We were excited when Sena sent us a pre-release version of their 10C Pro helmet camera/communicator. The 10C PRO is a remarkable device in that it combines a capable Bluetooth communicator AND and a 1440p action camera is a compact, lightweight, easy to operate device that mounts comfortably to the side of any motorcycle helmet.
We immediately took it out for a test ride and published this video.
Although the video quality from this new camera is leagues better than what we got from the old 10C, it’s still not as good as what most people expect from action cameras in 2018. The 10C PRO is still not available commercially, of course, so it’s totally possible that things might be improved with a firmware update. We’ve suggested to Sena that they reduce the baked-in image sharpening (detail) and lower the chroma saturation in order to improve image quality.
Audio quality is not that bad given that the 10C PRO’s noise cancellation needs to differentiate between voice and not-voice. Removing wind and background noise from an inexpensive microphone travelling at 60mph is no easy task. However, for some reason the 10C PRO records audio at only 128kbps and in stereo, and it would seem that dynamics could be improved if that bit rate were at least doubled. Even the old 10C recorded audio at 500kbps (mono).
We also found that for some reason, YouTube’s re-compression after uploading does not do the Sena video any favors. The files from the camera really do look a lot better than the clips on YouTube. You can download the raw 1440p clip here (845MB) Compare this to the YouTube and Vimeo uploads and you’ll see how much re-compression degrades the quality. I’m pretty sure Sena could drastically improve this by reducing the baked-in sharpening/detail in the 10C PRO.
Since we scaled the Sena’s 1440p video clips down to 1080p for our review video (above) we decided to include a raw 1440p/29.97p video clip excerpt here for those who care. This clip was encoded in Adobe Premiere from a 1440/29.97 sequence to a 1440/29.97 40mbps mp4 file. You can bypass YouTube’s recompression and download the the file directly here (845MB).
Here is the same clip on Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/inventivepictures/review/298853431/311cd9ebbd