Hands on: Cycliq Fly12

Really nice bit of kit. Two in one is so much more appealing than having two seperate devices mounted.

I've been lucky enough to be knocking around, some people have been a little disappointmented with the quality of the Fly12 camera. 

I think it's an exceptionally good safety camera, and a good action camera. I've recently completed a review on TitaniumGeek, and have included two videos comparing with the Garmin Virb XE quality

here is the link if people want to see the comparison

http://www.titaniumgeek.com/gear-reviews/fly12-review-action-camera-and-...

Are there differences between the Mk1 and Mk2 Fly6? I was a Mk1 kickstarter, and I have to say I'd put its video quality in the "not awesome" box: it's quite often hard or impossible to read plates (though you can of course record notable ones by shouting them out, if you're not too busy crapping yourself at the time). I have a Polaroid Cube and a Rideye to compare with, and I'd say the Fly6 Mk1 is on a par with the former. The Rideye blows the others out of the water in terms of video quality (once you've spent half your life getting it mounted without wobbling).

So are we all talking about the same video quality?

I do love the Fly6's simplicity, though. I use it a lot more than either of the front camera, simply because I can strap it on and go (though it's rendered useless if I'm using a seat pack). And the battery life is a hugely important feature. With hindsight I wish I'd kickstarted the Fly12 as well, but I was still waiting (and waiting…) on my Rideye.

Cyclic,

Thanks for taking the time to comment on people's comments, I take this as a clear demonstration of your company listening to it's customers.

Just to be clear of my meaning, "expensive" does not mean poor value.

I'd also suggest another advantage of your design, in that it is not obviously a camera. Not because I condone secret filming to catch people out (however much they might deserve to be), but because it removes a particular source of antagonism that people are becoming more resentful of having cameras conspicuously pointed at them. It's a bit like when I am travelling in the USA in certain states that allow citizens to carry concealed weapons. I am aware that there is probably some muppet who is packing a gun to go to the supermarket but I'm happier not to see that are doing so.

OK then ! I'm tempted. Can it be fitted to a helmet ?

Thank you all for your comments and please keep them coming. It is a great help for us to hear your thoughts and comments (good or bad). A big and special thank you to our Kickstarter backers and people that pre-order from us. You are our fuel to make our products better so everyone can benefit from it. Below we have tried to address all the comments in one post so forgive the length of it....

FATBEGGARONABIKE
We have designed Fly12 so you can use it exactly like Fly6....just as a camera & a light. You don’t ‘need’ the smartphone to use it. If you want to use the rich feature list, you will need to use the app. We do understand that not everyone wants all the features however they are there if you would like to use them! Please believe me when I say that we have applied the KISS principle. There is just one button to operate Fly12 if you don’t want the smartphone features…that’s pretty simple! We don’t need two versions - it is simple if that is your want or it is feature rich if you want to use our smartphone app….cool, hey?

Batchy
Fly12 takes awesome footage. Simple as that! There are a few little design reasons why our footage will be more stable/watchable than the other big brand action cameras - namely we have designed it for us cyclists in mind. When considering the value of Fly12, we think of it like an iPhone…feature rich to be sure if we want all the bells and whistles but at the end of the day, it makes phone calls too!

Plasterer’s Radio
If you have any issues with Fly6 please contact support [at] cycliq.com and we will get you sorted straight away with our friendly and attentive support team. If you don’t have any issues with Fly6 then it does exactly what it says on the box. We don’t over promise and nor do we want to. Your satisfaction with our products is very important to us so please let us know so we can address you concern.

KiwaiMike
The 720@60fps is pretty cool, for sure! Even with 720@30fps we can still capture number plates in a number of situations. What we find tho is that the ambient conditions have a large effect on how well you capture plates. Light conditions seem to play the greatest role in this regard. it is more about the direction of the sun/light in relation to the camera as opposed to ‘how much light’. By way of example, this vehicle passed a cyclist at probably over 60MPH and yet even with 30fps the number plate is very clear on a number of frames https://vimeo.com/108426178

bikebot
We are of course biased about our products however there is no better way to show how we feel about them than by showing footage that users send us like this on: https://vimeo.com/137223278 where the quality of the footage is awesome. Here is another recent video submitted by a customer: https://vimeo.com/133534288 If these videos are “fairly awful” in your opinion then it would be great to learn what the very cheap action cameras you refer to are so we can learn to make our products better. Fly12 will have higher quality footage due to a number of factors including a better camera sensor, better microprocessor, better lens and lots of other ‘better stuff’! We think you will be impressed.

Pavery1
Thank you so much for your comments….we live for them. We have such a small but dedicated team that tries to deliver products that exceed our customers expectations. Comments like yours fuel our passion to keep innovating...much appreciated.

Gizmo_
The trim/edits are done on the app, as you said, using the phones impressive processing power. Glad you like it!

mrchrispy
Our products don’t get shipped from Australia (where we live) and all Kickstarter backers and people that pre-order will be sent their Fly12 units with duty paid (we learnt that lesson from our first KIckstarter campaign)

Mungecrundle
Pricing products is like a science experiment with 15 ingredients, 5 processes and 11 different rules to work within. When you say ‘expensive’, we like to compare our offering against what else is available. As it happens, there are not any direct comparisons on the market. So we compare our features to other products such as action cameras and 400 lumen lights. When we compare these things to our products we find Fly12 is in most cases, cheaper, lighter, easier to use, takes up less space on the bike, lasts for longer, looks better (ok…that one is our opinion!) and address critical issues that us cyclists need like weather proofing, incident protection and looping record to name a few. As mentioned before, we are very biased however it’s hard to argue against all that. At the end of the day and as you said, we really are trying to develop a better product.

A note should be provided to the Road.cc team who we met at Eurobike. Great to catch up & keep up the outstanding work. Always good to see a small team punching above their weight.

Expensive, but isn't it refreshing to see a company attempting to develop a genuinely better product to justify the price, rather than investing a lot of money in building a brand image that then needs to be recouped from the customer.

I'm really liking the look of this, the fly6 is a great bit of kit (I took the plunge at the new £99 price when wiggle started doing them).

I missed kickstarter but there were doing a preorder price of £180, supposed to ship end of this year but the biggest problem for me was it'd ship from downunder and we'd probably get stung for import duty here in the UK. I'm going to wait till wiggle get them over here.

Very interesting stuff. I don't quite see why the Fly12 does the crop/edit stuff - surely it would make more sense to send it to the app and let the phone's processing (and battery) do it. But still, very interesting tech and very well integrated.

I think that's cool. It's a lot more than I expected. You have to give them marks for pushing things forward. Sit in a coffe shop and look at a fast decent or section of road on your phone. That's brilliant!

All this Stava/Smart Phone /Gismo/ Teasmaid stuff is fine. But does the thing take decent images/footage. If not, it will be a waste of good money !

Sounds absolutely brilliant IF you are conversant with all this technology, it seems you would (according to the write up) need a smart phone to adjust the settings. Speaking for myself who is not so much of a Luddite but a firm believer in the KISS principle I would love it if they did two versions of this a basic (passive) model like the fly6 and this other one with all the bells and whistles.

I'm a kickstarter