Nilox Foolish HD camera

Nilox's new HD camera might have a foolish name but you'd not be a fool to get one. If you're looking for a high quality camera for more than just the commute, this is certainly one to consider.

The UK spec of the Nilox camera is slightly different to the two listed on the Italian parent website. For your £199 you get the camera, the removable LCD screen, two waterproof cases (one for the camera with the screen, one without) and a mains charger; ours was European 2-pin although we just charged the camera from the computer most of the time. There's a remote control available too, but it's not bundled with the camera in the UK. It should be available separately though; it looks the same as the one that comes with the Veho Muvi HD10. Our Veho remote didn't work with the Nilox though.

You'd be forgiven for thinking the Nilox looks a lot like a GoPro. In fact, the camera sans LCD is exactly the same size as a first-generation Hero, near as dammit, and a similar weight too. Layout is slightly different with the lens right in the middle and two buttons on the top, one for stills and one for video.

Like the GoPro you can change all the camera settings by cycling through them all on the small black and white LCD screen on top, but plugging in the 150,000 pixel LCD viewfinder gives you a full visual menu that's much easier to work with. Even if you're not planning to use the viewfinder when you're shooting it's handy having it around, just to fiddle with the menus. The camera will shoot in 1080p HD at 30 frames per second, and that goes up to 60fps at 720p which is handy for slo-mo. Stills go up to 8 megapixels.

Mounting the camera is easy enough: there's a standard tripod screw in the base of the camera and both cases, and the Nilox comes supplied with a flat and curved surface mount. It uses the same mount standard as GoPro and Muvi Veho cameras, so there are masses of different options for mounting out there. We used a chest harness and a bar mount during testing, both Muvi branded, with no problems. The camera can easily be mounted with or without its waterproof case; both of those are rated to 60m rather than the more usual 30. There are two buttons that connect to the video and still buttons on the camera.

Making the camera point in the right direction can be a bit hit-and-miss with units like this. But the Nilox has not only the LCD but also a laser pointer that fires down the middle of the frame when you tell it to, which is dead handy for getting things framed just so. The laser is visible in most conditions although it goes missing in bright sunlight; at night it's very visible, and probably not suitable for use on the public highway.

Annoyingly you can only have it on while recording, or off. There's no option to fire it just to line things up, or a setting for it to be on for, say, ten seconds when you start recording. That'd be really good. As it is, you get a red dot in the frame if you use the laser, not the end of the world and only really visible in HD.

UPDATE: thanks to Peter Bascheck who emailed to tell us that you can engage the laser independently by holding the record button down for three seconds. I missed that!

So what's the picture like? It's good. Take a look at our little showreel of various shooting conditions - it's available in 720p on YouTube. The camera captures a very wide angle of view; mounted on the bars it still manages to pick my hands out on the hoods, just. There's a fair bit of distortion of the image, especially around the edges, and the picture is noticeably less sharp there too compared to the good definition in the middle. The waterproof casings take the edge off the crispness of the image and also make flare from the sun a deal worse; we had a few issues with fogging inside the casing too, but that's not specific to Nilox. Low-light picture quality is on a par with the other HD cameras we've tested, and the frame rate doesn't seem to suffer even when it's really dark.

Mostly I shot in 720p/60fps which gives good video definition and also allows you to slow the action down with no loss in quality, if that's your bag. The filesizes aren't ridiculous either. Connecting the camera to your computer allows you to drag the files off the 8gb micro-USB card for editing; you can watch the clips on the viewfinder, or a telly courtesy of composite A/V and HDMI outputs on the camera.

Audio capture is acceptable rather than good. recording handheld it picks up a good range, but put it in the case and things understandably get muffled. Out of its case on the bike there's a lot of wind roar and not a great deal else. Audio's never been a very strong suit of cameras like this though.

Battery life is decent rather than great. With the camera in standby I got about 2.5 hours of life out of it, and recorded nearly half an hour of footage. Only having the camera on when you're recording improves things, although it's a faff if it's in its case; fitting the LCD screen unsurprisingly doesn't help matters. I tended to use the LCD screen just for reviewing footage and fiddling with the settings.

Overall there's a lot to like about the Foolish. It shoots good quality footage, has some neat options for framing your shot and is easy to use and decent value. Better options for using the laser would really help, but for £200 you're getting a fair bit for your money. It's overkill for recording the commute, but if you're into making movies and looking at GoPros, Muvis and such, this is certainly another one to have a look at. Image quality is comparable and the feature set may suit you better than the more established options.

Verdict

Silly name, nice camera. Stands up to competitors and has lots of functions for the money, too.