Akaso Full Color Night Vision Goggle Review

Recently, the team at Akaso sent us out a pair of their SEEMOR-200 Full Color Night Vision Goggles to review.

At first I thought “What can I do with these!” I’m not in the military (I watch movies, ok!) and I’m not a night watchmen… But them my 11 year old spotted them on my desk and he was instantly hooked! So I sent him away to make a list of five things we could do, to test out these NVGs! Now, these SeeMor 200 NVG’s aren’t the most expensive pair that you can get your hands on, and at around $350, you have to keep in mind that you’re potentially sacrificing performance or build quality when compared with a much more expensive pair. We expected to open and test a flimsy little toy, but that wasn’t the case.

Anyhow, here’s what he came up with:

Explore the Outdoors at Night – Go for a nighttime hike or wildlife-watching adventure without disturbing animals with a flashlight.
Home Security Check – Inspect your property in the dark for any unusual activity or potential security risks.
Play Night Games – Organise a game of nighttime hide-and-seek with friends for an immersive experience.
Search and Rescue Practice – Train for emergency situations by using night vision to locate objects or people in low-light conditions.
Stargazing with a Twist – While not for seeing stars, night vision can help you spot possums and drop bears!

I’m afraid we didn’t get to most of these for this review, but they’re on the ‘must do’ list.

Opening the box, the Akaso Full Color Night Vision Goggle come in their own zip-up case, that keeps the googles, two batteries, a neck strap, usb charging cable, cleaning cloth and instructions neatly housed. It’s not a hard-case, but easily protective enough that you could pack your NVGs (Night Vision Goggles, if you were still wondering!) and chuck them in your backpack ready for a trek in the bush! (Spot snakes at night, yeah – no thank you…. but show me a cute cuddly drop-bear?!)

Before we get into it, here’s a full specification list from Akaso:

Dimensions: 16.2 x 12 x 6.9 cm
Weight: 500 g
Zoom: 16x digital zoom
WiFi: 2.4 GHz, supports connection with the AKASO Aura App
Video Resolution: Up to 4K
Encoding Format: H.265
Color Modes: Full-Color Mode and Infrared (IR) Mode
Sensor: 1/1.79-inch CMOS
Field of View (FOV): Diagonal 17.5°, Horizontal 14°, Vertical 11°
Lens Aperture: F1.2 (Really?)
Display: 3-inch LCD with 800 x 480 resolution
Microphone: 1 built-in microphone
Gyroscope: 6-axis gyroscope
Compass: Supported
Battery Capacity: Two replaceable 3,250 mAh batteries
Runtime: Up to 8 hours (4 hours per battery)
Operating Temperature: -20°C to 60°C
Memory Capacity: Supports up to 512 GB
Wide Dynamic Range (WDR): Supported
Infrared Illuminator: 850 nm with 7 adjustable levels
App Support: AKASO Aura App for remote monitoring and media transfer
Water Resistance: IPX5 rating

The Akaso Seemor-200 are constructed from a hard (ABS?) black plastic that doesn’t have a very tactile feel when compared with my regular rubber-coated Nikon binoculars, but they feel sturdy enough – I don’t know how they would survive the rough use of my kid on an outdoor adventure camp (but we’ll find out soon!) I opted to not use the neck strap, instead attaching it to the d-rings on the included case, I opted to mount the unit on a tripod plate so that I could use it on a tripod rather than hand-holding. The one downside of having the tripod plate attached is that it blocks the MicroSD and USB-C charging ports, so just keep that in mind if you’re out in the field and need to change a memory card. (They support MicroSD cards upto 512gb, Akaso suggest class 10+ cards for smooth video).

In the photograph below, you can see the single f/1.2 (I’m still dubious) lens and the IR Illuminator.

Using the Akaso Full Color Night Vision Goggle

My first test was from my desk inside with very little ambient light, I also grabbed a shot of the bright (I’d like to be able to dim it down!) screen of the goggles… The photo was going to be of my dog, but she legged it (I wonder if dog’s can see an IR beam!?) you get a feeling just how little light there was!

Below: The desk in IR (With beam assist) and then in colour shows up how the quality drops quite drastically when you don’t have enough light.

Real world use saw me in the back yard in the dark, one thing I came to realise was that in the dark-dark, like with no (or very little ambient) actual light, the full colour viewing experience needed to be switched to the IR viewing experience, but with just a little ambient, the unit would show an ‘AI’ full colour, or at least what it presented as full colour, image. I’ve found that the AI / iSP tech that powers these NVG’s has a tendency to soften off the images to make them easier on the eye maybe? Very noisy images in the colour mode, IR mode gives you a half-decent black and white image, then with the IR beam assist you can get a sharp enough black and white image. Again, above as an example, I’ve taken two images, one in IR beam assist and one in colour, both about the same time (6 whatever PM) You can see the difference between modes in the same setting.

As you can see, there’s a considerable amount of noise in that second image, yes, you can tell it’s a desk, but that’s really the limit of it. Once you get the Akaso Full Color Night Vision Goggle outside things change a little, the ambient light from the sky (If you’re in the city like me) can help the AI Colour work out what’s what, in this next short video, I start in standard IR mode, then add IR Beam Assist, then finally switching to colour, you can see in the dark it’s all pretty messy (Aside from the beam assist IR mode, which really is kinda like shining a torch, just that it’s infra red and you can’t see that with the naked eye) but at the end, the ambient light from the night sky above Melbourne shows up as nicely blue – which is kinda wild to me. I feel like the processing is kinda like an over-done jpg, but for the most part, it’s fine – these aren’t a super expensive pair of night vision goggles, does that make their performance acceptable? That’s really up to you, the viewer.

After my little sojourn into the darkness, I wandered back inside armed with a tasty cup of tea and a fresh battery (Using the IR beam really sucks the juice) I went about testing the WiFi connection and app – I tried all of the ways, reboots included and I couldn’t get the goggles to connect via WiFI! I did some research and found that some others had the same issue – I couldn’t find a fix for it, but will endeavour to do so and if I do, I’ll update this review with the details.

A couple of things before I wrap this up, firstly, they claim the unit has an f/1.2 lens, typically f/1.2 lenses are pretty expensive and they have a habit of having a very shallow depth of field (The bit of the photo that’s in focus) …that could well be there case here, getting the unit to focus on close objects can be finicky, I’m guessing because of the very shallow depth of field – if used on a tripod, this isn’t a problem, if you’re trying to hand-hold the unit, it could be a frustratingly blurry experience.

But why don’t they change the lens, then, I hear you cry!? Well, the smaller the number, for example f/1.2 compared with f/5.6 means that the lens lets in more light – for a product like this, you really do need as much light in as possible, so to change it would mean a less good low light performance.

While the Akaso Full Color Night Vision Goggle do what they say they do, I feel like many reviews talk about the astounding 4K images and video that’s produced by the unit and I just can’t agree, I found the footage produced just barely useable, the images mostly very noisy (lots of fuzz in the images when there’s not enough light)

For taking on a camping trip and checking out the trees for drop bears, or for any low-light viewing really, as long as you don’t need super detailed images, these are fun.

The Akaso Seemor-200 is available from their website in:

standalone bundle for USD$239.99 which includes 1 x Seemor, 2 x batteries, 1 x carry case, 1 x neck strap and 1 x charging cable
essential power bundle for USD$249.99 which is everything in the standalone bundle above and adding a battery charger

It is also available from Amazon with the standard bundle for A$319.99 and essential power bundle for A$409.99. There is a 20% off coupon available at time of publish.