SVP 2.7" Dual Screen Orange Aqua5800 Underwater Camera

I purchased this camera for our kids to take pictures in our pool this summer. Over 400 reviews with fairly good overall rating and less than $100, sure why not. I did scan over the reviews prior to purchase and there is always lemons and overly expectant buyers.ProsFairly decent picture quality- I purchased this camera for its waterproof feature not picture quality. Underwater vs. land is not apples to apples. Lets face it, you want to take a camera to our nations capital. This is probably not the one.Is indeed waterproof- Although only time will tell I supposeDual screen is very nice for selfiesSmall/lightweightCons-Batteries Consumption- The camera came with some generic brand batteries that died within maybe 20 flash and no flash pictures and "getting to know the camera time". I thought ok generic batteries and maybe there old etc. I replace the batteries with brand new duracells. Again dies within 20 or so pictures. Finally, I replace those batteries with rechargeable NiCads. Same thing. In summary, I went through 3 sets of AAA batteries in approximately 50 pictures/2 days. Unacceptable!-As others have mentioned the screens are very hard to see underwater. They are extremely dim, almost to the point that you are just pointing/clicking and HOPING you have the subject in the picture-Zoom does not work on selfie mode. More importantly, you have to remember to zoom back out on normal mode prior to switching to selfie mode.-Flash- There is a delay when the flash is "Charging"? WTH, I haven't used a camera in YEARS where I had to wait for the flash to charge.-The "Landscape/Macro" switch- This TINY little manual plastic lever on the left side of the camera which switches between Landscape or I suppose normal pictures and Macro or close-ups is asking to break off. Ours was very stiff.-Lastly, and this brings the waterproofness into question. When taking a picture from the normal view (not selfie) and the flash goes off you can actually see some of the light from the backside of the camera around the viewing screen bezel. Waterproof? Hmmm I did not get to the point of uploading pics. I wanted to like this camera, and honestly for $65 I probably could of dealt with every con but the battery consumption and dark screen, since like I said we would use this strictly for underwater use. Alas, it is going back to Amazon.

I just got back from a trip with boy scouts to Florida Seabase where we did a lot of snorkeling. The camera is waterproof as advertise but only rakes average quality pictures. For the price you can't really expect more than that. If you buy this camera the first thing you need to do is throw away the batteries that come with it. Use a good quality lithium battery and you won't have any problem with batteries that fail prematurely. Bring along a spare pair though if you take lots of pics. The shutter speed is somewhat slow so if you are taking underwater pics of moving fish expect the fish to be blurry. The biggest annoyance to me is that subjects that are brightly back lit appear more like silhouettes in the photo. The background will be perfect but the subject matter will be darker than you want. There is no way to tell the camera to compensate for this. The camera is rugged enough to be handled roughly. It got knocked around getting back into the boat. Forget about using the viewfinder in sunlight or underwater. You will have to point in the general direction and go with that. You might be able to see an outline but no detail in the viewfinder. However when using it indoors it is fine.I probably wouldn't buy it again but it served its purpose this time. Get a floating wrist strap if you buy this. Chums has a good one.

After having read mixed reviews about this underwater camera, I ordered with some fear that I might be wasting my money. It does not come with a card so that was an extra expense as well. Reviewers who talk about it eating batteries are absolutely correct. In my initial experiments with it at home it devoured alkaline batteries. I used the Ultimate Lithium batteries during my recent three week trip to Australia and New Zealand. The batteries lasted the whole trip! However, after using it while snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef it was only a backup camera the rest of the trip. We did use it several days and it worked well. As far as using it underwater, I had no problems with leaks. I did make sure the battery door was shut well and did not try to use the zoom or any other features other than taking pictures. The underwater colors were excellent with very vibrant hues. Out of the water, the pictures did not compare as well to my regular camera, but it was a lot more expensive than this one. If you want a relatively inexpensive camera for underwater use at snorkeling depth, based on my experience I can recommend it as an excellent if maybe not quite superior choice. For the money, it works well. I plan to use it again.

Purchased camera for a sailing / snorkeling trip in the Bahamas. For the money the camera is a great deal and does take great pictures, which are only evident once downloaded to a computer. The biggest problem with this camera is the screens, underwater they are nearly impossible to view anything (and to determine if camera is on I suggest you switch it to continuous on versus power saving which shuts the camera off after 3 minutes of inactivity) , so it is mostly point and shoot. Even with this handicap I did get many excellent shots because I took multiples of each picture. I was concerned about the camera moving with the rocking of the surf, but the camera performed admirably and did not take blurry photos. Battery life is an issue I used lithium batteries as suggested by many reviewers but mid week they needed to be replaced (shot about 95 photos). Overall I am satisfied with this camera and would recommend it to my friends to purchase. The instructions say its compatible with windows 7 but I had trouble with my computer recognizing it, so I just used a SD card adapter and the card reader on my computer.