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Imagine a 4K video camera that's no bigger than a box of matches, a camera that vloggers will love and everyone else will find great fun. If only it had better software and a better connection experience. Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ explains in detail and demonstrates the terrific video you can capture with the Akaso Keychain 4K VLOG Camera once you get it all working properly...
Check it out at https://www.AkasoTech.com/
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0:00
Believe it or not, this is a 4K video camera. Let's check it out
0:11
Dave Taylor here and I'm checking out this. This tiny little device is the Akaso Keychain. It's a
0:18
4K vlog camera. It can do video, it can do photographs, and it is, as you can see
0:25
ridiculously tiny. So how do you use this? Well, one way you can use it is on the little clasp
0:32
You could actually put it on your clothes and you can record yourself walking around or doing things
0:38
or doing sports, right? So skiing, anything like that could be fun. I have a demo I'll show you
0:43
I did this while I was walking around Lowe's Hardware. Not the most exciting demo, but pretty
0:48
fun. And it is a magnetic back. It comes with all these other options. So here's another one. You
0:54
could literally just glue, and not glue, it actually comes with a sticky back. You can put this on a
1:01
surface and you could use this, for example, on your bathroom mirror if you want to be doing a makeup
1:06
video. Now the one that I like is it also comes with this little tiny stand. And for this you can
1:13
use either orientation and you can then get the video that you want. So I'll do that demo in just
1:19
a sec. I have a bunch of demo video, but let's talk about the unit first. So it's powered by a 500
1:26
milliamp hour battery, which actually gives you 60 minutes of recording, which is pretty solid
1:31
It has EIS 2.0 stabilization, though, as we'll discuss in a minute or two, I was unable to test
1:38
it because I couldn't figure out how to get to it in the software. We'll talk about the software
1:43
Now at its maximum it can record 4k at 30 frames per second or 2.7k at 30 or 60 frames or 1080p
1:53
at 30 or 60 frames. It's pretty solid options. It can also do photographs, and here's an example of
1:58
a photograph that I took with this. It's actually pretty darn good. It can also do time lapse or
2:05
slow motion, so you can have this hooked up and sitting somewhere waiting for you to take an
2:11
action and it can just sit there and just do a time lapse for you, which is definitely fun. My
2:15
son's done some really cool time lapses when he's worked on his car. The camera has 128 degree field
2:23
of vision. That's a pretty wide angle. Most webcams, for example, are somewhere around 80 to 90 percent
2:30
or 80 to 90 degrees, so this is even wider than that. Now I'll turn it on and there's a fill light
2:39
Let me just get this thing ready for pairing, but there's a fill light you can turn on, hopefully
2:46
Well, we'll get there. We're going to pair it first because pairing is a little complicated, but
2:52
there's a little tiny ring of lights that actually can illuminate. It's not very bright. I'm not sure
2:58
what situation that would be beneficial in, but it's worth experimenting. When you have it like
3:03
this, including having the charge port covered with its little rubber seal, it is IP56 waterproof
3:10
so you can't really wear this while you're out swimming, but you could certainly get into a wet
3:15
situation like someone dumping a bucket of ice over your head, and you can record what you are
3:21
seeing as they do that or maybe as you chase them afterwards. Now let me take the cover off and show
3:26
you because on the bottom it's USB-C for charging. It comes with a USB-C charging cable and there's a
3:34
micro SD card, and let's talk about that card for just a second because it's a bring your own card
3:40
This does not include a card. Not a big deal. Unfortunately, it only supports up to 64 gig cards
3:46
and cards get much bigger than that now, so I'm not sure what that limitation is, but that does give
3:51
you theoretically 60 minutes of recording depending on resolution, so that's not too bad
3:58
If and when you get it working with your phone, again we'll talk about the software in a second
4:03
you can remotely download and then remotely delete content off of the card, or of course you can
4:09
literally pop the card out and just work with it that way, so easy enough. Now all of those are
4:17
all the upsides. What's the downside? The downside is their software. It's just not very good and it's
4:24
very confusing. They have something called Akaso Go, and that's the app you have to use. You really
4:30
can't use this standalone, so I'm going to show you what it looks like. Let's fingers crossed I'll
4:37
get it to work at all. It's hit or miss whether I can get this thing to connect, so I go into it and
4:45
it says connect camera as you can see, and to do that what I need to do is generally I need to go
4:52
and use Wi-Fi, so it connects via Wi-Fi. So I'll go over to settings, we'll go into Wi-Fi, and then
4:59
fingers crossed it will show up. Let's see, so it's supposed to go into this sort of flashing
5:08
light mode, but unfortunately they have overloaded buttons, so I'm going to push the top half of the
5:14
button, and that gives me a flashing yellow and a solid blue. Theoretically that should show up on
5:21
my phone as a Wi-Fi device. I will be optimistic, there it is. So SNKC, I choose it, and once it's
5:32
connected, there we go, it's connected. Now I can connect camera in the app, and then I should be
5:40
if it works, come on, you can do it. Oh, my phone's running mighty low on battery, it looks like
5:46
something's running low on battery. Well, it thinks it's connected, or maybe it doesn't, I'm not sure
5:54
what's happening here. This is a great demo, however. Ah, there we go, it's up, it's working. So now I can
6:03
actually use the little stand, and maybe we'll put it here, and I can see on my phone what I'm doing
6:11
I'll put the phone right next to the stand, and let me record this, and then you can have this as sort
6:17
of a demo of what's going on. So now I'm recording using the tiny little 4k camera, and you can see
