Whilst sounding more like an engine part than a toy, the CAM ECS-12 is
one of the newest blasters in the NERF range and is also the first ever blaster
to feature an integrated camera. With it becoming easier and easier to make and
share home videos via the interwebs, this blaster will provide NERFers with the ability to record
their antics and share missions and skill shots with their friends through
social media.
This isn’t the first time NERF have ventured into the world
of digital technology. There have been a couple of third party digital cameras
boasting the NERF logo, but none of these could be mounted to your favourite
blaster. I seem to remember at the time of their release, the community as a
whole were a bit confused by this lack of foresight. Then we had the ‘Mission
App Cradle’ which was released almost two years ago. Whilst it is a good
product, most people were dubious about strapping their £400 smartphone to a
£20 blaster just to make videos. The app that was designed for the cradle was
good, but not enough to make me risk my iPhone in the cradle. Hopefully the CAM
ECS-12 will provide a platform for people to video their battles but without
the risk of damaging an expensive piece of equipment.
Overview
Out of the box, the CAM ECS-12 is an impressive blaster. A good
size, a good weight and very well balanced. I hate to use the term
‘comfortable’ because it makes me think of slippers and a dressing gown but the
CAM ECS-12 is a very nice blaster to hold. It feels solid and robust and the
plastic feels a lot more rigid than that of other blasters.
The CAM requires 8x AA batteries to operate. 4 are used to
power the blaster (much like a Stryfe) and 4 power the electronic gubbins that
make the camera work. Strangely, there are two battery trays, one on the left
hand side and one on the right. At first I thought this was really odd but the
symmetry really helps with the blaster’s balance. The fact that both battery
trays are also directly above the handle also really helps make this blaster
feel really nice.
As a blaster, the CAM ECS-12 functions exactly like a
Stryfe CS-6. It has two triggers, the smaller operating the flywheels and the larger
trigger firing a dart. It is a semi-automatic blaster, meaning that one trigger
pull releases one dart. For me this was a little disappointing but not entirely
unexpected.
Performance
Performance wise the CAM ECS-12 is pretty impressive. It
seems to shoot harder than my Rapidstrike but this could just be an illusion. I
will be giving the blaster to Foam Data Services at some point for some proper
testing so make sure you check back for that. For now it suffices to say that
the ECS is a fairly effective blaster. It provides the reliable semi-auto fire
rate of a Stryfe but gives you a much more robust and stable platform.
Camera
I have to admit, I was really sceptical about the camera in
this thing. Boasting a 0.3 Megapixel camera recording 20 frames per second is
pretty shoddy. To put that in perspective, the Nokia 7650 had an integrated
camera of the same resolution way back in 2002.
As it turns out, my scepticism
was justified and the image quality is awful. Below is an image captured with the blaster. Taken indoors, I think it pretty much speaks for itself. It is by no means dark in my house but as you can see from the image, the camera is really struggling to get enough light.
Please don't be startled, it's only MerryUnBirthday. |
If you are playing outside on a sunny day then you will get
on pretty well with it. If however, your battle is indoors or during darker
conditions, then the CAM ECS-12 will really struggle to give you the image
quality you’d expect for the money.
It’s not all bad news from the ECS’s integrated camera. When
you switch it on, the camera makes a little robotic chirp as it boots up and
displays the NERF logo, both great touches. I was also pleased to see that the
2.5” integrated screen also shows crosshairs on the image making it double up as a pretty cool scope. Sadly, these crosshairs
don’t come out in the video which I think is a real shame.
The ‘Record’ button for the CAM ECS-12 is located in the
blaster’s foregrip which is a great bit of design. It means that you don’t have
to fiddle with any controls on the blaster during battle. You can record your
gameplay without shifting position and missing a single shot. I wasn’t
expecting this and I think it is a really neat feature.
The screen position on the blaster has caused me to be
somewhat divided. On one hand it is great. When you look down the sights of the
blaster the screen is right in your eyeline so you can ensure that your shots
are always caught on video. The downside I have found with this is that it does
give you a certain amount of tunnel vision. It would be all too easy to be
drawn into the screen and only concentrate on what is in front of you, making
it easy for an opponent to sneak up and tag you. I can imagine this effect
would be reduced with training but the lure of the little screen is all too
much for me!
The blaster comes complete with a 4GB SD card which I think
is really generous. Coupled with the camera’s terrible resolution, you can
record up to a maximum of 1 3/4 hours of video or 2000 images. Not bad really
but I think I’d still rather have a better camera.
Additional Findings
It’s not often that I find something a blaster does that was
probably not intended by the manufacturer. As it turns out, the CAM ECS-12 has
a bit of a trick up it’s sleeve... Night Vision.
Without boring you all with science, the camera on the ECS
is so cheap that the lens doesn’t have the infrared filter you usually find on
cameras. Infrared light is invisible to the naked eye but it can be captured on
camera.
