Mobius Action Camera review part 1

A few disclaimers before we start. I'm no cinematographer/videographer and I've not reviewed a camera before so be nice if I've missed anything. I'll drop a few links in amongst the text in the next part of the review where you can find much more info than I could ever hope to provide. If you have a question just ask and I'll answer as best I can.

I've had my Mobius Action Camera for about 6 weeks now and have taken it out on four rides and done some additional testing around the house in an effort to see if the incredible price translates to real value. After viewing a zillion MTB videos on Yobtube, Vimeo and a bunch of other sites over the last two and a half years I figured it could be cool to keep a visual record of my rides, even if no-one else would care. I know my girlfried would try very hard to care, the trooper that she is, but I'm under no illusion and harbour no great expectations. I'm probably the only person that would ever watch a video of an unskilled dinosaur (hence my username) gasping for breath trudging up the climbs around Nth Turrmurra. I'm not precious. I can live with that.

The conundrum quickly became the choice between spending real money on the 'industry standard' and forking over for a GoPro or being a tight-arse and hunting around the interwebs for the deal of the century. I bought both of my quite nice bikes (flat-bar roadie and MTB) at approximately one third of their respective RRP's and on each occasion they were then current models with only demo or "rode it home and realised it wasn't for me" mileage. The trend having been set I passed over the opportunity to receive birthday related contributions to the GoPro and decided to find a cheaper alternative. Sorry, a 'less expensive' alternative. First rule of sales. Any well-priced product worth having is never 'cheap'. It's 'inexpensive'

I had other motives for seeking out an inexpensive camera. When asking a few GoPro owners what they thought of their toys it was unnerving to hear that they didn't use them very often. For a variety of reasons from forgetting to charge it, to not remembering to pack it or simply not being bothered with the whole process of setup, video, download and edit. It became obvious that a nice idea can turn into an expensive paperweight with little more than a tiny dash of apathy. So I had to find an inexpensive camera that shot 1080p video of a quality that wouldn't require hours of correcting with software, had enough 'features' to provide options while shooting and was user friendly so I would be motivated to use it frequently.

All of the above is to set the scene and explain why I chose to buy a Mobious despite a number of worthy alternatives. Your reward for reading this far is a fast track to the list of pro's and con's. Rather than make you read to the end of the article only to decide you've wasted 20 minutes or more of your life I'll give you the critical facts and you can then decide whether you want to keep reading. Some items will be listed as both pro's and con's as the users own perception will dictate that status.

Pro's:
- Price. Between $75 and $85 AUD plus freight depending on USD exchange rate and seller you buy from. Accessories are also stupidly cheap from the overseas sellers. You can use most of the GoPro accessories if you already have them. You need to make sure you buy from a recognised seller though as, believe it or not, there are cheap Chinese copies of a cheap, ahem, 'inexpensive', Chinese camera. Most expensive item after the camera is the Micro SD memory card. Often best to buy a 'kit' from the seller and get a bunch of stuff at once.

- Size and weight. The Mobius is a bit bigger than a packet of matches and weighs 39 grams. Yep, 39 grams. On it's own you wouldn't even know the camera was attached to whatever thingy you routinely attach your camera to. The result of this, however, is that most accessories weigh more than the camera.

- Shape. About 6cm long, 3.5cm wide and less than 2cm thick so pretty small. Buttons and LEDs are well placed so that they shouldn't limit your mounting choices too much.

- Simplicity. It's not far off being a 'point and shoot' gadget. A 5 minute read of the destruction manual and you're away if you can resist the temption to change the default settings. Hint - the default settings really don't need changing unless you are feeling uber creative.

- Build quality. Yeah, it's as simple as a one piece jig-saw puzzle, but the manufacturer hasn't relied on simplicity as an excuse to scrimp and save on fit and finish. It's well designed and well put together. It looks and feels solid. At least as solid as a 39 gram rectanlge of black plastic can.

- Audio. The sound quality is impressive with its sensitivity and clarity.

- Video quality. The picture quality is very good in its own right, but excellent for a camera in this price range. The fact that the setup utilities (different for Android and Windows) provide access to a large range of image adjustments and that the camera can store two configurations that you can switch between 'on the fly' is just a bonus.

- Motion sensor and timelapse. Does what it says on the tin with a variety of settings available.

- Auto re-write/delete. Can be set to keep recording clips at various lengths and will start recording over old clips once the SD card is full. This is a popular feature with users that have the camera mounted as a car dash cam, for some riders wanting to keep an eye on the next bad driver they encounter and for those wanting a high-res security camera.

- No LCD Screen or viewfinder. I have listed this as a pro and a con. On the pro side, this means less to fail or break and less power-hungry camera bling.

- Popularity. Unofficial support forums, authorised sellers and reviewers all seem to be involved in supporting the product and the user 'community' are mostly hobbyists and geeky types that like to tinker so there is plenty of user-based knowledge to be found.

- Enthusiastic manufacturer. The Mobius was made to meet the requests of an apparently vocal userbase who liked previous mini cameras from the manufacturer. The manufacturer seems to actively seek feedback and feature requests. Now that's a refreshing change.

- Effectively 'open source' so skilled users have already written an Android app for setup and for viewing and a Windows app for setup and firmware/feature updates.

