EE 4GEE Capture Cam review - 4G life-logging

The 4GEE Capture Cam isn’t EE’s first foray into 4G-enabled video. That would be last year’s 4GEE Action Cam, but even its 4G live-streaming capabilities couldn't save it from being one of the worst action cams I've seen in recent years. Not only did it have very mediocre image quality, but it was also very expensive, and that price only kept on going up if you opted for an accompanying data plan and a lengthy 24-month contract.

EE’s second outing takes a slightly different approach, as the 4GEE Capture Cam is less action camera and more life-logging camera. It’s a square device with a built-in clip on its back that can attach to your clothing, or you can use GoPro-compatible mounts using the bundled adaptor that comes in the box.

It measures 55x55x28.2mm and weighs 90.5g, so it's still relatively large and heavy for something designed to be clipped on to an item of clothing, but it is lighter than your typical ruggedised action camera. It's still not very subtle, so anyone looking to document an undercover exposé will need to look elsewhere, but EE posits that the Capture Cam's suitable for both consumer and professional use, such as estate agents looking to give a virtual tour of a home as an example of the latter.

Pricing

Unlike the Action Cam, there’s no pay-as-you-go option with the Capture Cam, and at time of writing there are only two pay monthly plans to choose from, both of which tie you in for 24 months. One allows for 1GB of data a month and the other 3GB.

The cheapest option will have a total cost of ownership of £274 over the course of two years, while the other will bring you up to a total of £418. As 24 months is the minimum plan term, that’s a lot of money for a camera that might be redundant in a year or so, but at least the SIM will be transferrable to another device at the end of it, such as a compatible tablet.

Design

With its textured, grippy edges, the Capture Cam itself feels reassuringly made. A large F/2.5 aperture lens dominates the front and it’s supported by a sensor that captures 8-megapixel stills and up to 1080p video. The top also has a large, illuminated shutter button that changes colour depending on its mode. Purple shows that it’s in live streaming mode, whereas blue means it’s recording locally. You'll also find a sliding toggle to switch between video and photo modes here, as well as a three-stage signal status for the 4G connection.

However, it's not the most user-friendly interface I've ever seen, particularly when it comes to distinguishing whether it's on or off. For example, the light will slowly 'breathe' or pulsate when it's in standby mode, but stay on constantly when the camera's active. However, when each 'breath' can take quite a while to fade in and out again, it can be difficult to know whether you've accidentally left it on when you're only looking at it very quickly. In this case, it would have been more useful to have a completely different colour to indicate when the camera's active, as this would make it much easier to see at a glance whether you're recording or not. 

On the underside of the camera, you’ll find the Micro SIM slot, which provides the Capture Cam’s data connection, and a Micro USB port for charging. There’s also a microSD slot for expanding storage by up to 64GB, which you'll almost certainly need as there's only 4GB of storage built-in.

EE Capture Cam app

The camera itself only has very basic controls, as all you can do is toggle between video and still images. Instead, the majority of your tinkering will be done in the 4GEE Action Cam app, which has been updated to also support the Capture Cam. 

The app hasn't changed much since I reviewed it last year, but you'll need to connect your smartphone to the camera through Wi-Fi Direct before the two will work together. Thankfully, this doesn't take very long, and we were up and running within a couple of minutes. 

Once you're in the app, you'll see big, bold buttons and icons that show you the status of the camera’s battery, storage capacity and signal strength. Jumping into the settings menu, you can change the livestreaming and recording resolution, adjust timelapse intervals (which range from 1, 3, 5, 10, 30 and 60s intervals) and shot mode settings for photo capture.

Annoyingly, you can't actually swap between video and photo modes through the app, so you have to use the physical toggle switch on the camera itself. It’s also worth noting that changing the timelapse setting actually applies to video mode, not photo mode as I originally expected.

This meant it was easy to accidentally leave the camera set to timelapse mode in the app, but then accidentally record a timelapse when you wanted to record a regular video. This is especially true when you use the Capture Cam's shutter button to begin recording rather than the app, as there's no obvious indicator that it's still in timelapse mode. If timelapse applied to photo mode instead, at least you would still be able to grab the still image you wanted when trying to take a photo even if you did accidentally create a timelapse. 

