Intova Sport Pro HD Video Camera

Intova Sport Pro HD Video Camera
Intova Sport Pro HD Video Camera

The concept of a handy action camera presented by the GoPro Hero is, without any doubt, cool, and has numerous applications. GoPro invested a lot on marketing the product, which resulted in huge sales of the camera at very high price.

The users were not divers or they would have come to know that they had to shell out for expensive accessories to use the cam. This is because the camera the white balance of the camera doesn’t seem to work under water, and the focus has the same issue.

Even after I purchased all the overpriced accessories, I was stuck with a cam taking bluish pictures under water. You might be thinking why I am talking about GoPro given the fact the title of this article is about Intova sport HD II review, which is about Intova Sport Pro HD video camera.

Actually, GoPro is the cam we are going to compare the Intova Sprot HD with. This is because most people already know a lot about and they will most likely compare Intova with GoPro before making a purchase decision. Let us go ahead and read this review to know more about the product.

Design: 5/10

With respect to design, the Intova Sport HD is impressive. The cam features a cam, a tripod mount, a few buttons, manually controlled white balance, and so on. It gives you the feel of a real camera when in use.

After a few years of experience dealing with the GoPro insufficiencies, I can safely say that the Intovoa is the first camera that helps me get my job done much better. And the upside is that the cam is very reasonably priced.

At first look, the cam looks very familiar and the features that make it different from other cams are its flat lens, the small screen and the buttons allowing you to control the camera with ease, just like on other cameras.

Besides, the camera has been built into a water-tight housing. Since the cam is made to be used in the housing, it is not a good idea to get it out of the housing for use.

On the back, you can see a MicroSD card slot that can be used to increase the storage capacity of the card. It has other users too. On the whole, the cam feels sturdy and the back door is to open and close.

Performance: 6/10

On first use, it may be a bit hard for you to get used to the buttons as the button are not as responsive as they should be. The menu gives all the required options that can be found in the regular point-and-shoot cameras, such as time stamps, image and video quality options, white balance, display settings and so on. All of the options improve the performance of the camera.

While not in use, the cam will switch off its screen to save power. Alternatively, you can turn off the screen manually with the leftmost button located on the backside of the cam. While recording a video, you can also take advantage of the digital zoom feature for better performance.

Well, you can capture photos at 5MP with is a piece of cake for this camera. For high quality photos, you may want to go for a high-end DSLR camera. But it does take decent photos. As far as video recording is concerned, you can take VGA as well as Full HD videos. The footages are very clear. You may want to update the firmware for recording long videos.

Usability: 6/10

Intova have been used to shoot photos and videos under water for a while, so their products are compatible with the variety of cameras, rigs and lights they offer. The can be easily pimped with off-camera lights, red-filters, white balance wristbands, adapters, intova pod and so on.

The camera offers a lot of good things in addition to a few things that need to be improved. The camera does a lot of things that we cannot do with the GoPro. Overall, the camera is easy to use and does everything it should; however, the company doesn’t claim that it can do everything.

It’s in-built screen can be used as a viewfinder, and it can be used for menu operations too. Underwater, the camera is easier to use because the majority of masks add to the visible size of objects in water. If you are far-sighted and put on Sphera mask, it may be hard for you to shoot below the surface of water. But not many users are divers. It is important to note that the use of screen or the act of checking the image quality for analysis of the popular free diving method is not possible, as expected.

For use underwater, there is no preset options for white balance. However, you can manually configure the white balance, which is a bit annoying. There should have been a button to set the white balance automatically. We are hopeful that this feature will be added in the next upgrade.

One thing that made the usability of the cam suffer is the absence of user-exchangeable battery. This cam doesn’t let you swap batteries. With GoPro, you can change batteries whenever you feel the need to. This is not a huge problem, though. If batteries are treated well, they will last several years. Plus, the battery life of this device is excellent.

If you are looking for wireless features, don’t look at this cam. In simple words, this cam doesn’t offer any wireless features. The shutter button operation is based on power saving. For instance, when the screen is off, press the shutter button and it will turn on the screen once again rather than stop recording. This means you need to push the button once again.

As far as accessories go, the camera comes with a lot of them, but the fact is that you don’t need to use any of them when recording under water. However, they do improve the use, but are not needed.

Value: 6/10

if you are on the lookout of a cam with lots of features, such as protection against water, high quality video performance and reasonable price, maybe Intova Sport HD is your best bet. There is no reason to go for a GoPro, unless, of course, you need to use the advanced features of the camera, such as 3D filming and arrays.




Rate article
Add a comment