The Polaroid Cube+ is Polaroid’s addition to the action camera market. You’d think it interesting that a company making a very specific type of camera would create an action camera. The Cube+ is a remarkably simple action camera that bears resemblance to the GoPro HERO5 Fusion.
As a result, it is very small and practically fits in the palm of your hand. The flat color combined with the trademark rainbow of Polaroid is sure to catch eyes wherever you go.
Camera
The Cube+ sports a 124-degree wide lens that achieves 1080p video quality and 8MP camera shots. An action camera of this size doesn’t have the processing power of something like the GoPro HERO6, but it does make a name for itself.
At full battery, the Cube+ can record up to 107 minutes of footage. To achieve the maximum frame rate of 30fps, the Cube+ can run at 1080p with WiFi turned off. You don’t exactly need WiFi in order to operate the camera, only if you want to share footage and stills quickly.
Features
By downloading the Cube+’s specific app, you can instantly share the photos and videos to said app and promptly edit them. Once you’ve done that, you can upload them to social media or share with even more people.
The Cube+’s own WiFi network makes this possible and allows photos and videos to be shared relatively quickly.
Despite its size, the Cube+ can sport an SD card that can hold up to 128GB of memory. If you’re planning on going on short trips or excursions, that should be plenty of memory to last an entire day. For longer trips, an extra SD card might be a good idea.
The Cube+ also has a weak magnet on the bottom that also acts as a heat sink while it’s running. The magnet won’t stick to every metallic surface, but is pretty stable when it does.
Compared to other Action Cameras
The major drawback of the Cube+ is that it does not attain 4k video quality. There are other, cheaper action cameras that do, but none that are this compact. It is easily mountable on stabilizers, gimbals, and helmets.
A good portion of reviewers have commented on a recurring audio problem with the Cube+. Supposedly the microphone doesn’t pick up great sound beyond whoever or whatever is holding the camera. When talking directly around the camera, voices sound slightly muffled, but not to the point of distortion.
- An update supposedly came out at the end of 2016 to fix this problem, but its still not ultra-real quality.
In video mode, there is slight barrel distortion on the extreme ends of the video, but again, nothing too much of the ordinary for an action camera of this size. In lower light environments, the Cube+ actually does really well and pulls as much light as possible to illuminate the video.
The biggest advantage the Polaroid has is its price. The HERO5 Session, the other cube-like camera, is in the hundreds of dollars. While the Session does produce better quality overall, the Cube+ is pretty on par or even better than most 3rd party action cameras.
Overall
The Cube+ isn’t a bad camera for a fraction of the price. Obviously, we’d all like the video/picture quality to be better but if you’re not interested in spending hundreds of dollars just to get the best quality, the Cube+ is well worth the money.
Click here to shop the Polaroid Cube+.
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