Sure, the color and exposure is a bit off, the framerate of the 4K is too low (not real 4K) and the 1080p 60 looks like it’s been scaled up from 720p… But funny thing, from my preliminary tests this camera does better sharpness wise than many other cams I’ve tested that are also based on the Allwinner V3 / IMX179 (that are often 3x the price!). I can forgive a $25 cam for these issues but when resellers are selling these things for $75 – $150… Heck no! If you buy one, buy it at this price instead.

Initial impressions of this camera are very positive, and this camera is fast becoming one of my favorite real 4K cameras I’ve tested to date. The reason I prefer it over competitors such as the SJ7 Star or the ThiEYE T5e, is because it loudly beeps when buttons are pressed, compared to the other cameras, which only have soft beeping that is difficult to hear in the waterproof case.

While this camera may not have the best video quality of all the cams I’ve tested recently, it certainly has some of the best hardware, with a metal front plate and handsome orange accents. The camera feels well built in comparison to other cheap action cameras. Since this cam is based on the OV4689 4MP image sensor, it is not capable of real 4K.

I’m sure I called it the S7 several times in this video by accident. This cam looks very promising – I’m very fond of the user interface tweaks they’ve made. We’ll see how video quality holds up after more extensive testing. I only got to run it quick once last night before it was too dark out. Full review to come soon!

So many cams are based on the NT96660 processor, which results in fake 4K. The results are often less than stellar. The camera I used is the MGCool Explorer 1S (because it has pretty sharp video for Novatek). This is versus the ThiEYE T5e (real 4K). In order to get real 4K you need at least 8MP sensor, and many of these cams are advertised as 12, 14 or 16 but really have more like 4MP. This comparison shows a cam with a real 12 MP sensor. I’ll do another Novatek one with a 4MP cam later.

The Explorer 1S is your standard run-of-the-mill Novatek action cam without many improvements done to the default firmware. The video quality is decent in most situations but the gyro doesn’t seem to work. The cam has the potential to live up to other cameras that are a bit more expensive but that would require firmware updates on MGCool’s part (which I don’t currently expect).