We unbox the Sony Action Cam AS30V!

A few days ago we attended the launch (re-launch, actually) of Sony’s two Action cams – the AS30V and the AS100V. Today, Sony has been nice enough to send us the AS30V for review, and today we’ll be unboxing the more affordable of the two – the AS30V. The As30V is a small, highly portable action camera that’s aimed at adventurers and thrill seekers much like the GoPro Hero3+ and the Veho Muvi NPNG Edition, so it’ll be interesting to see how the AS30V stacks up.

Packaging and contents

The AS30V comes in a box that’s half acrylic and half cardboard, similar to the packaging of the GoPro Hero3+. The actual device is mounted to a hard plastic floor in its waterproof housing via a single screw. Once you open21 the acrylic part of the box, you can release the AS30V from the packaging by unscrewing it using a flat head screwdriver. The AS30V has a thread on the bottom that allows it to be attached to a variety of mounts that Sony offers, as well as traditional camera mounts and tripods.

Digging further into the box, you’ll see two adhesive mounts, the plastic clip that allows you to connect the AS30V to the said mounts, a USB cable, battery and a ton of documentation which includes a warranty card. We’re a bit disappointed in the amount of mounts included in the AS30V – compared to the two other action cameras we’ve unboxed earlier, Sony’s offerings is sparse at best. Hopefully the company offer the other mounts as a package deal of some sort.

Initial Impressions: Small, lightweight and packed to the brim with features

While we’ve seen the device in person before, we’ve never really gotten over how small the AS30V is, especially when you take it out of its waterproof housing. It’s relatively tiny, but it’s still able to pack in a number of features that make Sony’s Action Cams stand out from the crowd. Aside from your normal full HD recording, it’s also able to take super smooth HD slow motion video, thanks to its 120 FPS 720P recording mode.

It has GPS built-in as well, allowing you to pinpoint exactly where you shot the video, as well as show everyone the route that you took using Sony’s Play Memories software. Another nice feature is the image stabilization, which is important when you’re bumping around in the trail or just running around the boonies like we do.

Aside from GPS, the AS30V also has Wi-Fi built-in, and has NFC functionality as well. You can use any NFC or Wi-Fi equipped smartphone with the AS30V – simply tap your phone on the side of the device (when it’s out of its waterproof housing) to pair with it. For smartphones that don’t have NFC, you just need to find the SSID of the AS30V and input the password (both are located in the documentation of the device). If you don’t have Sony’s Play Memories app installed in your phone when you pair with the AS30V, it’ll ask you to download the software first.

Once you’ve installed the app, you can then connect to the AS30V and use your phone as the viewfinder to check angles because like the GoPro Hero3+, the AS30V doesn’t have a physical viewfinder. It does have a small LCD display on the side that allows you to navigate through the shooting modes on the AS30V without the aid of a smartphone.

There is one possible weak point of the As30V compared to all the previous action cams that we’ve unboxed though – the waterproof case is only rated up to 16 feet (around 4.8 meters), which pales in comparison to the 40 meter maximum depth of the GoPro Hero3+ Black Edition and the 60 meter depth of the Veho Muvi NPNG Edition. The good news is that the waterproof case is still able to pick up a good amount of audio while protecting the camera from the elements, something that both the waterproof cases of the GoPro and the Veho fail to do. 

That’s it for this unboxing. As usual, we’ll be strapping it up to our airsoft gear and will be playing with it this weekend to give you an idea of what it’s able to do. The AS30V retails for Php 15,999 for just the camera.