Sony HDR-AS15 Action Cam review - Hands on

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Posted on 10 Jan 2013 at 00:58, by Seth Barton

The Sony HDR-AS15 Action Cam is the company's answer to the popular GoPro devices, and it's a pretty good answer at that. Its £259 UK list price puts it up against the GoPro Hero3 Silver Edition - which costs around £250. And the two are largely comparable when it comes to features.

Here's the AS15 in a basic head strap mount

Like the GoPro, the AS15 comes with a waterproof housing good for up to 60m depth, and it too has built-in Wi-Fi, so you can hook it up to your smartphone to share video, pics, or even control the camcorder remotely.

Controls are as basic as you'd expect

Like the GoPro it has a superwide angle lens - 170 degrees in this case. It can shoot in 1080p at 30fps, at a bit-rate of 16Mbit/s, or you can use a slow motion mode at 720p at 120fps for super-cool slow-mo footage of your antics - this eats up 22Mbit/s. The GoPro meanwhile can only shoot 720p at up to 60fps, so that's a clear win for the AS15.

GoPro doesn't disclose the size of its camcorder's sensors, but we can't imagine they are bigger than the big 1/2.3in back-illuminated sensor in the AS15 - a sensor with that sort of technology should handle the vast majority of lighting conditions you'd want to undertake sports in - unless illegal nightime base jumping is your thing.

In its waterproof casing on a helmet mount

The AS15 includes Sony's SteadyShot electronic stabilisation, which should help even out the bumps, and it will be interesting to see how it compares to the GoPro in this regard.

Sony had a wide range of accessories on show - including one with an LCD screen that turns it into a traditional camcorder. Many were only concepts at present, but we included them below if only for the excellent canine mounting system or dog-cam. Whether or not those see shop shelves, the AS15 is a pretty impressive device and we look forward to an adrenaline pumping review.