You can also use the app as a live viewfinder when recording locally at up to 1080p, 30fps, but it's a shame you can't do the same thing while livestreaming as well. Instead, the screen remains blank (as seen above), prompting you to switch over to the Skeegle app instead. This is the company EE's partnered with to enable the Capture Cam's livestreaming capabilities, but, just like EE's Action Cam, switching over to Skeegle is where things start to fall apart at the seams.  

Livestreaming

To use livestreaming, you’ll have to install the separate Skeegle app and register for an account using Facebook. You can also create circles of friends through the Skeegle app, either from your contacts list or from Facebook. These people are then sent a notification to view your stream when you begin livestreaming. The good thing is that they don’t need to install Skeegle to view, as the livestream will play through a browser. This works on both desktop and mobile.

During my testing, livestreaming at its maximum resolution and frame rate saw the Capture Cam goes through about 14.7MB every minute. Unfortunately, the stability of livestreams was incredibly hit and miss. The quality will obviously greatly depend on the strength of your 4G signal, but when I tried it out for myself, streams would either be very stuttery or sometimes stop altogether, which proved incredibly frustrating. 

It's also worth noting that, unlike local video, which can be recorded at 1080p and 30fps, livestreaming limits you to 720p, 30fps. This shouldn’t really come as any surprise as livestreaming video requires a significant amount of bandwidth and data, but those after high-quality livestreams will need to look elsewhere.

Interestingly, since the Skeegle app works independently of the Capture Cam, you can actually use your smartphone’s camera to broadcast a livestream instead. When I tried this method, essentially using the 4GEE Capture Cam as a Wi-Fi hotspot, I saw some perfectly watchable streams. This indicates that the unstable livestreaming was a problem with the Capture Cam and not EE’s 4G signal, which should come as some, albeit small, consolation to the network provider. 

When livestreaming, a Replay version is saved that can be played back at a later date. However, many of my recordings ended up being taken down and marked as ‘violent/offensive’. These were test videos in the office where absolutely nothing of interest happened at all, so their removal was puzzling.

In theory, though, Skeegle currently has no limit on the number of Replays that can be saved to your account, but this might change in the future. The Capture Cam can be set to record a version locally when livestreaming, so it’s perhaps sensible not to rely on the online backup for anything important.

Video quality and Battery Life

The 720p livestream video, while occasionally jerky, also displayed artefacting and a general softness, no doubt a result of compression to allow for livestreaming in the first place. However, even the locally saved 1080p video was unremarkable, as there was lots of noise even in good outdoor lighting. Colours were also very dark and had an unnatural warmth to them and lacked shadow detail. 

Unsurprisingly, without any image stabilisation present, you end up with some pretty shaky footage when the camera's clipped on to an item of clothing, so much so that walking footage becomes almost nausea-inducing. It's not so bad when you stand still but at this point there's nothing to stop you from just livestreaming from a handheld smartphone, negating the Capture Cam's practicality. Image quality all round was disappointing.

The 8-megapixel still images outdoors were marginally better, with lots of contrast in each image and reasonable colour saturation. However, they were still no better than you can expect from an average smartphone. 

Recording 1080p video, you can expect about 1 hour 39 minutes, which isn't too bad, but pales in comparison to the 4GEE Action Cam's three hours. 

Conclusion

You can understand why the Capture Cam isn’t available without an EE contract, as it’s arguably more dependent on constant data access than the Action Cam. However, given the quality of the footage, I can’t see a lot of people wanting to sign up to a new contract purely for a camera.

It would have been better if the Capture Cam was available without a contract so you could swap in your phone’s SIM or use your connected smartphone’s data connection, but then EE wouldn’t be able to sell you another contract. Aside from the convenient wearable form factor, you'd be better off simply using the Skeegle app with your smartphone's camera, saving yourself a lot of money in the long run.