BOBLOVA21 64GB 1080P Body Worn Camera, 180° Rotate Body Camera, IR Body Camera of 8 Hours Video Recording, Camcorder for Delivery/Lecture Record/Traveling

It is a sad world when ordinary people are considering body cameras for protection. Whether you are a jogger, dog walker, drone flyer, or someone who sometimes works alone with a colleague of the opposite gender, a body camera can provide undeniable evidence in case of an altercation. The Boblov A21 is obviously a Chinese generic device rebranded, but it is one of the better units I have found. As usual with these generic devices, the 'Chinglish' instructions are poor, but the device is easy to get the hang of. The A21 charges in 3 hours and records for 8 hours (confirmed), which already puts it into a different category than most other Chinese body cameras, as that long battery life lets you use it for an entire working day. It can record just audio, or audio and video, and has a manual low light mode, where you can turn on four infrared leds and the camera will record fairly decent black and white footage. You can certainly see what was going on in pitch darkness for around 3 metres. The video files report as full HD (1920x1080), but you need to be outside in bright light for the recordings to look even close to full HD. Indoors, the footage looks somewhere between 360p and 480p depending on the lighting. But don't let that put you off, because the A21 has an ace up it's sleeve. The vast majority of Chinese covert cameras and body cameras have no infrared filters in the lens, to try and make the cameras as sensitive as possible. This is why most cheap mini cameras produce footage with a purple tint. The A21 does not do this, and tries it's best to reproduce more accurate colours in all lighting except full darkness, when you use the infrared illuminators. So the footage might be closer to standard definition, but the colours look more natural than any other mini camera I have tried. The A21 also has a few welcome features that hint that a bit of thought has gone into it. For example, you turn the camera on by long-pressing the power button, but the 'working' indicator is on the opposite side of the unit, meaning that you are not trying to look past a finger to see the little light. There is also a neck lanyard hole, that lets you clip the camera to a pocket, but save it from a tumble if you knock the camera off your clothes. You set up the camera functions by recording a little bit of footage to the included memory card, then either attach the camera directly to a computer, or place the card in a card reader. The camera will have saved a text file to the card. The text file contains an alphanumeric code. You refer to the instruction booklet and change the letters and/or numbers to set up things like the date, time, default resolution and whether you want the camera to fill a memory card and stop recording, or work like a car dashcam and start to overwrite the oldest video files. The supplied 64Gb memory card can hold more footage than the 8 hour recording time, so you will always have a full day of recordings. You can also turn on features like video movement detection/recording. The camera is set by default to record at max resolution with motion detection off and the date/time showing in your recording. You also need to decide which way round you are going to use that rotating lens. By default, the video files will be the right way up when the camera is clipped to the outside of a shirt pocket. If you want to rotate the lens and use the camera inside a shirt pocket, with just the clip showing outside the pocket, then the setup file needs editing, to rotate the video recordings 180 degrees, otherwise your recordings will be upside down when you play them back. There is no image stabilisation, but you could always run any important footage through any free de-shaker software. Because of the default loop recording feature, the A21 functions as a decent dash camera. It also takes decent photographs either while video recording is on or off, and saves them in a separate folder on the memory card. So if you wanted, you could use the A21 as a dashcam during your drive to work, as a body camera during the day, and take evidential photographs of any little fender-benders, all without ever turning the video and audio recorder off. Like I said, it is not perfect, but it is by far the best effort I have seen for the price so far.