Executive summary: the video and stills quality is good; the beast seems relatively rugged; the mount design (or execution?) is flawed; the software is NOT available for the Mac, so the GPS module is useless to Mac people.In the order that the rating attributes were listed -
BATTERY LIFE: seems ok. You need to be extra careful that the cable is _fully_ seated in the camera's socket. It will partially engage and _seem_ to be doing something when it's not.
The USB socket is inside the camera and can therefore be accessed only when the camera back is open.
Read carefully this next little bit... it's not really clear from the very limited product documentation.
If the camera is ON when you open the back and insert the USB cable, the display switches from showing what the lens sees, to showing a stylized picture of a USB cable... then it blanks. In this mode, your computer can see the camera (if the SDHC card is still inserted) as a USB drive. The camera battery is NOT charging in this mode.
If the camera is OFF when you open the back and insert the USB cable, the red light on the front comes on, and the battery begins charging. The red light goes off when charging is complete. In this mode, your connected computer can't see the camera as a device. You can charge, or you can transfer videos, but you can't do both at once, and you must disconnect, press buttons, and reconnect to switch between the two activities.
EASE of USE: It's fairly straightforward. Of the five little buttons on the back panel, one is power on/off, so that leaves 4 for everything else. Menus make sense, but are a bit un-handily nested for 3-button navigation.
WHEN the camera is on, two big buttons on top of the lens barrel can start/stop video or take photos. Good for when you are wearing gloves. HOWEVER, the display blanks after the camera has been running for a while (battery-saving feature), so you need to press once to wake up the display (and apparently the control interface), then press again to stop recording. So, you can't operate this puppy blind. At least, I don't trust it to be doing what I tell it unless I'm looking at the display.
The mounting system looks like a good idea, BUT, in order to be flexible, it has multiple piece-to-piece connections. A lever-clamp ring encircles the barrel of the camera, quite snugly, but allows the camera to be twisted around its long axis, and locked at any degree (so you could top-mount, side-mount, under-mount and still have the camera taking pictures upright). The ring's base has a free-spinning knurled knob (about 3.5cm across), the underside of which is threaded. Next, there's a piece with two spring tabs, that clips into a helmet mount or a bicycle handle-bar mount, exactly as headlights, bike computers, etc. do. That piece has a threaded portion on its top, that fits into the base of the camera-holder ring. Then, that assembly snaps into a helmet mount or handlebar mount, and you can swivel the camera 360 degrees before you tighten-down the knurled ring.
Basically, this arrangement allows you to spin/rotate the camera in two axes and lock in place. BUT the snap-in piece that mates to your handle-bar or helmet is a bit undersized. This means it does not bind when you slide it in and out of a socket, but it also means that THE MOUNTED CAMERA WOBBLES ON ITS MOUNT. Just a bit, but enough. No matter how still you try to keep your head, every ripple in the road, every breath you take, causes the camera to wobble ever-so-slightly. This translates to constant jiggling of the video.
About the only solution is to jack the camera into its clip-mount, then shove a shim into the mount, to take up the slack and stop the wobble. Good luck finding a suitable shim.
I also find this camera, with this mount, useless for skydiving video. The shaking from the 130mph wind makes everything a blur. Under canopy, much better, but that's only half the job... If I need ten feet of duct tape to solidify a camera mount, I don't want that camera to record a skydive. Also, I can't see the plastic mounting pieces surviving more than one or two hard openings.
MICROPHONE QUALITY sucks. Part of the problem is that there's an audible "click" each time the camera wobbles in its mounting socket. The other part is, it's just muffled. If the camera is on top of your helmet and you have a yelled conversation with somebody six feet away, it will mostly pick up your voice and mostly miss theirs entirely. For skydiving, just cover the speaker/mic vent with duct tape.
VIDEO QUALITY: is pretty good in 30-frame-per-second 1080p mode you can almost read the license plates of cars that overtake you, or that you overtake. In 720p mode, you do get the advertised smooth slow-mo, but those same license plates are an unreadable blur. Similarly, faces of cute chicks that you pass are blurry. Oh. Did I say that out loud? :-)
However, this thing really wants a bright, sunny day. If you were doing night-skiing (on a lit hill), it would give a dark and dingy picture the camera's night mode doesn't do much, that I could see. I wanted it to capture A-holes doing stupid/dangerous things in traffic (that I could later blog about), while I commute by bike and on foot, but half the year, I'm going home at dusk or under street-lights (we have winter here in Canada). In those conditions, the camera does a poor job of capturing vehicle ID or idiot-driver faces even at a well-lit intersection with the offending car not six feet away.
