Review of SJCAM SJ7 STAR Design, Hands on, and Other Details You Want to Know

SJCAM is a professional smart action camera brand which can be the best alternatives of Gopro in terms of its performance and price, it has some series, such as SJ4000, SJ5000, SJ6, SJ7 Star, and upcoming SJ8, etc. We have made a detailed SJCAM SJ6 Legend Review before,  right now we have got the sample of SJCAM SJ7 Star from SJCAM official. We will let you know its quality, performance, and other details you are interested.

Unboxing

When i got this package, i am excited to open it, the package is a little heavy when i hold in one hand, and i can see SJCAM has a very exquisite and high quality box for its camera, i can know its highlights from its box outside, for example, it has adopt IMX117 CMOS sensor, 12MP images resolution, supporting Gyro anti-shake to stabilize every motion, equipped with the most powerful Ambarella A12S75 to enhance omni-directional performance, built-in 2 inch touch screen, very convenient to use, inside the box is a SJCAM SJ7 Star covered by a waterproof housing up to 30m / 98ft, and other accessories i need to use in different scene.

In the box:

SJCAM SJ7 Star
Waterproof Housing up to 30m / 98ft
Quick Release Buckle, Vertical Quick Release J-Hook buckle
Handlebar Seat post mount
Curved & Flat adhesive mounts
3-Way Pivot Arm mount
Frame mount, Quick release clip for frame
Univeral 1/4″ Camera Tripod mount, Tripod Mount adapter
Cleaning cloth
Mini USB-USB Cable

Design

SJCAM SJ7 Star is similar to the last generation, SJCAM SJ6 Legend, very small and powerful, but there are some difference, for example, the latter has 2.0 inch back LTPS touch screen and 0.96 inch front screen, the former only has 2 inch touch screen, it has 6.00 x 4.10 x 2.47 cm / 2.36 x 1.61 x 0.97 inches dimensions, 0.0740 kg weight, very light and small, portable to take outside. On the front, it has a power button, and a set-up button. When i press the power button up to 4 seconds, it switches on, of course, do same operation, it can switch off. Besides two buttons, it has a lens with a 166° field of view, and in the middle of two buttons, it has two LEDs. On the back, it has a 2 inch touched LCD screen, which can show images or video to take. On the top only has a one button-record/capture. On the right side is the MicroSD, Mini USB and Micro HDMI ports, when you buy it, you need to buy an extra MicroSD card to save images and videos. Please don’t forget that if you doesn’t have. As for its bottom, it is the place for battery.

Hands on Test

Recording Modes

If we want to use its recording modes to take videos, we need to choose recording mode, just tapping left to right or right to left to finish the modes from images to recording or recording to images. It supports many resolutions to take videos such as 1080P (120fps),1080P (1920 x 1080),1080P(30fps),1080P(60fps),1280 x 960,1440P (2560 x 1440),1440P (30fps),1440P (60fps),1920 x 1440,2.5K (30fps),2.5K (60fps),2.7K (2704 x 1520),2.7K (2704×2028),2.7K (30fps),2160P (2880 x 2160),4K (25fps),4K (30fps),4K (3840 x 2160),720P (120fps),720P (1280 x 720),720P (240fps),720P (30fps),720P (60fps),960P (120fps),960P (30fps),960P (60fps), if we want high quality of videos, we can choose the top one 4K (30fps), of course, if we doesn’t want to take a video with a very large file but still clear quality, we can choose 1080P or 720P resolution, you can test the difference of videos among different resolution.

When we tap the screen, it enters to settings of recording mode, it shows different video resolution as we just mentioned, video quality, normal, Fine, S.Fine. FOV, Gyro Sensor, Car DV, Sharpness, ISO, etc. We just only some settings like video resolution, video quality, Gryo sensor, Sharpness are the daily operation we need to set up, others we may be not very familiar so that no need to set up.

When you press the capturing button on the top, it starts to record a video according to your settings, when we finished one video, we can slide down to check the video file.

Photo Modes

It can be adjusted  to the photo modes, same operation to the recording modes we mention before, it also support many resolution for options, such as 2048 x 1536 (3MP),2560 x 1920 (5MP),3840×2160 (8.3MP),4000 x 3000 (12MP),4254×3264 (14MP),4608 x 3456 (16M), for highest quality, 16MP will be best one to take 4K videos, we can also choose timelapse to take photos, and it can be regarded as a dash cam to support loop recording for choosing Car DV mode, by the way, before taking images, you can also set up first, such as photo size, photo quality, long exposure, Photo stamp, self timer, photo burst, timelapse photo, Sharpness, EV Value, ISO, etc. We can stamp the date and time on videos and images.

Performance

We may be very interested in its video quality, because it is the key to affect us to buy, SJCAM is a professional and reliable brand, and we have tested other models, very impressive, SJCAM SJ7 Star is powered by Ambarella A12S chipset which can record 4K at 30fps videos and send to your phone by WIFI in few seconds. A little issue is that sometimes i need to press the capture button twice to take the video or photos. I don’t know why this happened.

Because it is specialized in taking 4k videos and photos, the images and videos you will see will in round shape because it has a 166 degree wide angle lens. Anyway, it has very excellent video quality, we can take videos very stably with Gyro stabilization. We can also adjust the microphone volume to 100%, it can be connected by WIFI and Bluetooth for transmission. If you want to see the videos in 4K for every details, you can prepare a 4K TV or PC monitor to show.  We will take a video about its video quality that you will see more clearly, stay tuned.

Conclusion

Right now SJCAM SJ7 Star is one of the latest and most powerful Ambarella A12S75 action camera, we can take videos outdoors, under water, or other scene we want, it is quite small and light, we can take it everywhere, don’t forget to bring your charger to charge once it is out of power. It is built in 1,000mAh battery, which can be used for at least 4 hours without stop, but it takes at least 2 hours to charge full, exact time will be up to your daily use. SJCAM official has listed it to sell on its website. You can buy from Gearbest at  $179.99, only 150 units left.