DokiCam 360 - Review 2022 - Patterson Youstand

The DokiCam 360 ($230) is one of a crop of dual-lens 360-caste video cameras to hit the market in recent months. It doesn't cost a lot, has a splash-proof design, and includes a large internal battery good for more 3 hours of recording. Simply its video resolution, 3K, is most half that of 4K (more on that in the Prototype Quality section), and when stretched beyond a spherical view delivers very underwhelming footage. Couple that with issues-riddled software and you're better off looking elsewhere. For the same toll you can get the Samsung Gear 360, our Editors' Choice, which records noticeably better video.

Design

The DokiCam is a spherical camera. It weighs 5.6 ounces, measures ii.vi inches in bore, and has a apartment bottom with a standard tripod socket. It'south finished in an understated black finish, with a dust- and splash-proof plastic beat out. Dual lenses, each with an ultra-wide field of view and stock-still f/2.3 aperture, capture the unabridged globe around the sphere.

In that location are three command buttons, arranged in a triangle on the height—Power, Record, and Wi-Fi. In that location are indicator lights effectually 1 of the lenses to permit you know when the camera is powered on, rolling, or connected to Wi-Fi, but they're most impossible to run across under vivid sunlight.

There are two flaps, ane on each side. 1 protects the micro HDMI port—a live video output is bachelor via HDMI. The other covers the micro USB data and charging port, and the microSD card slot. The internal battery isn't removable, but provided an ample iii hours of recording time on our standard battery rundown test.

The camera is protected from dust and splashes, so yous tin get it wet. But information technology's not submersible. If y'all want to take it underwater y'all'll need to spend some other $80 on a waterproof instance.

Phone and Desktop Apps

You can use the DokiCam sans phone—it works every bit a standalone camera. Just if you lot want to conform settings or control it remotely, you'll need to download the companion app, available free for Android and iOS.

The phone app shows a live view from the lens and includes controls for video, time-lapse, and yet capture. It as well supports wireless transfer and stitching of images and video stored on the camera. Transfer takes a while, though, well-nigh 30 seconds for every minute of video, and stitching is a dissever procedure. My iPhone 6 Plus took most two minutes to merge each minute of video from the two lenses into a format that could be shared hands, although the app crashed a few times before I was able to successfully stitch a 2-minute prune together.

There's as well a desktop app, bachelor for Mac and Windows. It doesn't crash, but I experienced other issues using it to convert video. First, its output resolution isn't equally high as the phone app. It'south a small disadvantage, but it as well introduces odd artifacts, glitches that pop upwardly for a frame every and so ofttimes, and oddly renders false colors, giving footage an occasionally unnatural look. An example of the glitchy video is shown in the frame capture below.

Both approaches to stitching video have their drawbacks. With the phone app you'll contend with crashes, and with the desktop app the glitches in footage and odd colour artifacts are an issue. Third-political party stitching software, similar GoPro's Kolor solution, is expensive, so it's imperative that a 360-degree camera stitches video in-camera or provides good software back up. You lot get neither with the DokiCam.

Video and Epitome Quality

We'll talk almost video quality delivered by mobile app conversion hither, as it'south definitely superior to what you get from the desktop software. The finished footage comes in at 3,040 past i,520, most 4.6MP per frame. That's a little more half of the pixels delivered by the Gear 360 (3,840 by ii,160, 8.3MP).

Resolution is a trouble with the electric current spate of 360 cameras in general. Yes, many are advertised as 4K, but when yous stretch that 4K footage across a 360-caste sphere, it looks positively low-definition. Nosotros consider the footage from the Gear 360 to exist soft when compared with traditional 16:nine Hard disk footage. The 3K footage from the DokiCam is fifty-fifty softer.

Still images are meliorate. The desktop software does a better job here, delivering photos at viii.4MP quality, delivering crisp results when viewed on a computer screen. Although the desktop app delivers results that are a piddling overexposed to my center, you lot can darken them a scrap if desired. The phone app does a improve chore non futzing with exposure, but photos are a paltry ane.8MP, noticeably soft when stretched out for spherical viewing.

Conclusions

The DokiCam 360 doesn't pack as much resolution as the competition, a crucial misstep in 360-degree imaging, where more pixels are needed to deliver video that pops with the same resonance as we're used to seeing with modern 1080p and 4K in the 16:9 format. Information technology has a pretty incredible bombardment life, a big plus for extended recording sessions. But that's the most positive matter I have to say about it. I'd be more inclined to recommend the hardware if the software support was better, simply equally information technology stands in that location are a lot of bugs to be worked out, both with desktop and mobile workflows. The 360 space is evolving, and if you choose to bound in now, expect to exist wooed past better products in the near future, as resolution is spring to increment every bit image processing ability does.

If you're willing to live on the haemorrhage edge of tech in order to add together 360-degree capture to your imaging toolkit, the 2022 edition of the Samsung Gear 360 is our Editors' Selection pick. It'due south non perfect—if you lot're an Android user you'll need to use a Samsung handset for remote control, other manufacturers aren't supported. But it does work with iOS, and includes solid desktop software for both Mac and Windows. More importantly the software works well, the video quality is better than the DokiCam, and the Gear sells for the same price.