- Easily repaired. You can buy all of the components that make up the complete camera to repair or replace any individual part.

- Almost limitless possibilities for use. The user 'community', sellers and even the manufacturer seem to encourage 'modifying' the camera to attach external power sources for extended recording time, remote location of camera body with lens attached by long cable, interchangeable lenses for regular or wide field of view, live video output, etc.

Con's:
- Availability. Well, sort of a con. Easy to find online and usually only a week or two to wait, but if you want to try before you buy you're out of luck. The few 'local' sellers I have seen on the interwebs are asking 60-100% markup on overseas prices and I fully expect they will only order one in for you after you've laid your money down. So just buy online and pocket the change.

- Wind noise. You can turn the audio off with the setup utility or you can always add music when you edit, but I was hoping I could hear my bike to get a sense of when I was changing gears and also wanted to narrate the video from time to time either as a reminder to myself or for the benefit of the unenthusiastic few who might ever watch it. The wind noise is terrible at speed or in gusty conditions. I have a fair amount of sticky tape on mine at the moment trying to plug up the LED and microphone holes, but it's still overpowering. I've come to the conclusion that I need to put some foam around the microphone. It is bare inside the case and the case is a huge - relative to the size of the microphone - echo chamber so really it's no surprise that it wails like a banshee.

- Not waterproof. No biggee really. There is a silicon skin you can get from several sellers to make it 'weather proof' and one prominent seller has their own waterproof case to suit the Mobius. So no worse than a GoPro in practice.

- Only 30fps at 1080p. 60fps is at 720p and then only the "Narrow" picture setting. I wasn't sure whether this would bite me on the arse, but I did suspect that this was one of the reasons that so many people stump up their hard-earned cash for a GoPro. The relatively narrow field of view of the Mobius doesn't bother me so much and it actually helps to minimise the fish-eye effect so common in action cameras. The wide-angle lens you can get for the Mobius will give you plenty of viewing angle if you really need it anyway. The reason I have listed this as a con is that you do need 60fps or faster in a CMOS-based camera to get acceptably smooth video. I've learned my lesson. Still happy with the Mobius, but that beautifully crisp 1080p picture is best suited to use on a tripod or at least on something that doesn't bounce around like a 26" hardtail on lumpy firetrails. So 720p narrow field of view it is I guess.

Note - Not that they can be easily found and especially not at the sub $1000 price point of almost all current consumer video cameras, but the ducks guts in silky smooth video is a CCD-based camera. A really good one will have three CCDs. One for each primary colour. CMOS-based cameras suffer from several shortcomings including rolling shutter and the more expensive ones like the GoPro will try to make up for those short comings with lots of software tricks inside the camera. These software tricks mean that the camera will require a lot more processing power to process video 'on the fly' and that uses a lot more battery power.

Back in the day (I'm talking mid to late 90's) any digital video camera worth owning used a CCD as it was cuting edge tech. But then any camera worth owning - for the serious videographer at least - was at least several thousand dollars and by today's standards the picture quality was very low res (think old 4:3 ratio CRT TV) and unremarkable. CMOS image sensors have always been cheaper to make and, I believe, use less power so it was inevitable that once their quality was sufficiently good for Joe Average consumer, most manufacturers would move from CCD's to CMOS to save a buck and sell more product at a lower price. If I was remotely creative I'd spend the cash on a CCD-based camera to get the kind of video you see in the professional clips. My 'inexpensive' CMOS-based Mobius is just for shits and giggles at the moment so I'll live with its shortcomings.

- Can't use external microphone. Not a biggee unless you intend to conduct interviews, or plan a stakeout to surveil criminals.

- No WiFi. Maybe a con, maybe not. Less bling to consume your battery, but does mean you need a cable to connect to your Android phone to use as a viewfinder or change settings in the field.

- No LCD screen or viewfinder. I have listed this as a pro and a con. On the con side it does mean you have to set the position of your camera before you head out and leave it alone, hoping it doesn't move while you're riding. This is compounded by the lack of WiFi, but I use the cable option occasionally to connect to my Galaxy S3 and it really is only a mild hassle.

- No built-in image stabilization. After my first few rides with the Mobius I was beginning to regret buying a camera without image stabilisation, but it's never as simple as that. Yes, the Mobius, as with any other CMOS-based camera without built-in (and in more extreme cases even with) stabilisation, is highly susceptible to vibration-induced wobbly or jarring video if not well mounted. However, if Yobtube is your thing it does have its own stabilisation options and many editing software options exist to assist with stabilising shaky video, but it can be time consuming and the result is never as good as video that is smooth to begin with. Additionally, a great deal of research has yielded a few lightbulb moments that I will put to the test as soon as some very inexpensive bits a pieces arrive from overseas. Where there's a will there's a way.

- Setup via Mac is not straight forward as no-one has written a Mac compatible setup utility. Sads if you're an "i" person.

That's all for now. The next installment of this gripping epic will include info about and links to video reviews of the Mobius, where to buy, support forums, open source (free) editing software and some really sweet mounts I discovered while driving myself nuts looking for something better than the readily accepted plastic stuff. I'll also write about my plans to finally 'fix' the vibration issue.

Thanks for reading.