My son wants to get an action cam for his bike and to also record his skateboarding activities. He's looking at a WASPcam branded camera that supposedly has "night vision" so he can record after dark. Here's what he's looking at... Waspcam 9903 Jakd Action Sports Camera 1080p HD 5MP Nightvision 2" LCD 4X Zoom | eBay

I'm trying to talk him into getting a GoPro, but he seems pretty set on getting this one. Just wondering if anyone has any experience with this particular camera and if so, how does it do after dark?

Thanks in advance for any comments / information provided.

I'd compare it against an SJ4000 - $99 on ebay and well reviewed (check techmoan's site). I'm thinking about getting one myself. It's compatible with GoPro accessories (not the battery but the mounts).

Unless you get the GoPro Black, the GoPros are not really anything special. The Black is a hell of a camera, the White is no better than any random clone IMO, the Silver is a bit better but not really that much.

I had some serious issues with my GoPro when I had it - it was a temperamental pain in the butt and it sometimes stopped recording for no reason. Gopro tech support was very snotty and basically just told me that their camera was so awesome that if I was having problems with it, then clearly either I was an idiot or I was putting junk SD cards in it.

I've always had good luck with the two GoPro's I have, that's why I'm trying to talk my son into getting one of them instead of an "unknown" cam. So far, he's holding off on a decision until after Christmas to see what kind of $$$ he gets with his gifts. Maybe he'll get enough to get a GoPro.

As for the SJ4000, I've looked at them on eBay, and while they sound like they could be a good camera, once again I'd go with a brand that has a pretty good track record behind it and if there's a problem, it can be returned under the warranty. Don't know it that'd be possible with a lot of the "unknowns" sold on eBay.

FWIW, I've bought several action cams at this point, a GoPro, a weird no-name Chinese cam, a couple of 808s, two RD32IIs, a Sony Action Cam, an SVC200 (off brand, the one I still use over all the others), a Contour Roam, and I can't help thinking one or two others I've forgotten. None of them have ever failed on me.

The GoPro is the only one that has actually ever exhibited bugs - and they were bugs, the company confirmed that this was not just my unit, but they also insisted that though they saw this often, it was "always caused by people using crappy cards" - I was using the SanDisk Ultra10 that they recommended. I had about 12 microSD cards at the time, and they all worked in absolutely every device I owned - except the GoPro, which would only work with two of them. Also once formatted in the GoPro the cards didn't work very well, if at all, in anything else, until I could reformat them.

One card got so screwed up by the GoPro that my PC wouldn't even recognize it. I finally found a point-and-shoot camera that I had that realized there was a card though it couldn't read it either. I formatted the card in that cam TWICE and finally the PC would recognize it, then I formatted it in the PC and it finally was working again.

So it didn't fail, really, but sometimes I'd get home and find out it only recorded 2 minutes of video before shutting off for one stupid reason or another. The worst was that in their loop recording mode, if there wasn't some minimum amount of space free when I hit start, it would make the "start" sound then just shut right back off again. Once it got going it would loop record - deleting old files as the card filled up, but it wouldn't do that at the start, so I had to keep taking the card out and manually erasing files, or just formatting the whole card, to get it going again.

I wound up selling it because it's useless as a helmet cam if you can't turn it on and count on it having recorded a traffic incident.

Here's a good review of the SJ4000:

Techmoan - Techmoan - The SJ4000 Action Camera*Review

There's also the wifi version there. Here's the M10:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tMhb4t-hPE

If I was nervous about buying any cam it would be the GoPro. I don't worry about the others because the likelihood of them having trouble is so low, especially considering their costs.

EDIT: I went with the M10 last night. It's $20 cheaper than the SJ4000 and it's not quite as ugly. It doesn't have WiFi, but I've owned 3 cameras with WiFi and apart from playing with it for 5 minutes when I first took them out of the box, I have never actually used WiFi on one of these cameras.