Liquid Image Ego review

The Liquid Image Ego is one of the simplest and cheapest action cams we’ve seen. It’s also one of the smallest and lightest; it’s the size of a matchbox and only weighs 70g.

In the box you get a simple adhesive mount and a couple of super-sticky 3M mounting pads. The camera has a standard mounting point on the bottom, so you can also use third-party mounts and tripods if they have a normal screw mount.

Cheap, cheerful and yellow

The mount has a single hinge, so you can tilt the camera forward and back to get the right angle, and you can rotate the camcorder to point it where you wish. The mount is fairly squat and the camera light, so once mounted and with the hinges screwed up tight there’s barely any wobble.

This is a good thing, as the camera seems to have little or nothing in the way of image stabilisation. Footage taken on a bumpy track showed a significant amount of shimmering due to the buggy’s up and down movement. Colour accuracy wasn’t up there with the more expensive action cameras, with greens so oversaturated they made trees look like something out of Minecraft, but we were generally impressed with the amount of detail in our test footage. Considering its low price, the Ego definitely captures acceptable video.

The HPI Racing Bullet MT RC car we used for high-speed testing

The camera doesn’t move much on its mount, but footage is still pretty wobbly – best viewed full-screen at 1080p

Quality is still pretty reasonable for a cheap action cam – best viewed full-screen at 1080p

The camera doesn’t come with a shell and isn’t ruggedised, but its rubberised coating and included plastic shield for the front of the case should take some knocks. The camcorder is splashproof out of the box. If you want some proper waterproofing you’ll need to buy the Underwater Housing (£40 from actioncameras.co.uk) which will keep the water out up to 40 metres down.

The Ego is simple enough to use. One top-mounted button turns the camera on and off and switches mode, and one starts recording or takes a photo. A tiny LCD with equally tiny icons shows you which mode the camera is currently set to and the number of recordings on the microSD card, and the recording light on the front flashes a different colour for each mode.

The hinge lets you angle the camcorder how you wish

You can choose from 60fps video at 1,280×720 and 30fps at 1,920×1,080, as well as single-shot or continuous-mode photos taken at 2, 5 and 10-second intervals. You can change between video modes on the camcorder itself, but to switch photo intervals you need to use an Android or iOS app.

We were impressed with the Ego’s Action Connect app. While much of the action camera software we have tested was plagued by dropped Wi-Fi connections and odd designs, Action Connect connected wirelessly without a hitch and was easy to use. It lets you change the camcorder’s settings from the app and take photos remotely. You can also use the app to remotely monitor what the action camera sees – footage streamed from the camcorder is smooth, but there’s a second or so delay, so it’s not entirely real-time. You can also set the camcorder recording from the app, but this causes the Wi-Fi to disconnect.

The Liquid Image Ego is an easy camera to like. It’s easy to use, inexpensive, has impressive apps and fair video quality. Its footage isn’t up there with more expensive cameras such as the GoPro Hero3 or Drift HD Ghost, but it’s far cheaper and so a great Budget Buy.