Replay XD Prime X

The tough little action camera giving GoPro a run for its money.

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I like to keep an action camera on me whenever I go longboarding down hills that I clearly don’t have the skill to tackle. I figure that if I’m going to eat dirt, I may as well have some YouTube-worthy footage to show for my pain afterwards.

The Replay XD Prime X is designed to accompany extreme sports junkies, or just concrete masochists such as myself. I had never heard of the manufacturer Replay XD before this review, but its clever, tough camera is now on top of my Christmas list.

With its tubular shape and anodised aluminium body, the Prime X looks and feels a lot like a miniature mag torchlight. Although it only weighs 99 grams (for comparison, the GoPro Hero 3 with its waterproof housing weighs almost double), the camera is built incredibly tough. The robust body is complemented with an impact-resistant lens, which has a protective cover that can be replaced if damaged—although that’s easier said than done. I managed to accidentally drop my Prime X down a steep gravel path, and after blowing off a bit of dirt it looked as good as new.

Out of the box, the Prime X is waterproof up to three metres—no need for any extra housing units to use it in the surf, but you’ll need to buy a separate dive housing to make it waterproof up to 60 metres. The Prime X comes with an assortment of mounts and a carry case.

The video quality in and out of the water is better than the GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition. The combination of an f/2.7 wide-angle lens and a 16 MP CMOS sensor, make for some fantastic video footage and photographs.

The Prime X can record at 1080p up to 60 fps, all the way down to 480p with 240 fps for better slow motion shots. It can also do burst photos or timelapses that utilise the 4.6k pixel-width of the sensor. I did notice the body would start to heat up uncomfortably when left in timelapse mode for longer than 30 minutes.

What’s most impressive about the photo and video quality is the high dynamic range. A problem I often have with my GoPro is the constant battle between either washed-out skies or incredibly dark foregrounds. With the Prime X, this never seems to be a problem, even in the harsh midday sun.

Replay XD says the built-in 1700mAh battery has enough energy to last 3.5 hours on a single charge, but practically speaking, I was easily getting a day’s worth of use out of it.

It’s the clever utility features in the Prime X that really make the camera special. For instance, the vibrations which tell you the status of the camera when you start recording, or the highly customisable settings, either through a Wifi-connected Android or iPhone app, or by through pre-loaded custom settings carried on individual micro-SD cards.

See more at: www.replayxd.co.nz