It's easy to just toss aside the news of the new Sony action cam as "late to the game" or "too late to matter." However, I beg that you give this little guy a chance, and maybe think a little bit about what it means for the industry.
In all honesty I am writing a piece on gear that I know very little about and rarely use, but more view this as a market-based overview. With the announcement of Sony's new Action Cam, many have called it out as too little too late, since GoPro has already established itself as the run-and-gun mini HD camera of choice. The truth of the matter is that Sony seems to have released a competitive camera to the GoPro, and said camera happens to be released after the GoPro. All things held constant, it would take a very pessimistic outlook to say that it is too late for this camera.
As much as I have had a good time with the GoPro system, it boils down to not cameras, but markets. GoPro did a great job at exposing a market and catering to it very well. We all wanted a camera that was cheap in case we destroyed it, robust to resist us destroying it, and small so we were less likely to destroy it. The fact that the camera took great quality video was a plus.
Now Sony has entered this market with a camera that looks to have rather comparable specs and even a few benefits over the GoPro. Do I think is will have the market saturation that the GoPro does? No, but I do find it to be a viable camera that should be considered rather than written off. This camera looks slick, and just because the game is already being played doesn't mean other players can't try out for the team. The mini-HD cam is here to stay, so now it's up to companies like Sony to refine and improve upon what already exists.
Close your mind off to the opportunities that a piece of gear may present, and you have limited your art to your pride.
Ok, ok. I have dismissed it like you say. So now i'll go check it out.
In for at least one... (I'm most intrigued by the form factor and the high FPS)
The 120fps thing is what they need to be shouting about the loudest, as I think there are a lot of people that would buy it for extreme sports stuff just based on that (even if the rest of the package was sub-par, which it does not look to be).
GoPro may be the biggest name in the game, but far from the only one. There's this Sony, the Contour range, and several other action-cams besides, some offering more than others in various areas. Too late for Sony to step in? Well, that depends on the quality of the product; If they can produce a fair value product, there's no reason they can't get their oar in for this market.
i dont understand why people are so complacent with their go pros. I am constantly finding issues that bug me or could easily be improved upon. Go pros are far from great they just had a jump start with advertising.
I'm a gopro user, but I really like this camera. 120fps in 720, wifi, IS. But not modular like a gopro. thats the only con so far. I like the backpack system for gopros.
aerodynamic clean ergonomic buttons 120 keep the improvements coming
to be more accurate, GoPro have developed a name for them self by coming to the market after VHoldR / Contour and got popular by giving cash rebates back to sales people that pushed their product.
Hence they got massive market saturation.
There is already a half dozen competing and better products than GoPros on the market at similar(ish) price points.
its great that sony has entered this market.
sony can bring in lot of improvements really quick into this segments unlike gopro who being a dedicated company have a smaller crew.
sony can share their tech from other cameras into this one and make it much better.
and the best thing the prices are gonna come down in thanksgiving :)
I'm really looking forward to seeing some real world footage from this guy. Ironically (or perhaps sadly), the demo reels Sony has on their website look like crap. I assuming/hoping they aren't representative of what the camera can do.
I second the 120fps feature. That's a big deal at 720p for this market. This actually looks pretty promising. I think it's mainly the mounts that will make the camera though. GoPro definitely has that on lock.
The biggest gripe for me is the release date, I am looking to buy an action camera at this very moment and would wait a few days for Sony if I knew it would come out in early September. But they just state September, so it could be a four week wait before I can even order it! When will camera manufacturers learn to be more specific? According to B&H it comes out 30th september.
So what are the benefits ?
A summary would have been nice.
(Yes I can go look, but would have been good to have them here)