But I was totally wrong, and it’s pretty amazing how good the video and photo quality is as well as the quality of the camera itself as well as the accessories and the usefulness of it. all. Don’t get me wrong – it isn’t in the same category as the big boys when it comes to action cams but it is quite good for the price.
I guess I’ll start with a few of the negatives though.
The single button on the camera works fine, especially once you get used to the ends and outs of either tapping it or holding it for a bit, depending on what function you are using. But it really should either start recording or have an option to start recording as soon as it’s turned on, rather than this being accomplished with two button presses instead of one (one longer press to turn it on, another to start recording – not that hard though). Reading this over – this may be a bit nitpicky.
And there’s no way to take photos with the button itself, you do have to use the app while the camera is connected to take any photos. You may or may not care about the ability to take photos via the button. If you have the camera resolution set to the maximum (12mp) then you get the same resolution as the HD quality video anyway, so maybe you need the ability to take photo while it is in standalone mode, or not – but you can always grab a still from the video itself no matter what.
Sample still shot above – HD and 4k sample videos at the end of this post.
The app itself is okay, it does the job and after a few minutes of messing around it’s pretty easy to work out. You do have to connect directly to the camera‘s Wi-Fi to do anything while using the app, and it does go through the process fairly quickly once you have it set up. It would be a little awkward for some people the first time around, I suppose.
So onto the camera itself and the stuff I liked about it.
The camera looks great, really nice design, and has a well-manufactured housing and wow; it looks real pro quality in general. The plastic is solid and well-fitting.
The side has a little plastic/rubber water-resistant cover for the SD card and the USB-C charger. You can also use the camera as a webcam while connected to this USB-c port. They included a USB cable of moderate length.
It came with SD card already inserted and formatted, 64 gb.
In addition to the SD card port and USB-C port, there is a small push button that can be held down to reset the camera.
The USB-C also is your computer interface if you want to connect directly to the camera for downloading video or photos or using it as a webcam or charging it, and the nice thing here is that you can charge the unit while you’re recording. Which means you could power it with a power bank or something like that for more recording time, though you might look into a 90-degree USB-C connector so it’s not sticking out of the side. The light on the front changes color when it is fully charged.
One of the best features is that the H88 body cam / action cam is very small and fairly unobtrusive. As it says in the description on Amazon; it is about the size of your thumb. Possibly in some occasions you might want to cover the blue flashing light with a bit of electrical tape to really hide it.
The cover around the lens’s cover protrudes out from the body, slightly providing a little protection for the lens cover itself, and I suppose I might say this is a bit of a negative as it could possibly be more susceptible to scratching as the lens cover is very very close to the level of that ridge protecting it. It would be nice if it were more indented a bit, but that would add some size to the overall unit I suppose.
To power on the camera you hold the single button down for a short time and the blue light comes and it vibrates briefly to show that it’s powered on and in standby. Having that vibration function – which is nice – allow you can go through the camera’s functions without actually looking at the light if you feel for that vibration indication.
Once powered on it is in standby and eventually powers down after about 3 minutes, if nothing else is done with it.
To start recording you press this button again briefly, the camera vibrates again to tell you that it’s now recording and the blue light slowly flashes.
To stop it you just press the button again and to shut it down you hold the button down a little longer. Very very easy.
To connect to the app make sure the camera is turned on and in standby mode and then press the button twice quickly and it switches to Wi-Fi mode, with the green light flashing quickly, then you just follow the prompt in the app for connecting.
When the app is connected to the camera, you can set the resolution for the recording mode, with video options that go from a low resolution through HD and up to 4K with the maximum resolution of 2840×2160. The lens is a bit of a wide angle range and video is saved in pretty standard 16:9 MP4 30fps video format.
There are a few other options, all pretty basic and straightforward stuff like being able to adjust the exposure level, and other options, etc.
The video itself is pretty good, I would say medium-quality and everything is fairly clear and identifiable. I mean it’s obviously not the absolute highest quality like some of the real expensive action cams, but it’s a cut above some of the other moderate-priced ones that I have and certainly much better than any real cheap ones I’ve tried. Some of which are nearly unusable.
And the H88 body cam / action cam also does record audio fairly well and from up to a medium distance. The microphone is right under the lens, and seemingly also quite wide angle in recording.
Battery life is rated at 2 hours and I suppose I’m getting about this. But I’m using mostly medium resolution and I haven’t really tested at the highest resolution for a long period of time, but it is a very good battery life for such a tiny camera.
There is no mention of image stabilization, I do not believe that it has it.
To set the options of course you need to connect the app, using the camera’s Wi-Fi and then you have access to things like resolution and setting the time and date and also seeing the video in real time. And the ability to take pictures as well as video and downloading the pictures and photos.
It records on a loop and you should be able to set the interval but for some reason the interval setting does not seem to do anything,it is set at 5 minutes despite making any changes. The loop will overwrite older video when the SD card fills up, there is no other option that I can see for this – get a larger SD card if you find yourself overwriting video.
One thing to note here is that when you are previewing the video and pictures these are just medium quality and just for preview, and when you want to actually put them on your phone and save them in full resolution then you must transfer them from the app into your album via the download. Or you can plug the camera into your computer via the USB-C or take the SD card out and access it.
