I'm seeing a lot of cheap Chinese copies of the Go Pro on eBay with pretty compelling specs and I'm wondering if anyone has tried them. Some of the basic models go for as little as $40 and the higher end ones with 1080-30 and a lot of the features you pay extra for in a real Go Pro are selling for $90. They seem to be mount compatible with regular Go Pro mounts. The biggest concern I have is actually with accessories. I use a Hero 2 and even with the Battery Bac-Pac I can't get more than 30 minutes shooting time with it. The knock-offs don't have the mount for the Bac-Pacs and so I can't add an extra battery. The ads claim 150 minute shooting time at full resolution, but I'm dubious. I use my existing camera a lot for kayaking and so changing batteries while floating around in the water is not a real option. So, back to the original question. Has anyone tried one of these and if so how does it work?
A friend of mine was looking at a Chinese copy earlier in the week. They decided to go with a Hero 3 from Ebay instead. The biggest problem for us is cheap cameras using the MOV container instead of MP4. Without having one to look at; the issue was whether Premiere would be able to read the video files without having to transcode them with third party software. We've used a GoPro for long duration shooting. It lasted about 50 minutes before shutting off due to heat. By that point the battery was pretty much exhausted anyway. You might be able to get a higher capacity battery for the Hero 2 but with third party units take mAh rating with a pinch of salt. The standard battey for the 3 (1050 mAh) lasts about as long as an off-brand 1200 mAh pack. I'm looking at the genuine AHDBT-302 as a replacement but heat may still be the defining factor.
I bought a Xiaomi Yi action camera some time ago, I used it on a custom built quadcopter I made. It was great for that but much less practical for every day usage as it doesn't have a screen and you have to use your phone or tablet as a viewfinder. It's had a few firmware updates since I bought it which brought some improvements to it. The only video I have from it as an example of the quality is a flight video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEmmrfsWXSE It's OK for what you pay. I've never used a GoPro as I'm too tight to be paying out that much for an action camera.