Y'know those general purpose video cameras that every family has? The ones with 30x optical zoom and all the features? The ones that can capture details in the smiling faces gathered around a birthday cake lit by nothing but a few candles? Yeah, well this camera absolutely does NOT have that kind of sensitivity or range/adaptability across ambient lighting conditions (never mind zoom and other features that would be useless on a ruggedized action cam). Even on a sunny day, if you drive from a lit patch of pavement to a stretch that's shaded by some trees, the camera takes several seconds to adapt. Then when you leave the shaded area, back into full sun, the camera washes everything out for a few seconds. On a road or path with lots of alternating light-and-shade stretches, you don't get to see much, swinging from dark and gloom to over-driven glare while the camera tries to keep up. My poor old eyes adapt without effort and barely a noticeable delay. The camera needs better-optimized algorithms... but I don't see a way to update its onboard firmware, even if Oregon Scientific provides a download remember, I've got a Mac.
Given the failings of the mount, I think the camera really, really, really should have had image stabilization. I'd pay another hundred or two for the same camera with either optical or digital image stabilization.
DURABILITY: Can't really comment on that, as I've yet to really abuse it.
SOFTWARE: I've got a Mac at home, so the software doesn't exist for me. That means, the GPS module doesn't exist for me either, since you can access it's features only if your computer runs the software.
OVERALL: I guess I'll keep it. Maybe buy a GoPro HERO 1080HD. Mount the Hero looking forward, and mount the ATC9K looking back. Knowing what I know now, I would/should have gone GoPro. Not by a huge margin, but... Hope this helps somebody making their choice.
kevin (Ottawa, Canada)
1 Integrated shock and water resistance built in not in some plastic outer case. I didn't like taking my camera in and out of the case, and then in the wet weather risking exposure of my delicate Contour or GoPro to the elements. No worries with the Oregon Scientific.
2 Lots of mounting accessories included with the 9K. It cost more for the camera in the box, but costs about the same by the time I added the Contour protective case, the bike mount, and the helmet mount. More mounting options and adaptability with twist of the camera (not possible with the GoPro) in the housing and/or pivot of the housing base.
3 Integrated LCD. What you see is what you get. Why pay more for some add-on. I want to review right now in my extreme sport live in case we need another take/ski run to get a better shot to know everything is lined up in the shot now and avoid any surprises when I get home and download.
4 Optional GPS tracker and the integrated G force sensor are an absolute must for an action camera. Oregon Scientific knows this business and builds a great product. The PC interface is awesome.
5 Better audio than the rest. No outer protective housing to muffle the sound.
If you get an Oregon Scientific ATC 9K enjoy!
If you get a GoPro Hero good luck with that!I got some really great amateur snorkeling video up until I lost the camera. Fortunately I had downloaded it before loosing it. I had the camera attached to the strap base with a lanyard which was attached to my wrist. While swimming the strap base detached from the camera. When I reached for the camera to do some recording the lanyard was attached to my wrist and the camera base. The camera was gone. So somewhere on a beach in Hawaii or floating in the Pacific ocean is a perfectly good ATC9K camera. Reading other reviews I find that the attachment system for this camera is weak so be cautious with it.This is a great helmet cam. It is the second one i have owned. I sold the first one, there was nothing wrong with it and it had survived several crashes. I use it when I race motocross. The video is great and the camera mounts and removes very easy. The GPS is a great added feature, however only works in their program. Only drawback is that it records in MOV and QuickTime is need to view and edit video.I'll make it short:
pro:
the display is awesome to control your recording angle and review taken shots. I don't know how Go Pro users manage to get along without it...
the controls are easy to reach and the remote control is even better. :)
image quality in the sun is really nice
inexpensive (at least in Germany) in comparison to the Go Pro
con:
the mounts are wobbly and fragile. I had to be VERY creative to get them into a stable position (I succeeded, though, with duct tape and metal plates). After half a year of frequent use, some of the plastic mounts start showing cracks and will probably break in the near future.
shutter speed is bad, if you have fast changes of light (riding in a forest with sun coming through the trees), the image gets quite blurry
All in all, it's a nice cam if you want to put some special time in it trying to create a custom mount. For out of the box use, it's NOT worth the title "action cam". Yes, you might be able to attach it to the inside of your car without ever having a problem, but as soon as it gets rough (mountainbike, freeskiing, rafting), expect shaky results and short lasting plastic mounts. :/
However, one final piece of advice: NO action camera will ever give you raw footage like the one you see in all those pro videos on youtube. The key to a great POV video is the shooting setup (creative angles, a fixed point/something/one that you're filming in front of you, no contre-jour!!, ALWAYS record in 60fps if you're filming fast things) and EDITING!!! With a decent editing program (Magix Movie Edit Pro Plus, Final Cut), you can make an awesome edit out of crappy footage.
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