a great option for you. Or if you have a young child who wants to have a camera I’d give them this.
I like that it has the threads on the bottom of the camera so I can easily mount it to a tripod without any additional accessories.
I think the remote is a cool addition, although I could only get it to start recording and not stop. It’s also confusing because the grey button starts a video while the red button takes a photo. GoPro offers a remote, but you have to purchase it separately, and it’s between 60 and 80 bucks.
I like that it comes with pretty much every attachment you could ever want. I only used one so far to mount to my top tube for those sexy thigh shots.
Battery life is similar to the gopro, so you can expect similar record times.
It’s fairly simple to use: It does not have a touch screen, but navigating the menus is straight forward with the 3 buttons. I did discover that driving mode automatically starts recording once you turn camera on, so I had a few hours of footage of my kitchen counter. This thing would make a pretty great dash cam if you just keep it plugged in your car.
Cons:
The video quality. Again, you get what you pay for, so if you’re expecting cinematic quality for $50, you need to check yo self.
Audio. Same as above
Durability: While I can’t comment on this yet because I’ve only had it a couple weeks, I’m concerned about the build quality. If I still have this camera in a couple months, I’ll do a follow up to see if it’s still working.
While I can’t recommend this camera to someone who regularly posts to RU-vid or is serious about making videos, I will say it could make a decent first camera to someone on an extreme budget or kids. I think a young kid would be stoked to get one of these and fiddle around with it, and if they break it you’re only out 50 bucks instead of $400 with a gropro 7. I’ve been interested in having a second camera to get other angles which I experimented with a bit, but for me the video quality isn’t there. I really appreciate vantop reaching out to me and sending me this camera. I hope you the consumer find this review useful and enjoyable. If you are interested in purchasing the Vantop moment 3, I’ve left a link to it down below. If you did enjoy this video, do me a big favor and click the thumbs up button, and while you’re clicking stuff, you might as well subscribe to. A new adventure on wheels awaits you weekly and we’d love to have you. Thanks for watching and until next week, stay rowdy within reason.
8 янв 2019
