Odrvm 4K Action Camera

Peter ScargillODVRM18 Comments on Odrvm 4K Action Camera

Slightly out of the normal, I’ll grant you but I thought this was worth doing a short piece on because of an alternative use for this camera. So what we have here is the Odrvm 4K Action Camera, which comes as a complete kit, in my case from Amazon.

ODVRM Action Camera as WebcamHere’s the story. I’ve been looking for one of these for ages for Spain, I have a decent camera, an SLR which would be wonderful were it not for the weight. Despite a lifetime dabbling in photography, I’ve never gotten used to carrying around a large camera in the hot summers of Spain which is where I plan to be this summer.

I can’t tell you how many hours I spend trawling through videos on YouTube for an “action camera” capable of at least 2k video and preferably with a gyro to minimise shaking.

Simba on OdrvmWell I was just down to the last couple of cameras when I received an email from a company who wanted to know if I would check out their action camera! Next thing I knew I was off ordering a camera and spare batteries on Amazon PRIME for next day delivery and this morning, my parcel arrived – well, part of it. Not unusually for Amazon, there was a last minute hitch and the batteries won’t be here until next week.

However as it turns out the camera package comes with all sorts of mounts (I mean LOTS of mounts), the camera itself contains a battery and.. there’s a spare one in the box! The manufacturers claim 80 minute battery life but if we assume that means somewhat under an hour of video’ing, it makes sense to have a spare or two.

Odrvm 4K Action Camera

As you can see from the above, action is limited to no closer than maybe 6-9” – but beyond that is extremely sharp – this is shown in the video.

So, as requested I opened the box, described what was inside then went off into the freezing cold Bellingham winter air to take a video.

And that’s fine, no-one is suggesting using this as a top end video camera but with anti-shake it is pretty good for the money – however – that’s not all because it ALSO makes a very good webcam – better I may add than Logitech upmarket models I’ve tested.  So – when you’re not out taking mountain photos – this doubles up as a webcam while it is sitting charging – sounds like a good idea to me.

I did enquire and the sound level is fixed in the unit. Right now it is not possible to add an external microphone, this will likely change in future (if I were to do any serious filming I think I would record audio on a phone with proper external mic – I’ve yet to come across a camera built-in mic that is very good.

For Amazon.com: http://amzn.to/2sl6eNl

For Amazon.co.uk: http://amzn.to/2qESbRE

For Amazon.de: http://amzn.to/2rWSVX3

For Amazon.fr: http://amzn.to/2vlNnDO

For Amazon.ca: http://amzn.to/2rsjYZC

18 thoughts on “Odrvm 4K Action Camera”

  1. I use action cams mainly for dirt bikes, enduro and motocross, a bit of trail cycling and some scuba dive. My previous camera was GoPro hero 3 silver for the last couple of years now, recently after a very long time I broke it during one of my motocross rides, you can find all of the videos I took online, I wont lie I wanted a brand not GoPro but the prices are just not reasonable, not because its not worth it, but mainly because the competition is getting better and better and most importantly cheaper, for the price of my broken GoPro I could buy 3 or even 4 cheaper cams and this is what I decided to try with this camera. The accessories and attachments itself worth the already half of this cameras price which is good, you get all of the needed mounts, stickers, surfing security, open back, additional closed back, and many more which I dont even know what are they for. As for the camera itself – My car dash-cam which is a totally different brand uses the same UI as this camera, so it seems some big Chinese vendor is doing the software for most of these camera, it is not a complaint but just pointing a fact. Video quality – I did some dry runs during the last two days mainly home and some holding by hand in the car, my conclusion as follows: While staying at the 1080 range, the camera does a fairly good job. When using 1080 with 60 frames I think is the best option available for this camera, for comparison better than my old Gopro 3 silver. When trying to go higher than 1080 – unfortunately it didnt shine and i actually believe its a bit worst than the 1080, in any case not better. Sound quality – Mic is very sensitive, if you plan to do a lot of noise you must use the housing. Wifi – Didnt had the chance to check it out yet but i will give it a try and keep this review updated. Battery life – again since ive only done dry runs for now i have no opinion on real live scenario battery usage, I am not a huge favor of the screen staying on while recording, I assume there is an option to shut it off, havent found it yet, in any case in the accessories package you do get additional battery, i always had 4 batteries while using my gopro, one minus is that i havent found a dual battery charger in the kit so you have to charge each one separately in the camera, not a huge fan of it so i might buy a dual charger for it. My summary – Is it a gopro killer? no, it is not Is it worth buying? Yes, and I will explain why, action camera is a constantly evolving market, something you buy today is lagging behind in the next half a year, same thing as i had with my Gopro 3 silver, is it worth paying 400-500-600$ for something that wont be the top camera in the near future? the answer is no, I did this mistake before and not going to repeat it, this camera is solid, comes with a good accessories kit, good video recording (not best – but good) and it all comes for under 80$ and this is the key feature here, even if ill brakes it in my next few rides i wont feel the same way as braking my gopro, this alone worth the gap. I will update the review with photos and videos later on – small note on this part – Amazon compress the video uploaded to reviews and its not even close to the real resolution the camera shoots, the video reviews people uploaded looks much better in real life.
    Best,
    Nordfalcon

  2. Would anyone know how to get it to default to being a webcam when plugged in to USB?

  3. The camera looks good, your walk about brought back fond memories of a very pleasant night at Bellingham when I walked the Pennine way, a good few years ago. I’ll be very interested to see any further stuff you do with that camera.

    1. Actually Bob, most likely I will as I get used to the features. The problem I had yesterday was the simple fact that it was mind-numbingly cold. I’m replacing the video with some minor changes including better sound – but I’ll leave this in place due to the RIDICULOUS policy of YouTube where you can’t replace a video but have to delete it along with the comments etc… but yes, more when the chill goes away.

  4. take a look at settings, usually there’s an option to divide videos in short pieces, usually of about 3 minutes… can’t remember now how it’s called in mine, i’ve seen in many different models, and it’s always set to ON…

    1. I actually figured that out by the time I did the video… and yes it was set to ON by default which seems odd.. anyway, now the back screen times out to save power and that’s fine – the top button brings it back.

  6. Your link is broken Peter, I think you accidentally made it a relative link.

    Looks like a pretty nice camera for £80. I wonder, what can you do over Wifi? Can you stream video? Seems like it’d make a pretty cool little security camera if you can.

    1. Ok, so as a webcam it LOOKS great but there’s no audio out for some reason – so that needs external audio – but streaming – I imagine you’d have to add some software for streaming… my other webcams don’t do streaming…. oh, try out the free YAWCAM.

      1. I was just thinking that if you could somehow hack them to do a standard video stream (e.g. MJPEG or something) they’d make for an awesome security camera for around the house. They’re small, weatherproof, have an onboard battery, wifi, good picture etc. Reading about them more though it looks like you need a proprietary app to access the camera, so it’d probably require some non-trivial hacking to do sadly.

        It’d be awesome to have a simple and cheap camera like this with hackable firmware. Robotics and computer vision people would probably be pretty keen on it too.

        2. Well that YAWCAM seems ok and as far as the weatherproof box is concerned if that’s what you were going to use it for you could always drill a hole, put the power lead in and seal it….

              1. well, no, i admit i don’t know of security cameras with this resolution… but you have to think to how much data has to stream sucj a device, and honestly i’ll never run security cameras on wifi… you can do a wifi deauther with a 3€ esp8266 and block whatever wifi device you want in a breeze…

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