Review: Sena Prism Tube Wifi

Are you looking to record in-flight video footage of your motorcycle ride? Do you want an easy-to-mount, easy-to-use camera? If so, the Sena Prism Tube Wifi (with its $215 price tag) might be what you need.

Let’s talk background details: The first time I ever realized action cameras were going to be “a thing,” I was at DealerExpo in Indianapolis in 2011. Throughout that whole powersports industry show, one display was noticeably more busy than anyone else. The GoPro booth had interested dealers backed up wayyyyyy into the aisles, at a time when everyone else was grumbling about lack of business.

In the years since, there’s been a sharp stratification of the action camera market: GoPro vs. Everyone Else. GoPro has an advantage because it doesn’t just have great cameras: there’s a huge selection of camera mounts and other accessories that allow you to use GoPros effectively.

In the past couple of years, the only company to seriously challenge GoPro has been Sony; Sony’s cameras shoot footage that is as good, or better, than GoPro, but Sony still doesn’t dominate the market.

The Sena Prism Tube Wifi falls into the “Everyone Else” category of action cameras. But, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad choice; it has some decent features that make it a good choice for someone who is looking for a basic, easily-controlled camera.

Let’s start off with the  on/off switch. One of my favourite features of my old Contour action camera was its easy activation: the whole body of the camera was the on/off switch. Slide the body forward, and you were recording. Push it backwards, and the camera turned off. Compare that to the Waspcam models we tested a few years back, with fidgety buttons; they weren’t bad if you were stopped, but were a pain to turn on and off while riding.

The Prism Tube Wifi has that same easy on/off capability. The whole front body of the camera is the switch; pull it forward, and the camera turns on. Push it back, the camera turns off.

The Sena camera comes with a single earphone that mounts in your helmet, and a microphone. The earphone transmits audio signals (there’s a little voice that tells you when the camera is turning on or off). The mic simply records an audio track. If you talk, it picks it up, along with engine noise, wind noise, etc. (wind noise is minimal, thankfully).

The Prism Tube Wifi mounts to your helmet with a very similar clamp to Sena’s comm systems; you fit the clamp over the side of the helmet and tighten a pair of screws. Then, route the wiring for the earphone into the side of the helmet, and route the wiring for the microphone to the front of the helmet. The mic and earpiece are held in place with adhesive Velcro pads.

All in all, mounting might take all of 15 minutes, and it’s easily reversible—pull the mic and earphone off their Velcro mounts, undo those two screws, and everything is back to stock.

Once you get the camera mounted, then you have to make sure it’s aimed correctly. This is where the “Wifi” part of the name comes in. Basically, you’ve got to download the Sena camera app, and then connect the camera to your phone via your phone’s wifi connection. It’s not too complicated as long as you don’t do what I did, and download the wrong app, then wonder why it won’t work.

When you’ve got the camera connected to your phone via wifi, you will get a live view of what the camera sees, so you can sit on your bike and adjust the camera’s positioning to get what you want. You can tilt the mount forwards or backwards to get the vertical alignment right, and you can easily rotate the camera in its housing to provide horizontal alignment.

Along with checking the camera’s focus, you can also tweak the camera’s settings via the app as well.

So you’ve got the camera bolted to your helmet, aimed correctly. You’ve unscrewed the cap on the back to insert a microSD card and charge the camera (via USB).  You roll out on the street, and you slide the front of the camera body forward, and you’re recording. What does the footage look like?

My answer: “Good enough.”

If you look at the camera’s spec sheet, Sena says the Prism Tube Wifi will shoot 1440p footage at 30 fps (aka “2K quad HD”), or 1080p footage at 30/60 fps. That’s not the 4K footage that competing cameras from GoPro and Sony offer. I say, it doesn’t matter for most users. You can see the quality of the footage in the clips uploaded to this story; they aren’t the stuff of the GoPro sizzler reel, but then, they’re only shot by a numpty rider in less-than-optimal conditions, uploaded raw to YouTube with no post-processing. This is what most people are going to get, more or less, no matter what camera they use,

I’ve used three or four different action cameras over the years, and a couple of my buddies have spent big money on GoPros. None of us have every done anything besides put the occasional clip up on YouTube. None of us are submitting to film festivals, or aiming for sponsorship-worthy videos. Most of the footage we’ve shot never makes it to the public, and most of it is never viewed on anything better than a smartphone screen, or a computer monitor. If YouTube nerfs the quality, it’s gonna look crappy anyway.

When you look at it that way, the Sena’s footage is just fine. It’s good enough that if you want to make quality online footage, you can, but it doesn’t really matter that it isn’t 4K footage. If you’re buying a camera just to record for your own viewing pleasure, or sharing with a few friends, then this camera is going to get the job done.

The Prism Tube Wifi will take microSD cards up to 64 GB, and recharges in three hours to provide about two hours of recording.

There are a few niggles, of course. The camera comes with a lens cap that’s incredibly easy to lose, and incredibly hard to find a replacement for. Also, it could be tricky to combine this camera with a comm set that’s also mounted to the exterior of your helmet. If you want externally-mounted comms and a video camera, the Sena 10C EVO is a more compact solution.

The biggest niggle, though is the camera’s biggest feature: its easy on/off actuation.

Because the entire body of the camera is hanging off the side of the helmet, it’s constantly exposed to the elements. That means that, if you’re riding in a lot of dust, you get crud starting to work its way around the edges of the camera body, and inside.

This was very noticeable after riding in dust all day during the Fundy Adventure Rally; by the end of the rally, the camera’s on/off actuation was very gritty.

However, if you’re smart enough to know that is a potential problem, you can remove the camera ahead of time, if you’re going to be spending a day riding in dust. If you didn’t, I think this would be enough of a problem to eventually kill the camera, especially if the grit eventually allowed water to seep inside.

Aside from that issue, the camera seemed pretty robust through the months I used it. Would I buy it with my own money? If I was on the market for an action camera, I’d be pretty tempted; the $215ish Canadian price is much less than most of the competition, for a camera that’s simple to operate. Low pricing and ease of use are two huge benefits in my eyes, and (I suspect) in the eyes of a lot of other customers, who want to try action cameras without spending a lot of money.