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Comment by mamonoleechi | Hacker News Reader

any recommendation?

Are you looking for Good or Great?

If you just need Good, there are dozens of no-brand options on Amazon and Ali that do 4K60fps with output that is more than sufficient for any non-professional use.

I don't have a brand recommendation off hand, because the ones I've bought have been random names, but they've all been more than enough. As a reference, I've used them for capturing footage for training machine vision systems, and some general purpose marketing videos. I'm not a "creator", so I paid no attention to editing features, clip hosting, or any of those things.

Amazon sometimes gets some hate here, but I usually just buy there because the returns process is so simple. In the random case I get a product that turned out to be deceptive advertising, I drop it at Whole Foods and have a credit before I leave the parking lot. And I have the product in hand in 48 hours at most.

> Are you looking for Good or Great?

What about equal-or-better-than-the-same-or-similar-GoPro?

> there are dozens of no-brand options on Amazon and Ali that do 4K60fps

I have to very strongly disagree with this sentiment. I have personally tested quite a few no-name "4K 60fps" cameras from Amazon and AliExpress. Many of them upscale from 1080 - which is fine I guess - but then in 60fps will use a crop sensor and upscale from like ~640. Even with the more recognizable SJCam and Akaso brands, unless you're paying ~$200 - you're going to get upscaling, bad color science, bad image distortion. When comparing against a GoPro 5 (first 4k 60 entry) or 8 (first with USB C) the difference is astounding.

Though perhaps this is the difference between good and great that you refer to - but for me, it's certainly worth getting a used GoPro vs any of these modern cheap alternatives.

Unfortunately current new GoPros don't improve on their existing line enough to justify paying current prices. I wish I could get a new 2018 quality GoPro knockoff for <$200

For professional action shots people want 180 degree immersive VR video nowadays.

No one wants this, nobody is watching action footy in VR

Are you serious? Watching skydiving footage in VR is amazing. Flat pictures are nothing compared to it.

As a massive VR enthusiast I agree with you, but that doesn't change the fact that we are the only 2 people doing it

I saw a review on YouTube of a lot of these alternatives, along with the established brands, and in bright sunlight and little movement some were ok but quality was all over.

However once it got a bit darker, or heavy movement, the big brands left the rest in the dust pretty much.

So yeah, do a bit of research and figure out your use-case.

I'll have to try and dig out a couple of the ones I bought and re-verify this. Really though the 60fps doesn't matter for the majority of users. Even the 4K aspect is overkill for most common things.

ISTR GoPro moved away from Ambarella SoCs several years ago and rolled their own, but most of the other cameras are using Amba, Novatek, etc., and certainly offer great performance for a fraction of the cost of GoPro.

It’s less that 4k 60fps doesn’t matter, but that most mobile cheap cameras are so poor quality that you don’t see much of a difference. The sensors are so small that switching to 60fps leaves less time for the shutter speed so you end up with a noisy image.

On a good camera the difference is stark.

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