Budget action cameras

SJCAM carried the SJ20's two-lens idea forward and gave each lens its own sensor and processing path — a 1/2-inch daylight sensor, and a 1/1.8-inch starlight sensor behind an f/1.8 lens for night — which is a more serious piece of engineering than the price suggests. The headline is 8K, and the honest reading of it is 8K at 20 fps — below the 24 fps that reads as motion, so it is a stills-adjacent mode rather than a usable video one; 4K60 is the real ceiling. What is unambiguously good is endurance: a 2000 mAh internal cell plus a 4200 mAh power handle gives a claimed seven hours at 4K30, which only SJCAM's own C400 beats here. Horizon lock is the 45-degree kind, which corrects lean but not rotation.

AKASO's flagship, and the only one of its single-lens cameras with a 1/2-inch sensor rather than the 1/2.3-inch chip the others share. Two colour screens, 4K60, 48 MP stills, 10 m of bare waterproofing and two 1550 mAh batteries in the box put it on paper somewhere near a mid-range DJI. In use the gap shows where budget cameras always show it: stabilisation that copes with walking but not with vibration, a noticeably slower interface, and no horizon lock, which is the single feature that makes handlebar and helmet footage watchable. At AKASO's price it costs more than a DJI Osmo Action 4, which has more than twice the sensor area — the comparison to make before buying.

The cheapest camera in this catalogue, and it has been AKASO's volume seller for years by being exactly what a first action camera needs to be: 4K30, a touchscreen, a waterproof case, a remote, a mountain of plastic mounts and a price that makes the decision easy. It is also where every corner has been cut. There is no bare waterproofing, no horizon lock, no USB-C, no published weight or runtime, and stabilisation that only works below 4K. The realistic use is a kid's first camera, a snorkelling trip, or a second angle nobody will grade. Anyone planning to actually edit the footage should read the GoPro HERO row instead and find the extra money.

Sold as a 4K60 camera, and the spec sheet on Campark's own site quietly says otherwise: native 4K is 3840×2160 at 30 fps, and the 60 fps mode runs at 3200×1800 — upscaled to look like 4K in the file. That is worth knowing, because it is a pattern across the sub-$100 tier rather than one brand's failing, and it is the reason this catalogue records a native resolution and frame rate rather than the box copy. What you get for $89 is a competent daylight camera with a touchscreen, two batteries, a 40 m case and standard GoPro mounting. Electronic stabilisation cannot run alongside distortion correction, so you pick one. The card ceiling is 64 GB, which is low.

Cheapest dual-screen camera in the catalogue, and the front display is the only reason to pick it over Campark's own X30. At under $90 it does the basics: native 4K30, 20 MP stills, 10 m of bare waterproofing — which several cameras three times the price do not offer — and a 40 m case for anything deeper. Everything about the image is what the price implies, and the list of things it does not have is long: no horizon lock, no log profile, no published bitrate, no 4K slow motion. It is a camera for a pool, a first bike, or a second angle on a trip, and nothing about it pretends otherwise once you get past the packaging.

Under a hundred dollars with a touchscreen, electronic stabilisation, 4K30 and a 40 m case, which is roughly the floor of what is worth buying at all in this category. The honest framing is that this is a snorkelling and holiday camera: put it in the case, take it in the water, and accept that the footage will look like $99 the moment the light drops or the mount vibrates. Against the V50 Elite it gives up 4K60 and voice control to cost less. Against a GoPro HERO, at about twice the price, the trade is closer than the badge suggests: the HERO goes to 5 m with no case at all, but it only stabilises footage afterwards in GoPro's Quik app, while the V50X does it in camera — which is the comparison most people should actually run before the price tag decides it.

