Cycliq Fly6 CE Gen 3 Review - Part 2

 This is a follow up from part 1 of the review.  

So I have had a chance to put the Fly6 though its paces a bit more, and for the most part it works fine.  Honestly the stabilization works better than expected based on reviews - but maybe that's because I have a full suspension bike.  

I did some tests with sidewalk riding as well, but since you are more likely to hit pedestrians in front of you (rather them hitting you from than behind), I suspect most people will be interested in the road footage.  

In addition to the comparison video I made last time (which shows the same ride with the Sony ActionCam and the Fly6), I have made some Fly6 only videos, which are essentially unedited.  

The actual quality of the camera video will be slightly higher than these videos, since Youtube cuts the quality a bit.  The only edits I performed were to cut out long sections, and sections where I am stopped at a traffic light, etc.  This is as close as possible to the raw footage as I could provide without boring you to death.  

I'll apologize in advance, the videos show the bike's tire on the bottom and Varia radar on the top, so there is not a nice clean uninterrupted image.  

Day Time (Road)


Here is the night time video.  To be fair, Tokyo is pretty bright even at night, licence plates are actually surprisingly clear when they aren't driwned out by headlights.  

Night Time (Road)

The quality of the night video is much better than I expected, even better than the GoPro Hero 9 in some ways.  

As for the bitrate, The file size is a bit less than half of the video from the Sony ActionCam, which is recording at 100Mbps, so that means the Fly6 video is less than 50Mbps.  

Checking the metadata of the video files did not reveal too much interesting, except that the audio is Mono 32khz AAC.  Who uses 32khz?!  The word "aweful" does not do justice to how bad the audio is, but I don't think that the audio quality is terribly important in this application.  The main thing you would want to hear would be squealing tires, etc.  It does pick up the clicks from shifting gears, though.  

The lack of ability to swap out the battery is disappointing, but the internal battery lasts surprisingly long.  Some reviewers expressed disappointment that they couldn't get 10 hours, etc. - but even 2 hours is much longer than any action camera.  

What's more, I took an hour long ride (including stopping time), and charged the camera afterwards.  It only took a few minutes to charge back to full!  The Sony ActionCam also failed to eat through an entire battery, but I am sure it used up more than half of the charge - and it took over an hour to charge it back to full again.  

On the one hand, I wish the Fly6 could be intellignet like the Garmin Virb, and only record when you are moving - but on the other hand, someone could hit you even when you aren't moving.  

Another item on my wishlist would be some kind of powered mount, so you can power it while using it.  This would be especially nice for eBikes, where you have a huge battery anyway.  



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