Speaking of that, one of the accessories they give you is a USB dongle that has an SD/TF card reader on the end of it in case this is the route you undertake for downloading photos and videos. Though it works just fine through the phone or via the USB-C cable. I recommend getting used to downloading (for full quality) photos and videos onto the phone rather than the wear and tear of plugging in the USB when you aren’t charging, or the high wear and tear of pulling the SD card out and inserting it into a reader and then back again.
You can manually set the date and time by plugging it into a computer via the USB-C port and accessing a file called time and its root directory and setting the time and date and that. Possibly a holdover from the days before there was a connected app.
So theoretically you could use the H88 body cam / action cam without ever even connecting it to an app. But you aren’t getting the benefits of changing settings and possibly other features.
There’s also a quick instruction booklet for getting you started on button presses and setting up the app and things like that. By the way the app does come in Android and iOS versions, which you can easily access by searching for Viidure or using the QR code in the instructions.
The camera itself seems fairly weather resistant with the rubber cover over the ports but there is also a totally waterproof enclosure, capable of protecting it down to 30 meters deep. This is a really nice quality waterproof enclosure with its own waterproof button and a really good-looking seal and clamp system. It even comes with its own little instructions.
If you’re going to use this as a body cam or action cam for personal use and not on a vehicle or other device then probably one of the first things you want to investigate is the lanyard and magnetic base that you wear under your shirt. The back of the camera is magnetic so this pretty securely holds this through the cloth of your shirt. So far this has worked really, really well as it is a very strong magnet.
Of course, with thicker clothes, you’ll need to use another option. But this is kind of cool in that it just sort of hovers on the front of your shirt. And while it’s very strong I guess in general if I was doing some sort of very active exercise or other function then I might be worried about accidentally brushing the camera off. It would take some pressure for this to happen.
One of my favorite mounts that came with this is a clip mount that the H88 body cam / action cam just snaps into. This works if you have too thick of a jacket or something that the magnetic lanyard wouldn’t hold a camera through or if you’re afraid that the camera might get brushed or knocked off the magnetic mount.
Next, there is an outer ringed enclosure that holds the camera securely and which has the GoPro mount on one end. This means it can be mounted in this ringed enclosure in either direction, depending on whether you want the mount to be at the top or the bottom of the camera. This makes the camera completely compatible with GoPro mounting of pretty much any sort.
There are multiple GopRo compatible mounts included, including a clip-in one for equipment and clothing and backpacks that have the clip-in socket buckle and also it can slip into either of the two included stick-on buckles/adapters. Very strong tape is included for these. There are two receptacles and the double-sided tape pieces for them. There is also a 360 adjustable mount that fits in between any GoPro mount and the camera ring that holds it, so the H88 body cam / action cam can be positioned pointing in any direction.
Next there is also a rubbery enclosure with a strap, and an extra strap. Good for wearing around an arm or around other things of various sizes. I’m not exactly sure how the extra strap works.
Lastly and a bit of a negative, there is a GoPro bike handlebar mount, that can also attach to anything that has a comparable thickness for it to fit around like handholds, or another sort of handlebars or handrails or whatever, etc.
This is adjustable but not very widely. It does have a rubber spacer that can be taken out if needed but even taking that out – it’s not wide enough to fit around most bike handlebars. For smaller things it should be fine.
For my bike test video sample (below – the second part of the first video) I had to use a GoPro handlebar mount that I had from previous cameras and accessories.
One thing I noticed is I needed to bump up the exposure compensation in the app settings a little bit for days that weren’t the brightest. It recorded video fine and bright enough but very overcast and heading towards dark It needed a bit of a bomb. It does good at self-adjusting up to a point but I thought I got a better brighter picture when I tweak this a little bit depending on conditions.
I also wanted to try this during dark conditions like night time or near night time, but when there was still some light sizes nearby – in other words not complete darkness as I don’t expect it to be able to record anything in total darkness as there is no night vision mode.
Cranking up the exposure (pushing it to the left in the app) did allow me to record in fairly dark conditions and a somewhat adequate display. It’s not perfect for dark conditions but it’s somewhat usable and better than other cheapo ones.
I might not have really thought of this because I tend to not record things toward evening unless it’s with a still camera, but my friend and Toronto uses a body cam and some of his experiments with various body cams from Amazon seem to show some nearly unusable dark video conditions when he wanted to record something. So for me, it’s probably not something I’d use often but if you were using it as a body cam that might be much more important.
I may try cutting out a small lens cover anti-scratch shield and see how it adheres to the cover, just for a slight amount of extra protection over the lens cover.
Below are two very short videos, one in HD showing a short walk and bike ride and the other a short 4k sample. If the quality is low on these please open them in Youtube via the “Watch on YouTube link” at the bottom of the videos or the links to the left.
So, in ending this I would have to say that my final and current overall opinion about this H88 body cam / action cam is that it does record a good medium-quality video and photo, the camera looks really good and has a ton of nice and useful accessories and the basic options that you would need. Don’t expect the highest quality records, but expect a good average quality in general. The H88 body cam / action cam is a good little multi-purpose unit and is a very good item and well worth the low price for it, grab it at my link or one of the exact duplicates of it sold by other sellers.
Short Video demo – walking and biking
Short video demo – 8k recording
Longer video demo – 21 minute ride down the Black River Trail in Watertown, NY
