Miveu-X5 for iPhone 5/5S review

The Miveu-X5 is a chest mounted piece of kit that turns an iPhone into a POV recording device. Most action cameras are still pretty expensive, but if you already own an iPhone 5 or 5S then the Miveu might be a cheaper solution for you.

Simply insert the phone into the Miveu’s hard case – which has a built in fish-eye lens – then secure the chest mount to your body with the well thought-out strap system and then click the case into the chest mount.

The case includes a large button that will starts your phone recording and stops it again. So once that’s in place there’s very little faffing involved.

You do need to make sure you get the recording angle just right, which takes a bit of trial and error, although the replaceable ball joint mounting makes it quick and simple. The ball joint also means that recordings can be made with the device set in either a portrait or landscape orientation.

The quality of the footage was very impressive; we were surprised at how well the lens dealt with low-light conditions and focussing at speed.

The chest mount is easy to attach and adjust. It’s comfortable to wear and does a great job of absorbing vibration. Even the sound was decent on our test recordings. The fish-eye lens gives you a 190-degree viewing angle and can take some seriously nice pictures.

So, what are the limitations of using the Miveu? Well, most of them lie with the device inside – your phone’s internal memory, battery life and the camera’s performance. It’s a good idea to minimise the brightness of your screen during recordings and switch your phone to ‘airplane mode’ to reduce power consumption.

But the Miveu itself does have one major flaw and that’s the fact that it’s not waterproof. We never worried about how secure the phone was in the chest mount and even in a crash scenario, we think the phone would escape unscathed, but the one thing we weren’t prepared to risk was water damage.

So, for dry days or if you’ve got a pack to quickly stow your phone away in when it starts to rain, then the Miveu is an ideal alternative to an action camera.

We had a word with UK distributor Limitless Outdoors and they were keen to mention that a cheap way to convert the Miveu into a waterproof device is currently being tested, which sounds good to us! We’ll keep you posted on that.

A slightly cheaper version is also available for the iPhone 4/4S too.