Garmin Virb Elite

Garmin Virb Elite Review – Garmin has taken its experience in sports trackers and GPS devices and applied it to this 1080p action camera. The result is a cam with more than the average amount of smarts. The Elite connects with ANT+ sensors, from heart-rate monitors to speed and cadence sensors, thermometers and more.

Garmin Virb Elite, The outdoorsy experts’ first action cam shows potential

Garmin Virb Elite also comes with GPS, an altimeter and an accelerometer built in, so you can add actual raw data to your videos, tracking how fast you were hurtling down that hill before you crashed and exactly where the emergency services needed to be scrambled to. Those added extras are nice, but it’s video quality that’s important and here the Virb really shines. It delivers amazingly clear and rich visuals in daylight, with Garmin’s 16-megapixel CMOS sensor picking up great detail and clarity that trounces all cameras on test (except one). This even holds true in shaky conditions, mountain biking through uneven muddy bogs and over drops.

You can watch it all back instantly on the Virb’s 1.4-inch, 205×184 resolution colour display, too. Decide to take to the trails at night, however, and it’s a different story. Video comes out very dark indeed, with a lot of detail lost. The lack of a casing for the Virb also means wind noise at just about any speed overwhelms the audio.

Battery life is a slight improvement over many other cams on test at three hours, but then this is also one of the larger cameras. Mounting options are plentiful, too, with all the usual options, plus an adapter that fits to standard GoPro mounts. This gives the Virb instant access to the massive array of add-ons already on the market. For a first attempt, this is a proper balls-out action cam, throwing absolutely everything into the mix. It’s a corker, but needs a small amount of finessing before it earns that extra star. We love the extra features, but we’d prefer more focus on delivering in low light

Pros

• Daylight video performance is best in class
• Waterproof
• Best battery life on test

Cons

• Low-light video performance lacking detail
• Too much wind noise
• Not as compact some

Garmin Virb Elite Specifications

• Screen 1.4-inch Chroma
• Sensor 16-meg/1080p at 30fps
• Burst Mode 6fps
• Storage MicroSD only (64GB max)
• Connectivity Wi-Fi, USB, microHDMI, ANT+, GPS
• Water Resistance 1m
• Battery Life Up to 3 hours
• Mounts Included Flat surface, curved surface, pivot
• Dimension Height 32mm Width 53mm Depth 111mm
• Weight 170g (227g in case)
• Price $480