6:25
the app makes it reasonably easy to work with, but there's still a lot of things that leave you
6:31
puzzled, and now it stopped recording. Let's try again, maybe my finger was too close to the screen
6:37
Okay, so now I'm recording again off of the Akaso directly, and you can see this demo. I have a much
6:43
better demo in a second, so let's actually switch to that. So the app does give you access, it does
6:52
give you some pretty neat controls, but getting that thing to connect is such a pain. I mean, I will
6:59
just tell you that I have tried and tried to get it to connect, and it's very inconsistent. I ended
7:06
up emailing the company to ask for assistance, and they finally sent me a video saying here's how to
7:11
do it, and part of it is that they have these two buttons on the side with a little illumination
7:18
and these buttons are just very overloaded. There's a lot that they do, which means that it's very easy
7:25
to get confused, and I found that the documentation was inconsistent. So what I did for a demo is I
7:30
actually went and I clipped this to my shirt, and I went into Lowe's, but I started out by using this
7:37
on the dashboard of my car. So let's switch to all of that footage and see what that looks like
7:42
So I'm sitting in the parking lot at Lowe's Hardware, and I'm about to go in and buy some paint
7:47
This is a great excuse for me to use a demo. So here I am sitting in the car, and you get to hear
7:53
the microphone and see it's very wide angle. All right, let's go in. All right, so I'm heading into
7:59
Lowe's, and I have my mask on, so who knows what the heck this is going to sound like, but you can see
8:05
it's kind of fun. I feel like I have one of those chest cams that cops wear, and actually the mask
8:12
works perfectly because no one can see me talking. All right, we're in, and you can see there's a lot
8:17
of stuff, but not a lot of people. I can, however, show my phone, so it's a little self-referential
8:26
Anyway, I'm here to get some paint, so I'm going to go over and get the paint. All right, so I just
8:31
have this sitting literally on a paint can. So I just ordered my paint, and they are mixing it up
8:36
for the color I need, and that ends my demo here in the store. Pretty interesting, actually. When it
8:41
works, it's a really cool device, and I really love the size and portability, and honestly, I'm pretty
8:48
sure no one at Lowe's knew I was doing this, which kind of makes it like a little spy cam, if your
8:53
imagination goes down that road, or you can just document what you're doing. So all of this, it's
8:58
really pretty darn fun. It would also be fun, I've been thinking about how I could get this to be on a
9:04
dog, and then let the dog run around and have a video of them moving. I haven't quite figured out
9:10
that mounting yet, but we'll figure it out eventually. Maybe a little beanie for the dog
9:15
Not sure they'd like that, but we'll figure that out. Anyway, the big issue is, number one
9:20
connectivity. It's just a pain, and it's anxiety-provoking that it takes multiple minutes
9:26
to try to figure out how to get this to come on, how to get it to work with your phone, what buttons
9:32
to push or not to push, and it's not something where you push a button and boom, it's ready to
9:37
connect. There's a delay there of, as you saw, 15 to 30 seconds, so you really have to have patience
9:44
and get to a certain light pattern, and then wait and see if that's the right one. Maybe over time
9:49
it gets better, but it's just anxiety-provoking, and I did not appreciate that. And then when you
9:54
get to the app itself, I found that the app is also confusing, and it didn't work in the way
10:00
that I wished it did. It does have the functionality, but it might be that they just need a
10:05
redesign to make it something where it's just much more obvious how to do things like that
10:11
stabilization system, right? Maybe it just needs a row along the bottom of every possible mode, and
10:17
you can just swipe back and forth until you find the one you want. That would be easy, right? So
10:23
really sort of a mixed bag here. The size, the functionality, the quality of the video, all those
10:30
are glorious, but the overall experience might be frustrating for you. Now, one way they can fix
10:37
this is just to iterate on the software. So, if you already bought one of these through their
10:41
Indiegogo campaign, you're not necessarily in trouble. It might be the case that, you know
10:47
by the time they ship and they get this out, and they get that first iteration done, the software
10:52
will be improved, and that'll be great. So, that means we need to talk about the price
10:59
But, before we get to the price, I'm going to ask if you can subscribe to my channel. I put a lot of
11:03
effort into my reviews, and I really appreciate if you can subscribe. Gives me a bigger subscriber
11:09
base, which gives me access to more gear, which gives me the chance to do more honest reviews for
11:14
you. How is that not a win-win? So, click or tap on that little red button on the lower right
11:19
Awesome. Now, this is the Akaso Keychain 4K Vlog camera, and it is on Indiegogo
11:29
though the campaign is over. Indiegogo offered it at $99, but I think their
11:34
manufacturer's suggested retail price is going to be $139. It's sort of in limbo right now. If you
11:41
go to Indiegogo, you can't actually subscribe or buy it because that campaign's over, but it hasn't
11:47
yet shown up on the Akaso website, which is at akasotech.com. It will soon enough. So, if you're
11:55
really excited about something like this, something this small, then it's definitely worth keeping an
12:00
eye on the akasotech.com site, and at some point it will show up, and fingers crossed, you will
12:06
have a better experience with connectivity and a better experience with the app, and you will say
12:11
this is one slick camera because the video itself is really pretty clean. That's all I got. I'm going
12:18
to try to go back and actually get this thing to charge and then connect again. We'll see how that
12:23
goes, which means I'll hope to catch you in my next video
12:41
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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