EE 4GEE Action Cam Review

Great if you have 4G, not so great if you don't.

by Greg Hook
Tech Review

EE 4GEE Action Cam Review
MSRP: £249.99

What is the 4GEE Action Cam?

Recording every part of your daily life seems to be all the rage these days and with most people carrying around a 4K or HD camera built into their phone it has never been easier. It's slightly trickier when it comes to sport or similar activities such as mountain biking as phones tend to get easily lost/damaged/driven over. This is where the likes of the very popular GoPro come into their own.

Covering pretty much any activity you care to record, GoPro and other manufacturers offer a wearable camera to do the job. Whilst recording your favourite activity and then uploading it when you get home for all your Facebook 'friends' to see is great, what is now available on several devices is the ability to live stream that activity so you can immediately make everyone envious of what a brilliant day you are having. One such device is from mobile operator EE.

The 4GEE Action Cam, developed by BenQ, is claimed to be the world's first 4G action camera and offers up to 1080P HD recording at 30FPS and 13MP stills along with a Viewfinder Watch which gives you a live view of what the camera is seeing. Using a 4G sim card you can live stream via EE's Skeegle app. Priced at £239 with an allowance of 2GB of data, it has a lot to prove, so let's see how it performs 'out in the field'.

What about the design?

Starting with the camera itself, the 4GEE Action Cam is a basic all black design with no LCD screen. The top of the camera has a small OLED display showing the current time and settings and various other information such as battery life, storage percentage remaining, recording mode and network strength alongside the power/menu button and the recording button. To the side is the mini USB connection and the MicroSD card slot which can take up to 64GB capacity cards. Removing the rear cover reveals the battery and the SIM card slot.
4GEE

It's a little bulkier than the GoPro Hero 4 for example, which is to be expected with the extra space for the SIM card setup, coming in at 59 x 51 x 42mm and 70 x 65 x 68mm using the included waterproof housing. The camera itself weighs 126g and that increases to 234g when using the waterproof housing, compared to the GoPro Hero Black which is just 152g including housing. If you are using this mounted to a bike then the extra weight won't be a problem, but if it's going to be attached to your helmet all day the extra weight may be something to consider.

Out of the box you get the waterproof housing which features both a rear and bottom mount that is compatible with the GoPro mounts as well as a couple of accessory adaptors. A separate lightweight housing is also included but that provides the camera with very little protection, if any at all, it's just there for mounting. Even if you aren't doing anything likely to get the camera wet or dirty, we'd probably just leave it in the waterproof housing all the time and this separate housing seems fairly redundant.
4GEE

The overall build quality seems very good with the waterproof housing doing exactly what it should. Fully submerged in our pond for testing the camera survived the encounter and came away completely dry. The housing features the level style lock to the top that feels very tight and secure and whilst it feels strange putting an electronic device in water, the quality of the housing gives you the confidence that the camera is well protected.

Moving onto the watch and here we feel this is an area which lets the 4GEE Action Cam down. The watch looks and feels a bit too cheap for our liking. It looks like the sort of waterproof watch you'd probably pay £10 for at a market. Looks and feel aside, the Viewfinder watch is very easy to use and you can see the camera's live view allowing you to fine tune your mount to get the best picture, plus you can start and stop the recording directly from the watch. The quality of the display though is very poor, it's perhaps best used to simply line up the camera, providing you don't need to be too exact and we found the image would freeze if the camera was under water. The watch has a single power outlet on the side for connecting the charging cable. It also tells the time.
4GEE

Is the specification any good?

The 4GEE Action Cam comes equipped with 2.5GB of internal memory which can be expanded to 64GB via a MicroSD card. The Wi-Fi is 2.4Ghz 802.11 b/g/n and of course we have both 3G and 4G network coverage. The camera itself uses an Ultra-sharp f/2.8, 3.4mm optics giving a fish eye style image with up to 13MP still camera, which includes an 8FPS burst mode at 13MP and at 2.4MP this includes a GPS tag.

For the video recording we get 1080P HD at 30FPS and 720P HD at 30 or 60FPS. When live streaming is enabled the video is limited to 720P HD at 30FPS. The chunky little battery is a 2260mAH polymer Lithium-ion offering up to 3 hours of video recording (up to 1 1/2 hours for live view) which, on paper, is better than the likes of the GoPro Hero at 2 1/2 hours and the GoPro Hero 4 Black at around 1-2 hours.
4GEE

What about the initial setup and features?

BenQ have clearly worked hard to get the setup and operation as easy as possible on the Action Cam. With the SIM card inserted and the camera charged up, it is a simple process to pair the camera with the watch and then you are ready to start filming. The streaming side of things uses EE's own Skeegle app (although this isn't limited to EE's network) which is again very easy to use. It currently doesn't work for Periscope or Meerkat.

Before running Skeegle we first had to download a separate 4GEE Action Cam App. We then connected our phone to the WiFi network provided by the action cam and paired the camera to the phone. Once this had been completed we entered our Facebook details to create the live streaming account. Then onto Skeegle, which is a very well designed app, within the app you can create circles and then add friends to those circles. When you start live streaming, each of those friends in that circle you have chosen instantly receives a text message with a link to the live stream.