Six years old and still selling, because a dual-screen 4K camera with an external microphone jack under $150 does not otherwise exist. The front screen is the reason people buy it, because it lets you frame yourself, and the mic input means a lav or shotgun can replace the tinny built-in audio that ruins most budget footage. What you accept is a 4K ceiling of 30 fps, so no slow motion above 1080p, and an IPX7 rating that means splashes rather than swimming — the 40 m case is not optional if it is going near water. Treat it as a cheap talking-head and travel camera rather than a sports one.

AKASO's long-running budget workhorse, and the cheapest camera in this catalogue that shoots 4K at 60 fps rather than 30 — which, on a bike or a board, is the difference between footage you can slow down and footage you cannot. Voice control is unusual at the price too. Everything else is what this price buys in 2026: a 1/2.3-inch sensor, electronic stabilisation that smooths a walk and not much more, no bare waterproofing at all so the supplied 40 m case does all the work, and a camera design that has not changed since 2019. AKASO does not publish a weight, a bitrate or a runtime for it, which tells you something about the documentation standard across the budget tier.

A pocket-shaped body rather than a GoPro-shaped one, and the whole design is organised around recording for hours: a 1000 mAh camera battery that clips into a 2800 mAh grip, for a claimed six hours at 4K30. That makes it a body-cam and vlogging tool more than a sports camera, which is how SJCAM markets it. Dual touch screens, six-axis gyro stabilisation, a 30 m case. The limits are the usual ones at $159 — 4K30 with no horizon lock, no bare waterproofing, and no published bitrate — plus a form factor that does not sit as well on a helmet as a standard action-camera body does.

Drop the 1/2-inch sensor from the Brave 8, shrink the front screen to 1.22 inches, keep the 4K60, the 48 MP stills, the two 1550 mAh batteries and the 10 m bare waterproofing, and the price comes down to $199. That is a reasonable trade, and the wristband remote AKASO adds is arguably more useful on a helmet than any screen you cannot see while riding. The sensor drops to the 1/2.3-inch chip most budget cameras use, so low light is where this gives up first. What it is genuinely good at is being the camera you take somewhere you would not take a $400 one: two batteries, a full mount kit, a case rated to 40 m, and nothing to cry about if it comes off a handlebar.

SJCAM has been building GoPro-shaped cameras longer than most of the brands that undercut it, and the SJ11 Active is its mainstream model: a Sony sensor behind an Ambarella processor, dual screens, 5 m of bare waterproofing and 30 m in the case. At roughly 18 mm² its sensor is among the smallest in this catalogue, which matters more than the 20 MP on the box. Where it does well is the dual-screen layout and a 4K30 image that holds together in daylight. Slow motion is 1080p120, there is no horizon lock, and SJCAM rates the 1300 mAh battery at 100 minutes of 4K30.

Two lenses on the front, and neither of them is for 360 capture. One is an f/2.0 daylight lens; the other is an f/1.3 night lens, and the camera switches between them. It and the newer SJ30 are the only cameras in this catalogue that answer low light with a second, faster lens rather than a bigger sensor or noise reduction, and for night riding or filming from a car that is a genuinely different answer. The cost shows up everywhere else: each lens sits on a small 1/2.8-inch sensor, 4K stops at 30 fps, the bitrate is 25 Mbps — the lowest figure in this catalogue, and low enough that fast motion visibly falls apart — and there is no horizon lock. It did surprise on endurance: in road.cc's four-camera drain test it stopped within three minutes of the DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro, about half an hour after the Insta360 Ace Pro 2.

A 54 g camera module that drops into a handle carrying a 3000 mAh battery and a big rotating screen — the same split-body idea as the DJI Osmo Nano and Insta360 GO Ultra, executed for well under their price. Seven hours and seventeen minutes at 4K30 with the handle attached is the number SJCAM leads with, and only its own SJ30 comes close. What it does not have is the sensor those two carry: 1/2.8-inch against their 1/1.3-inch and 1/1.28-inch, a quarter of the imaging area, which is the whole difference in low light. Nor is there bare waterproofing. Read this as a very long-running vlogging camera rather than a small flagship.