I noticed that the ECS could ‘see’ IR when I was playing
with it outside at dusk, experimenting with it in different light levels. I
noticed that the floodlight on a nearby security camera was clearly visible on
the blaster’s screen. I simply had to explore this further so I bought myself a
cheap IR illuminator to see how well it would work.
On the whole it is a fairly effective night vision camera
but the limitations of the cheap camera components make even this neat party
piece tactically ineffective. You’d need a big IR light source to make it work
as a viable night vision scope. The image below was taken in total darkness. What you are looking at is a toy tractor on my son's bookshelf.
Whilst messing about with the blaster, I also noticed that
the hole in the stock serves as storage for an additional clip. Whilst a neat
feature, the positioning is pretty awkward in terms of carrying the blaster.
Anything larger than a 6 dart clip will stick out like a third elbow and cause
you all manner of issues, especially in a CQB situation. MerryUnBirthday and I even discovered another use for this feature. Could this be the worlds first Rhinofire with an integrated CAM ECS-12?
The jam door on this blaster is tiny. I purposefully jammed
a dart and found that it was really fiddly to clear the dart. As you can see in
this picture, the jam door only exposes the rear half of the mag so it’s
actually a bit easier to remove the mag to clear the jam. This doesn’t do much
for the CAM’s ease of use.
Conclusion
The NERF CAM ECS-12 is a great blaster. Aesthetically it is
awesome, I really like it’s sci-fi looks and colour scheme. The build quality
is top notch and the plastic feels a lot more solid and rugged than that of
other blasters.
The way the camera is integrated makes it feel really high
tech. Rather than a camera simply bolted on, the camera is a part of the
blaster and a lot of thought has gone into how it would be used. There is no
need to take your hands away from the trigger or foregrip so capturing your
battle is seamless and intuitive.
Performance wise, the CAM ECS-12 is everything I expected.
Data will be available soon but I can only imagine that it will be at least on
par with the other Elite flywheelers.
You are going to get through batteries quickly with this
blaster. If you use the blaster and camera a lot, you can expect to replace all
8 batteries every couple of weeks. If I were to make this my blaster of choice,
I would be dropping around £12 a month just to run it. Something to think about
if you are considering one.
Now, down the crux of the matter, would I buy one? More
importantly, would I advise you guys to get one?
The short answer is... No.
To elaborate, Hell no!
Put simply, at £70 this blaster is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay overpriced
for what you get which is a Stryfe (clip fed, semi-auto flywheel blaster) with
12 year old camera technology built in. I’m afraid I simply can’t deny the fact
that you could buy one of these for £16 (at the time of writing this) and have a camera that has 3 times
the image quality and could easily be fitted to any blaster you own.
Tape it to
your Stryfe and you have a blaster with the same performance but much better
quality camera, all for less than half the price of the NERF CAM ECS-12. If you drop it and smash the camera it'll hurt your wallet a bit, but you could buy an new one and still be making a saving against the ECS. As nice as
the camera integration is, I’m not sure it’s worth the extra £40 and I’m sure
that parents will feel the same way. I have been selling foam dart blasters for
years now and I can spot a lemon from a mile away.
Side Note
These days it is getting easier to create and share videos
on the internet. Products like the NERF CAM ECS-12 are a good example of people
realising this and creating products that will facilitate users expressing
themselves through this medium. In a way, the CAM ECS-12 is allowing users to
promote the product themselves when they upload their blasting to social media.
This in turn also allows the manufacturer to gather information on how their
products are used, thus providing some incredibly useful feedback.
For these reasons there is no doubt in my mind that the NERF
CAM ECS-12 is an important milestone in the NERF brand, I just think they’ve
tried a little too hard and as a result, missed an opportunity to really give
users another dimension of play.
Had Hasbro launched a rail mounted camera, I think they
could have cleaned up. The product could be cheaper, better quality, more
readily available (the smaller size of the product would take up less shelf
space in store and therefore, any shop could carry it) but most important of
all, it would fit any of the blasters that you already own. Think about it,
rather than users promoting one product, they would all be promoting the whole
range of blasters and the camera at the same time.
Fortunately, Buffdaddy NERF gave us a glimpse of something that could be the answer. It would seem that NERF have already been developing a ‘better’ product. I’m not going to go into it now, if this product sees a wide release then I’ll review it at a later date. If you want some more information, check out the NERF Reddit where a user called ‘rdewalt’ has the Elite camera in hand.
Fortunately, Buffdaddy NERF gave us a glimpse of something that could be the answer. It would seem that NERF have already been developing a ‘better’ product. I’m not going to go into it now, if this product sees a wide release then I’ll review it at a later date. If you want some more information, check out the NERF Reddit where a user called ‘rdewalt’ has the Elite camera in hand.
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