4GEE

Once the app is all configured, you don't even need to open it to start live streaming, meaning you could leave your phone packed safely away. With live stream mode selected on the camera you can start the stream either via the camera or by the watch, so if you are doing something crazy involving water then you have no fear of damaging your phone. During testing in a decent 4G area, the text message was received almost immediately the live streaming had started, once the link had been opened the delay appeared to be about 15-20 seconds. The quality was reasonable although there was some pixelation. With 4G absent the live streaming tends to be largely redundant, even in a decent 3G area, the video was very pixelated and prone to constant freezing.

This leads us on to the potential flaw with the Action Cam. With 4G very much limited to larger towns and cities and even 3G absent in many rural areas, given that the common types of activities for these types of cameras, such as mountain biking, running and hiking for example are usually done in the countryside where even a mobile phone signal is often absent, this therefore renders the live streaming functionality redundant. Of course the camera still works and you can record for uploading later, but given the importance placed on the live streaming side of the device, if you mostly plan to use it in the countryside then there could be far cheaper alternatives for simple recording.

4GEE

Is the recording quality any good?

We tested with a variety of scenarios, although sadly we did not engage in any extreme sports, so we can't show you any videos of kayaking or hand gliding! The recording quality in 1080P was reasonable without blowing us away, with the colours being slightly muted and washed out but the overall quality was there. The audio recording quality is OK, when used in the waterproof housing it does sound as if you are underwater even when you are not, which is to be expected. Out of the housing the audio still sounds slightly muffled, but clear enough. The two videos below give you an idea of what the quality we got. Please excuse the shakey cam!





A 1080P test video lasting 7 1/2 minutes came out at 1.05GB which equates to around 20Mbps whereas a 720P video of 11 1/2 minutes was 1.15GB which is about 14Mbps. You can see here that the included 2.5GB storage will not get you very far at all, with around 17 minutes of 1080P video using up all the capacity. MicroSD cards are available fairly cheaply with a 64GB card setting you back around £16. The still picture quality was a tad disappointing considering the 13MP specification. With no flash, low light conditions are a no-go area, but even in lighter conditions the picture appeared fairly grainy and lower quality than we were expecting, although the fish eye style lens does make for interesting pictures.

4GEE

Is it good value?

There are several ways of buying the Action Cam, outright for £239 with a PAYG sim with 2GB of data, £15 a month if you already have a 4GEE phone and can share the data, or £49.99 upfront and £15 a month for 2GB of data. With live streaming a 1 minute video used around 5MB of data, meaning that you would roughly be able to stream for 400 minutes for that 2GB of data. It doesn't sound like a lot but unless you have a massive audience, we'd think friends will probably get a bit bored watching you for over 6 hours every month doing something amazing whilst they sit at home or at work looking at their phone!

4GEE

There are several accessories available to help maximise you usage of the Action Cam, key ones being the bicycle mount and the helmet mount, both priced at £19.99 each and the chest mount for £24.99. If you do plan on recording for several hours, additional batteries are available for £24.99. It is worth mentioning again that out of the box the included accessory adapter is compatible with GoPro mounts.
4GEE

Conclusion

Pros

  • 4G live video streaming
  • Waterproof to 60m
  • Simple setup
  • Easy to use
  • Fits GoPro mounts

Cons

  • Bulky
  • Cheap viewfinder watch
  • Low resolution watch display
  • Limited use in non 4G areas
  • Video quality could be better

EE 4GEE Action Cam Review

The 4GEE Action Cam is a welcome addition to the action camera market but at £239 it does seem a tad overpriced. The live streaming is an excellent feature to have, works well and is extremely easy to setup but that's providing you have a strong 4G signal. If you are in the countryside with no 4G or at the very least a 3G mobile signal then the live streaming becomes mainly redundant.

It's biggest competitor the GoPro does have the ability to live stream via the free Livestream app, although this is currently for iOS devices only, but with the GoPro Hero4 Silver available for around £233 it makes the 4GEE Action Cam look an expensive and bulky proposition. It's saving grace may be the £15 a month contract option which if you can't afford to purchase outright looks very enticing.

The video quality when live streaming can often leave a lot to be desired, especially with a poor mobile signal which gave a very pixelated and often delayed image. When recording in 1080P it was good although the colours were far too washed out for our liking. We feel that EE have tried to include too much in the package to try and give them the edge over the competition. The Viewfinder watch is a nice touch but felt far too cheap and could easily have been left out to reduce the overall package cost significantly. If a fast 4G network was available in all parts of the country then the 4GEE Action Cam would have a real advantage over the competition, but it just doesn't have the goods to compete against the GoPro.

Scores

Build Quality

.
.
8

Connectivity

.
.
.
7

Ease of Use

.
.
8

Features

.
.
.
7

Video Image Quality

.
.
.
7

Still Image Quality

.
.
.
.
6

Value for Money

.
.
.
.
6

Verdict

.
.
.
7
7
AVForumsSCORE
OUT OF
10

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