Chilli Tech Action Cam 2

Chilli Technologies' Action Cam 2 arrived in a lovely metal box and peering through the windowed lid of the metal box filled me with excitement. It looked shiny, small and most importantly, it looked waterproof (well, bar the metal body potentially rusting).

The initial rush of excitement soon dispersed as I emptied the contents on the table. The first disappointing thing about it was the handlebar attachment which had rubber straps and looked flimsy. As we all (should) know rubber is flexible, therefore logic dictates that no matter how tight you think you’ve got the camera on the handlebars, it’s going to give way to movement.

The second disappointing, and very irksome thing about the camera was the access to the on / off switch and USB connector. Both of these things are located behind a screw top. Yes, you read that right - a screw top. This means that as you are setting off on your journey on a cold winters morning with your Endura gloves on, you have to remove the gloves to remove the fiddly cap to turn on the switch and then screw the top back on. I found myself dropping the lid on a couple of occasions due to the unit being close to my Garmin Edge.

This is taken straight from the instruction manual:

"Push the switch to power-ON position – it will now enter initialization status and a blue light will turn on and then the yellow light – when the blue and yellow light are showing, this means that the unit is on Standby and ready to record. Press the pause button once to begin recording – as soon as the unit is recording, the green light will begin to flash."

So, from what I can work out from the instructions, if your unit is recording, the blue and yellow lights will be static, whilst the green light flashes. If the green light isn’t flashing – its in standby mode. If the blue light is on and the green light is flashing, you are in camera mode, but if the green light isn’t flashing and the red one is - you have a low battery. Give me Milton Bradleys Simon any day.

Back to the handlebar mount, as this was the prime position for testing the camera. Attaching it to the handlebars was easy, and the rubber stretched quite well, allowing me to fit it to the chunkier part of my mountain bike handlebars. The top strap is also made of rubber, and to securely fasten it into the mount you really do have cover up the pause / play button and all the flashing lights, otherwise you will find the Chilli firing out the front. Of course this renders the unit useless as you can’t see that its recording and makes the buttons difficult to reach. I also managed to pull off the top strap completely, and had to get a colleague with extremely thin fingers to reattach.

Due to the handlebar mount the unit becomes very shaky on use and makes the recordings on anything other than a smooth flat surface pretty useless. Even then the slightest of vibrations sends a shiver through to the camera. Capturing a number plate whilst in this state is a difficult thing to do.

Another snippet from the manual:

"The recorded file will not automatically save unless you set it in the pause status after recording."

So, if you forget to pause and switch it off – you lose everything that you’ve recorded and because the unit doesn’t do anything sensible like split the files every 30 minutes (a la Veho Muvi), you could potentially lose a whole 2 ½ hours worth of continuous footage.

It comes with a few other attachments in the box, allowing you to attach to a helmet or even inside your car, which is pretty good, and they also supply you with a sight to line up that ‘perfect’ shot if using the 3mp camera – interesting idea, but pretty pointless as most people would chose to use their mobile phone or camera to take pictures.

Finally although the unit may look waterproof it isn't, but as I can’t find a mention of waterproofing in the manual I resisted the temptation to use it in the rain, and when we checked with Chilli they confirmed that the reason there' no mention in the manual is because it isn't waterproof – they do have plans for a waterproof version in 2011 though.

Verdict

Despite its very attractive price point, its priced that low for a reason. Though you can’t fault the cameras ability to film in darker conditions (it outperform the more expensive Oregon Scientific ATC5K on this score), it still only records in VGA (640 x 480). What’s more, the microphone doesn’t seem to pick up anything other than muffled noise.

Had the camera come with a more solid way of attaching it to the bike handlebars, I would probably have bought one - especially at such a low price.