Rollei Actioncam 400 review

It might be distinctly boxier than some of Rollei’s other action cameras, but the Actioncam 400’s very keen price makes up for it – especially when that includes a comprehensive array of accessories as well as a camera capable of 1080p shooting at 30fps. Despite the entry-level price, the 78g camera is light enough to be unobtrusive when mounting one to a helmet.

The rubbery exterior texture provides plenty of grip, making it ideal for handheld use if you prefer to take it out of its waterproof case, which will let you dive to depths of 40m. There are plenty of other bundled accessories, including a bike mount, a helmet mounting plate, a pair of helmet straps and a pair of adhesive pads. Unfortunately, the quality of these pads left a lot to be desired; after using them to attach the camera to our remote control testing rig, they struggled to keep it secure, even when driving the car at low speeds.

Framing shots is easy thanks to the 2in LCD screen, which shows a live view of the camera’s sensor. The 960×240 resolution is perfectly adequate for a screen of this size, and is bright enough to use outdoors, although images do look rather grainy.

The power and record buttons are conveniently placed on the top of the camera, and the dedicated Wi-Fi button is a welcome addition. The physical buttons are useful for navigating the menus when changing settings, but the Rollei companion app for iOS and Android is much less fiddly. Your handset connects to the camera over Wi-Fi, which can be toggled quickly on and off using the dedicated button. Once paired, the app is quick to acknowledge the camera and all the settings you would expect are available to change.

Live view is available through the app, but it has a disorienting two second delay between what the camera sees and what is shown on-screen. The image is also heavily compressed, with lots of compression artefacts on the live feed. This is disappointing, considering other action cameras are able to provide a much clearer view over Wi-Fi.

Smartphone controls aren’t always practical, especially if you’re wearing gloves or need both your hands free, so it’s great to see a wrist-worn remote control included as well. It has three large buttons with LEDS that let you know when the camera is recording. It maintains a connection at up to a respectable 15m, and recharges over microUSB, much like the Actioncam itself. However, with a rated battery life of around 240 hours, you shouldn’t run out of juice in a hurry. We didn’t have to charge it at all throughout our testing, but the camera itself was a little disappointing, lasting just one hour and 15 minutes when recording in 1080p at 30fps.

The Actioncam 400 is rather limited in terms of recording resolutions, with only one other mode: 720p/60fps. There aren’t any options for faster framerates, even by sacrificing the resolution, which is fairly common on other action cameras. This is bad news for anyone looking to create dramatic slow-motion videos, as footage from this camera will be jerky when played at anything other than full speed. The 3-megapixel sensor can of course be used to snap still images as well as shoot video, and there’s also a timelapse setting for taking a sequence of photos at intervals between 5 and 60 seconds.

Unfortunately image quality isn’t particularly impressive, especially if you’re shooting through the waterproof case. It might add a degree of physical protection to the camera as well as keeping it watertight, but the lens struggles to focus through the case optics, leaving our test videos looking overly soft. This was the case both with the Actioncam in situ on our RC car, and when set up in a stationary position.

Shooting without the case definitely improved the picture, but our test footage still lacks a degree of sharpness. The corners of each clip were noticeably soft, and colour saturation was also a little too subdued for our liking. Video also wasn’t as stable as we would have liked, with a considerable amount of wobble as well as shearing evident in our RC car test footage. There wasn’t much in the way of barrel distortion, though, which is surprising for an action camera.

It might come with a commendable amount of accessories, and the wrist-worn remote control is genuinely useful, but the Actioncam 400 doesn’t do enough to excite, even at such a low price. Image quality left us disappointed, as did the insecure mounting pads. If you’re looking for an entry-level action camera, we would much rather stretch to the £150 Drift Stealth 2 for its far superior battery life and image quality – even if it means having to buy accessories separately.