stangmx13
not Stan
I like recording my races but haven't been able to get much consistent footage lately. I've been running a Liquid Image EGO camera on the front, my GoPro 3+ Silver facing rewards, and my GoPro HD1 looking back at me. The 3+ works flawlessly as expected. The HD1 bounces around too much because of its weight when I put it up front, so I had to use the EGO there. Now, I've killed the battery on the EGO so it was time to search for something else. That camera was shit anyways so I'm happy to see it go.
So here's what I purchased: the Replay XD 1080 Mini
Form:
As u can see, the cam is freakin' tiny. In the 2nd pic, its useable just like that. There's no thick housing to take up space and no connector pieces. So just like the Contour, this cam will probably work great on the side of bikes and helmets. This mount also swivels a little, you can see the cinch mechanism in the 3rd pic, so thatll help for small angles. After a quick test with that mount on the bike, everything stayed tight and in place.
It also comes with a shorter mount if you can find a perfectly angled surface AND a tripod mount if you want it to bolt to something. The tripod mount is about the same height as the swivel one. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the design and shape of everything here. It was very easy to just stick the camera onto the side of my bike and just go.
Functionality:
There's one part of the functionality that is both surprising and amazing... it vibrates. When you use either of the two buttons for their intended function, the camera vibrates when it does that thing. You instantly know when to let go of the button. Given that you have to hold buttons to turn action cameras on and off, this is amazingly helpful. I can't hear GoPro beeps at the track with other bikes and my helmet on, so this will work a lot better. The buttons also seem to be pretty good quality and they will be easy to press with gloves, so I'm stoked.
Changing the settings on the camera is much different than GoPro. There's a text file on the SD card with all the settings listed. To change a setting, you open this file, adjust values there, switch "Update" from "N" to "Y", and the camera will update its settings the next time you turn it on with that SD card. This is easy and intuitive for me but may not be if you aren't a computer guy. Its nice that all the settings (except resolution which is an external switch by the SD card) are in one place so you don't have to click through all of GoPro setting pages. You can also adjust different settings like contrast, sharpness, mic gain, and a bunch of other stuff which could be helpful.
Other than those 2 things, the camera worked as expected. Turn it on, record, stop, turn it off, easy. Resolutions, frame rates, and FOV are fixed, 1080-30@110deg and 720-60@120deg. I'll always record in 1080, dont need 60fps to fill up my SD cards and computer drive, and I like the 110deg FOV much better than superwide.
Battery Life / Charging:
No idea on the battery life. It took at least 3hrs to fully charge on a 1A charger, so hopefully this suggests it has a hefty battery. Replay advertises 130min of battery life which might actually be more than what I get from the 3+. If it makes it through 4 races without charging, I'll be happy.
Video/Audio Quality:
For this, you can decide for yourselves. There def seems to be less detail and clarity than my 3+ but more than both the EGO and HD1. I'll prob increase the sharpness and saturation a little just to see. Low-light like in my garage was really grainy (forgot to put that in the vid, screenshot below), so night vids would probably suck. The vid below was recorded in 1080-30 at 6:20pm with sunset at 7:20, so the light level is probably indicative of an overcast trackday. I think this camera will work just fine for my trackday & race videos and thats all I care about.
ReplayXD provides little stickers to put over the mic to block wind noise, which I didnt use for this test. I've got the stock exhaust on my bike, its an undertail CBR, and the mic points down on the camera so its not surprising that you cant hear any good moto noises. You can get an external mic but I'll prob just use another cams audio when I make a race vid.
Other stuff:
Price.... $115 on Amazon
I plan to mount the camera on the side of my ram-air duct behind the fairing. I might need to make a small bracket, but we'll see. Pics later. The install (if i drill the hole in the right spot) will look a lot cleaner than a huge GoPro up front. Hopefully hiding the camera will get the photogs to actually take my picture, since someone always says they hate GoPros in the shot. The mounting location will affect the sound quality too.
I'm racing this weekend so more to come later.
So here's what I purchased: the Replay XD 1080 Mini
Form:
As u can see, the cam is freakin' tiny. In the 2nd pic, its useable just like that. There's no thick housing to take up space and no connector pieces. So just like the Contour, this cam will probably work great on the side of bikes and helmets. This mount also swivels a little, you can see the cinch mechanism in the 3rd pic, so thatll help for small angles. After a quick test with that mount on the bike, everything stayed tight and in place.
It also comes with a shorter mount if you can find a perfectly angled surface AND a tripod mount if you want it to bolt to something. The tripod mount is about the same height as the swivel one. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the design and shape of everything here. It was very easy to just stick the camera onto the side of my bike and just go.
Functionality:
There's one part of the functionality that is both surprising and amazing... it vibrates. When you use either of the two buttons for their intended function, the camera vibrates when it does that thing. You instantly know when to let go of the button. Given that you have to hold buttons to turn action cameras on and off, this is amazingly helpful. I can't hear GoPro beeps at the track with other bikes and my helmet on, so this will work a lot better. The buttons also seem to be pretty good quality and they will be easy to press with gloves, so I'm stoked.
Changing the settings on the camera is much different than GoPro. There's a text file on the SD card with all the settings listed. To change a setting, you open this file, adjust values there, switch "Update" from "N" to "Y", and the camera will update its settings the next time you turn it on with that SD card. This is easy and intuitive for me but may not be if you aren't a computer guy. Its nice that all the settings (except resolution which is an external switch by the SD card) are in one place so you don't have to click through all of GoPro setting pages. You can also adjust different settings like contrast, sharpness, mic gain, and a bunch of other stuff which could be helpful.
Other than those 2 things, the camera worked as expected. Turn it on, record, stop, turn it off, easy. Resolutions, frame rates, and FOV are fixed, 1080-30@110deg and 720-60@120deg. I'll always record in 1080, dont need 60fps to fill up my SD cards and computer drive, and I like the 110deg FOV much better than superwide.
Battery Life / Charging:
No idea on the battery life. It took at least 3hrs to fully charge on a 1A charger, so hopefully this suggests it has a hefty battery. Replay advertises 130min of battery life which might actually be more than what I get from the 3+. If it makes it through 4 races without charging, I'll be happy.
Video/Audio Quality:
For this, you can decide for yourselves. There def seems to be less detail and clarity than my 3+ but more than both the EGO and HD1. I'll prob increase the sharpness and saturation a little just to see. Low-light like in my garage was really grainy (forgot to put that in the vid, screenshot below), so night vids would probably suck. The vid below was recorded in 1080-30 at 6:20pm with sunset at 7:20, so the light level is probably indicative of an overcast trackday. I think this camera will work just fine for my trackday & race videos and thats all I care about.
ReplayXD provides little stickers to put over the mic to block wind noise, which I didnt use for this test. I've got the stock exhaust on my bike, its an undertail CBR, and the mic points down on the camera so its not surprising that you cant hear any good moto noises. You can get an external mic but I'll prob just use another cams audio when I make a race vid.
Other stuff:
Price.... $115 on Amazon
I plan to mount the camera on the side of my ram-air duct behind the fairing. I might need to make a small bracket, but we'll see. Pics later. The install (if i drill the hole in the right spot) will look a lot cleaner than a huge GoPro up front. Hopefully hiding the camera will get the photogs to actually take my picture, since someone always says they hate GoPros in the shot. The mounting location will affect the sound quality too.
I'm racing this weekend so more to come later.
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