We didn’t expect a ton of nominations in our budget action cam Co-Op—GoPro still dominates the market, despite their financial troubles—but one particular model earned nearly three times as many recommendations as any other competitor: the Yi Action Camera.
I poked around online when I saw how well this was performing, and I have to say, it seems to be an impressive little gadget for $80. Its video quality (assisted by a genuine Sony image sensor) stands up well next to the GoPro Hero4 Session, built-in Wi-Fi allows you to change recording options and view a live preview on your phone, and it can even shoot in 1080p at 60fps or 2304 × 1296 (which they confusingly refer to as 2K) at 30fps. If you need to shoot in 4K, you’re still going to have to shell out for a GoPro Hero4 Black, but otherwise, the Yi doesn’t seem to have any glaring weaknesses
It’s ridiculously cheap and still able to shoot decent footage while having a bunch of additional awesome functions like connected to a smartphone via wifi and also multiple recording modes.
$100 MSRP. I got lucky and they offered a 50% deal a few months ago so it was even a bigger steal for me.
Another massive bonus is the fact that once you get a waterproof case or an adapter, you can use it with any existing go pro accessories that you might have or want to get.
and finally, I believe it’s also got a decent amount of water resistance built in as well. - Mike_Vee
The camera itself will set you back about $80 at the time of this writing, but you’ll probably want to tack on a microSD card, some extra batteries and a waterproof case (which is compatible with all GoPro mounts, by the way) to get the most out of it.
Own one of these? Share your footage in the comments!