The action camera market couldn’t be more vibrant in 2020. Obviously, there are not many outdoor activities going on, but that doesn’t stop people from having adventures, broadcasting from home and documenting their lives on these miniature all-weather cameras.
Up until recently, almost all mid- and low-end cameras were just accurate “tributes” to the style and functionality of the pricey GoPro cameras which started the craze. But now things have moved on and newer action camera makers are finding their voice. Right at the front of that mid-range development is the AKASO Brave 6 Plus Action Camera.
AKASO Brave 6 Plus Action Camera
The AKASO Brave 6 Plus is a modern, full-featured mid-range action camera. It shoots in resolutions up to 4K at 30FPS and full HD and regular HD at a variety of useful frame rates. The camera features Wi-Fi connectivity, still images up to 20MP, a dedicated driving mode for use as a car DVR, slow motion and timelapse modes, and a loop-recording mode for security. It comes with a full pack of accessories to attach it to you and your vehicles, including an all-weather water- and dust-proof case for extreme environments and a very nice little USB dual charger with two batteries.
Also included is a remote trigger in the form of a watch which you can wear on your wrist. This comes in handy when the camera is attached to a helmet or somewhere else you can’t reach it. All in all, it’s a great action camera kit with most things you’ll probably need.
Review and Evaluation
In such a saturated market, it’s quite hard to distinguish your product, but AKASO does a pretty good job. The camera is very nicely built, with a reassuring solid build quality with all the parts fitting together perfectly. This is not a cheaply produced item – it has the look and feel and heft of a well-made piece of equipment.
The lens is very wide. It’s designed to be wide enough that wherever you point it, the subject is in the frame. This shoot-from-the-hip camera will capture the entire scene in a fast-moving situation when you can’t carefully frame shots. You’ll notice, for example, in the demo shots I took in my lockdown garden that flowers close to the lens are a bit out of focus. That’s my fault for trying to get the whole plant to fill the frame with such a wide lens. You’ll notice the bits that are in focus are nice and sharp.
The color rendition is actually really nice. A lot of these cameras have a very nasty plasticky tone to the photos, but this is really rather lovely. As far as optics go, I wasn’t expecting much, but the lens is actually pretty good. There is a little little bit of chromatic aberration (red and blue lines on vertical edges) when shooting into the light, as you’d expect on anything other than really high-end coated lenses. The effect is really minimal and not noticeable in videos. At this price point, the lens quality is good.
Obviously, the high-resolution sensor helps with any minor shortcomings of the optics, the 4K shooting is a very nice quality, and the videos you get are crisp and sharp. But shooting 4K means large files, so while you get top-quality images at this resolution, you need to bear this in mind when shopping for SD cards.
Bigger is better, and you should definitely use high-quality SD cards where you can, as the data throughput for 4K is a fat wad of bits. Get the fastest, highest-capacity cards you can to ensure no dropouts or corruption. I used some cheap cards during testing, and the camera struggled to get the images on the disk at times. That’s not the camera’s fault, it’s mine. This is a known issue with all cameras, so bear it in mind.
The included accessories are brilliant, although you have to download the detailed manual (from a QR code link) for instructions. I would have preferred this to be a hard copy, but I guess printed manuals are pricey. In the PDF manual is a link to an instructional video which tells you how to put it all together. (It’s for a slightly earlier version of the camera but still works for the mounts, etc.)
As well as mounts for clipping it to your clothing, there are helmet mounts, tripod mounts, and adapters for selfie sticks, etc. For my money, one of the best accessories in the pack is the remote control, which triggers stills or video with two buttons on a wrist-mounted pod. Not only is this a boon when you can’t touch the camera (such as when it’s on a helmet or the other end of a surfboard), but it’s very handy to eliminate camera shake in general terms when the camera is on a tripod. Also, there are zip ties and metal cables to prevent the camera getting lost if a mount comes unstuck when you are up high or moving fast.
One of my favourite features and one which takes this camera to a whole other level is the Wi-Fi connectivity. You can use it to take selfies when the camera is out of reach while looking through the viewfinder on the screen of your phone. This is good for nature photography where you want to only run the camera while there are birds on your bird table, for example. Just hit the shutter button on the phone screen to take pictures or video.
Also worth mentioning in the overflowing feature set is voice activation, where you can talk to your camera like it’s a smart speaker to turn it off and on hands-free. That’s very neat but obviously only feasible in quiet situations.
This link, Demo Shots and Videos, will take you to a Google folder with raw footage and still shots so you can see the real quality. YouTube compresses the videos horribly, and you don’t get a true flavor.
Availability of AKASO Brave 6 Plus
The AKASO Brave 6 Plus is a good quality and robust action camera with a generous pile of accessories for you to have fun filming your adventurous life experiences. The price for the kit as shown is $119.99, which in my opinion is good value for what you get. My review here only really scratches the surface of this camera, and as a photographer, I appreciate the way they’ve provided a camera which is easy to get into and just use, but which contains hidden depths for you to explore.
Also check out our review of the AKASO V50 Pro Action Camera.
This is a sponsored article and was made possible by AKASO. The actual contents and opinions are the sole views of the author who maintains editorial independence even when a post is sponsored.
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Phil South –
Contributor
Phil South has been writing about tech subjects for over 30 years. Starting out with Your Sinclair magazine in the 80s, and then MacUser and Computer Shopper. He’s designed user interfaces for groundbreaking music software, been the technical editor on film making and visual effects books for Elsevier, and helped create the MTE YouTube Channel. He lives and works in South Wales, UK.
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