RunCam 5 4K FPV Camera 1080P HD Micro Action Camera 145 Degree FOV NTSC PAL Switchable for FPV Racing Drone and Sport Video Recording Orange

Since the reviews for different items seem to be mixed together, I would like to clarify that I am reviewing the RunCam 3s action camera.

Firstly, I was blown away by the quality of the picture for the price I paid. Video is very nice at 1080p/60fps and I have been able to get some very nice recordings of my flights. The WDR is relatively quick to respond to changes in light and can pick up images easily on a cloudy day.

There is no LCD on the camera unlike the GoPro Session series, so it’s hard to tell what function or attribute you are changing with the two buttons on the outside. There are two status indicator LEDs as well that are supposed to show you what menu you are in. To be honest, I didn’t bother with changing settings that way.

The RunCam app for smartphones is what you can use to change settings on the camera – which at first seems very convenient. However, the app would crash the first time I launched it after a period of time, and it shuts off your mobile data and disconnects your WiFi from the internet. Not a huge deal in reality but still a bit annoying. There are plenty of settings that you can change in the app such as contrast, light gain, WDR settings, etc – a lot like your standard FPV camera.

Finally, my biggest complaint. The battery life of this camera is absolutely terrible. I can record between 8 and 15 minutes of flight before my camera runs out of juice. Luckily, it looks as if it is able to save the current recording if it runs out of power, but it’s frustrating that I can only record so much before I have to recharge – especially since it takes between 1 and 2 hours to charge fully. I suppose you could purchase more batteries and charge them up beforehand, but my old original GoPro Hero Session’s battery lasted at least an hour before going kupoot.

There are some things that I really like about this camera (most notably the picture quality and relatively low price), but it just doesn’t compare with the GoPro Hero Session series that it was clearly contesting.

Edit: Also, the manual states that this camera supports up to a 64GB class 10 Micro-SD card, but my camera wouldn’t recognize the two 64GB cards I tried. I ended up having to use a 32GB card instead.