Battle of the best quadcopter cameras – RunCam 2 vs Foxeer Legend 1

Yesterday it was a cold but nice sunny day so I thought it would be time for the first flight of 2016 🙂

I have planed this side by side camera test for a while but only now I found the right time and also had the mood to do it.

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I prepared my X380 quadcopter for this test. Firstly I wanted to install both cameras on the same 2 axis gimbal but the gimbal calibration was not a success. I applied B plan so I leaved aside the brushless gimbal and used a simple camera mount with 4 vibration reduction damping balls. Finally, the cameras where installed one above the other, note side by side.

While the Foxeer Legend 1 is equipped with a 166° wide-angle lens, the RunCam2 has 120° lens, so the field of view for these two cameras are a bit different.

These two small cameras are very popular because there are extremely lightweight (about 50 g ) and allows 60 fps at FULL HD video resolution (1080p). Both cameras came with FPV cables and they can be easily used on a racing quadcopters as first person view camera.

RunCam 2 vs Foxeer Legend 1 – Video file properties

Both cameras where set to default factory settings and 1080p@60fps video resolution.

RunCam 2 HD test video file

Video length: 15:26;

File size: 3,640,717,117 bytes;

Codec: H264 – MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1);

Resolution: 1920×1080;

Frame rate: 60 fps;

Decoded format: Planar 4:2:0 YUV;

Content bitrate: 28000-33000 kb/s;

Audio: Stereo, 44100 HZ, 16 bit.

Foxeer Legend 1 test video file

Video length: 15:37;

File size: 3,438,955,325 bytes;

Codec: H264 – MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1);

Resolution: 1920 x 1080;

Frame rate: 59.94 fps;

Decoded format: Planar 4:2:0 YUV full scale;

Content bitrate: 25000-35000 kb/s;

Audio: Stereo, 48000 HZ.

RunCam 2 vs Foxeer Legend 1 – Sample photos

The sample images are snapshots from the videos (made with VLC player) and are in PNG format without being resized or post processed.

RunCam 2 vs Foxeer Legend 1

Features/Camera RunCam 2 Foxeer Legend 1 Weight 49g 49g Lens 120 degree 166 degree Max video resolution 1440p@30fps 1296p@30fps 1080p@60fps latency ~60ms ~100ms FPV out Yes Yes HD FPV / HDMI out No Yes USB connector Micro USB Mini USB Servo cable with remote control No Yes Removable battery Yes No Mounting accessories Yes No Lens cap No (integrated lens hood) No Reset button No Yes WIFI connection Yes No Remote APP with Live view Yes No

Which one is better quadcopter camera? I will let every one to decide by them self based on the sample images and the test video. Those who are not convinced, there are many other test and comparison videos with these two cameras on YouTube.

The certain thing is that the Foxeer Legend 1 has a much wider field of view but the RunCam 2 has a more sharper image quality and also has a better video out latency.

RunCam 2 and Foxeer Legend 1 comparison video