Power Bank FullHD DVR

The device is interesting, but still needs a lot of development.

  1. The camera is useless without the remote control (RC), so you need 2 hands to operate it, or glue the RC to the top of power bank, however, it has a strange brown color and won’t look good on a black/white camera. Besides, I don’t like its style, it looks like you are going to blow a bomb with it and may attract eyes of the police. It should be smaller and black and the antenna should be hidden better. The RC is a useless toy itself. You cannot use it if you don’t see the camera’s LEDs, because the remote control doesn’t show the camera’s working state — is it writing video or off or in standby mode, and you can never be sure what you do when you press buttons on the RC, you don’t even see if the signal was received or not (sometimes it works 7 meters away fine but sometimes it doesn’t work 20 cm away from the first button press and you should try again). And you cannot operate it blind, because one button is used to start and stop video — you should see LEDS on the power bank to understand if you started it or stopped. So I don’t understand why the control buttons are on the RC, I’d prefer to have them on the side of the power bank to operate video features with one hand and to be sure that the camera really starts the video when I press the button.
  2. There is no keychain ring as shown on the seller’s photos. You should buy it separately somewhere…
  3. Video quality is not bad for a mini DVR, but not the best. For example, I see I-frame updates every second on static movies and it really annoys my eyes. I have several different mini-DVRs even cheaper and they don’t have this problem. And don’t expect good true colors because the lens don’t have IR filter.
  4. The lens are of very low quality! In my device they were focused to 10-15 cm and while the center was in focus, the edges were terribly blurred. In contrast, everything in the distance was blurred in the middle while the edges were sharp! I haven’t seen such shitty lens for quite a while. The real problem was when I decided to refocus them. This device is glued and I had to break plastic to open it. Moreover, the lens were glued into the mount very deep (not just at the top as most producers do), so I couldn’t refocus them. Finally, I removed all the glue at the top, but they didn’t move a bit! After lots of effort, I broke them completely 🙁 I hope you will be more lucky and receive correctly focused lens because it’s not possible to refocus them manually.
  5. FYI: there are 3 bitrate settings: ~9.4, ~11.2, ~14.2. GOP M=1, N=16. Frame rate ~26 fps for full hd and 50 fps for hd and can vary. You cannot change fps, it adjusts automatically somehow for the max possible value. It eats up free TF card space very fast even in the «low quality» mode because there is no reasonable quality mode like 1280×720/30fps/5-6mbps.
  6. In 720p mode the view area is SO NARROW that it’s difficult to position the camera correctly to get the things in frame. Looks like you are using 5x zoom. There’s no way to fix it in the setup utility.
  7. Night vision quality is poor. The LED is too deep inside and lights up only a small round part in the middle of the picture, while the sides are completely dark. However, the quality of the video is acceptable for 1-1.5 meters in complete darkness. 2-3 meters give you only very dark shades, 4-5 meters — nothing. Infrared light is pretty much visible by eyes as a red LED, so don’t use it as a candid camera.
  8. It won’t charge the devices that need middle pins to be connected. For example, it doesn’t charge my Samsung GT-I8000 phone with the supplied cable. It only works if I use a cable that was supplied with my old Ritmix power bank.
  9. The remaining power indicator with 4 LEDs is a fake. You cannot see how much power is left. It only turns red automatically when the power level gets too low. You can’t check remaining power at any time the way we do it with most other power bank models.
  10. If you turn off the power bank while it is writing video, the video file becomes corrupted and cannot be played. Don’t forget it because there are absolutely NO indicators when it writes the video, so you can forget that it writes and turn it off, and the video will be lost…

So, the idea is good, the shape and size are convenient, but there’s a lot to be improved inside. The absence of status lights on the RC makes it only useful if you sit not far away from it and see the status lights on the power bank itself, so it’s not a complete remote solution. The lens are of terrible quality, at least when they are incorrectly focused, and there’s no way to refocus them because they are deeply glued. I wish the developers could spend some more time to make it a really cool thing, but now I cannot recommend it as a universal power bank and camera.

2 комментария Power Bank FullHD DVR

  • Shafique

    Greetings!

    Thanks a stack for your feedback on this product!

    I wanted to buy it but I will rather wait for their improvement to the design.

    I also recommend that you place some sample video files on Mediafire to show potential buyers what this Power bank Cam is really capable of. Most AliExpress Sellers don’t provide sample video files of their CAM products so its then up to the buyer to take an expensive gamble.

    Thanks once again.

    Regards
    Shafique

    • Tol

      I don’t have videos now because the lens was glued a lot and I broke it when I tried to refocus it. I also found that it’s not difficult to push the IR LED slightly forward to improve illumination. The seller is really good, I asked him to get replacement parts from the factory and he sent me unglued lens and unglued plastic cover, so I will be able to open the power bank and refocus the lens whenever I need without any damage. The price for the lens was $12, but I ordered lens+mount+sensor+plastic body for $25. As soon as I receive the parts and fix it, I will make sample videos. In comparison with other IR «toy» cameras this power bank is not the worst, really. The only things that really disappointed me are (1) the absence of buttons in the camera (you need to glue RC to the camera if you want to operate it with one hand) and (2) uneven focus (different in the middle and in the edges of the image). Maybe the lens is cheap, BUT it is not standard, 5mm mount, I was not able to find alternative replacement lens anywhere on Ali and ebay, so I had to order the original lens. So there is a lot to improve here, but I’m not sure whether the manufacturers will follow my advice and redesign it — it’s easier to make a completely new model!

      BTW, the sensor that they used is really good (larger and better than in 808#16) and it is attached to a special aluminum heat-sink, so it was designed for a long continuous work. All image problems are from tiny cheap lens and poor firmware.

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