A TRUE GoPro Challenger? Garmin Virb Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,216 words · ~6 min read
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You uh ready to shoot this action camera review with me? Cool. Okay, Garmin,
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start recording now. That's pretty cool.
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Cooler Master's Mastercase Maker 5 features their free form modular system,
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allowing you to customize, adjust, and upgrade. Make it yours at the link
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below. One of my biggest problems with the GoPro Hero 4 line and below in the
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ocean of GoPro knockoffs has always been the usability. Often their best mounting
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places are inconvenient to get to or in a place where you can't monitor them
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easily, like the top of your helmet, making it so that you can't really tell
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if the thing is actually recording or not without firing up the app on your
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phone, which is inconvenient for its own
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reasons. And your only real option in many cases is to have it record the
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entire event where you risk your battery
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dying and your SD card filling up.
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Now, in film making or video creation in general, arguably the most important
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thing is getting the shot. A big proponent of this over the last few
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years has been the venerable Casey Neistat. He has said many times that
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gear doesn't matter. Story matters. And to get the story, you need to get the
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shot. So, with that in mind, let's start with the Verb's new accessibility
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features. They are in no particular order. Okay, Garmin, start recording.
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Okay, Garmin, remember that. Okay, Garmin, stop recording. Okay, Garmin,
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take a picture. Start and stop recording and take a picture are all rather
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self-explanatory. What remember that does is when you go to edit your video,
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there will be tags throughout your footage of where you told it to remember
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something. So, what you could do is just
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okay Garmin, remember that. All you have to say is remember that and then when
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you finally get to edit that footage later on, you don't have to scrub
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through everything you filmed, which could be a huge benefit when you've got
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a lot of footage. Also of note is that
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being able to start and stop recording with just my voice ended up being a huge
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battery saver over time. Continuing the theme of usability, we have a
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legitimately astonishing touchcreen. No, really. It works through the water
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resistant case. Not while it's underwater, mind you, and the screen
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isn't nearly as responsive or accurate when used in this manner. But despite my
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complaints, I did end up using it, even
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if it was often in combination with the hardware buttons. It also features live
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streaming when paired with an iPhone, automatic multi- camera sync if you're
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doing a more complicated shoot, Bluetooth audio, and ant plus in order
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to connect additional sensors like heart rate sensors on top of the high
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sensitivity GPS, accelerometer,
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gyroscope, alttimeter, and compass suite
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that they're calling Gmetrics. And that serves as proof that you went that high,
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rode that fast, etc. Very cool. Which is
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all fine and good as long as it doesn't look or sound like butt. But I'm going
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to pass things off to our in-house camera expert, Brandon Lee, to take a
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look at that. Jumping into image quality, the Verb is surprisingly solid
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in this department. The Verb's image is quite comparable to the GoPro Hero4
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Black, rendering similar detail in the recording. The addition of the image
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stabilization is a nice touch and will come in handy in certain shooting
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situations, but it is by no means a substitute for a proper stabilizer that
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can be used with action cameras like this. Like GoPro, Garmin has decided to
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include a flat profile in the Verb when you want to capture a wider dynamic
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range. However, when using the vivid profile setting on the Verb, Garmin has
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done a good job on not making the image feel oversaturated or processed in
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camera, something that I've seen action cameras do in the past. Overall, the
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Image and the Verb stands up to the competition in this space, but with the recent release of the GoPro Hero 5, that
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might not be the case for much longer. Thank you, Brandon. In the accessories
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department, Garmin has quite a number of options for you to scoop up. But if
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you're drowning in GoPro mounts already, never fear, the mounting mechanism was
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shamelessly ripped off of GoPro and therefore can be used interchangeably.
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So, conclusion time. It's interesting,
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but is it worth it? I'm going to give the ever annoying answer of maybe.
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Complicating my conclusion is the extremely recent announcement of GoPro's
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Hero 5 lineup, which features water resistance without housing and similar
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voice control, but not the additional sensors. So, I have a feeling I'll need
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to do my review of that before I can give a more complete conclusion. They're
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even the same price now that Garmin has lowered theirs by about $100. No word
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yet on whether or not early buyers will be getting a refund. Let's hope that is
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true. So, awesome sensor data or almost
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certainly better image quality of the raw capable GoPro Hero 5 that we will
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check out soon. Let me know in the comments down below which you prefer.
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But for now, okay, Garmin, stop recording.
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You know what? Printers, specifically the PageWide Pro MFP 477DW.
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It offers best-in-class ISO speeds. It's very quick to print the first page and
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can print up to 70 pages per minute. On
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the 500 series models with double-sided print speeds of 25 pages per minute, it
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can do single pass double-sided scanning and allows you to spend less time and
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budget on scheduled maintenance with their pagewide technology. It's got
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front USB that supports multiple file formats such as Word and PowerPoint. and
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its intuitive touchscreen controls allow you to navigate on the 4.3 inch display.
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You can set up pins for receiving print jobs that are confidential in the
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workplace and you can print from mobile devices with Wi-Fi Direct and NFC
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touchprint technology. So there's no network required to print. You get four
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times more prints from their extra high yield cartridges. And you can check it
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out at the link in the video description.
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Thanks for watching this video, guys. If it's sucked, you know what to do. But if
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it was awesome, hit the like button, get subscribed, all that fun stuff. I can't
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believe that the GoPro Hero 5s was announced literally the day that I
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filmed this. That is ridiculous.
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If you want to buy some stuff, check out Amazon. Link in the video description down below. Or our shirts. Those are
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cool, too. You can talk about these various cameras and the ups and downs of
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each one of them on the forum. I can say that word.
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That's what we should just call it from now on. The Linus Tech Tips.
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Anyways guys, check out this video which is Linus' review on the Yi action camera
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if you want to see more of these things. And I'll see you next time.