Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Aldi 4K action camera. There may be better prices on eBay.

I saw the upcoming promotion of the Aldi 4K action camera. I have no doubt the GoPro devices would be of much better quality and/or performance, but at $69.99, I thought I'd pass the information on to some family members. At the much lower price it may just do what they require.

I then started to wonder whether or not eBay had similar products listed. As it turned out a search on eBay for "sports camera 4K" turned up sports cameras at much lower prices. Products with similar specifications to the Aldi action camera can be bought for around $38 with Wi-Fi, and down to around $20, if you go without the Wi-Fi. It's important that you compare the specifications carefully and not get tricked into a lower resolution action camera on eBay.

You can find more information on the specification for the Aldi 4K action camera is you search for "Bauhn" where you'll find the current products on sale at Aldi and their specifications (http://www.bauhn.com.au/product-listing/action-camera). With eBay, change the search order to "best price including postage", and then check the information provided for each action camera. Keep in mind the eBay advertisers often bait with a lower price item to get you to their listing. You need to select the actual item to see the price.

A few specifications did catch my attention. The Aldi 4K action camera according to their ad has the wide angle lens as 125 degrees. That's quite narrow. From what I've read sports cameras often have wide angle lenses of 140-170 degrees. Perhaps it's a typo. Most on eBay appear to be 170 degrees. Whether you want the wider angle or not however is a personal preference. The Aldi 4K action camera includes Wi-Fi and a remote control. Also mentioned is slow motion mode and the specification does indicate 1280x720 @ 120 fps. The ability to handle 64GB generally indicates the higher resolution.

The Aldi action camera mentioned 4K interpolated and had an image sensor "SONY 179, 8M pixel COMS". I'd be fairly sure "COMS" is a typo and should probably be CMOS. Interpolated to me suggests the resolution is not really 4K.

A bit of reading reveals there appears to be a lot of fake specifications from suppliers of the action cameras (https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/the-list-of-shame-fake-4k-cameras-and-cmos-size.16490/).  This does mean you could easily get tricked so make sure you read the specifications and do the necessary research. Even then you may not end up getting what you think you're getting.

Even though with Aldi's 4K action camera does appear there may be better priced units, the advantages are: Aldi give you what they advertise, they're local, if they have sufficient stock you get the action camera quickly.

Kelvin Eldridge

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