Charlotte Forrest
The Cock Camera bills itself as the “latest must have bedroom gadget” and highlights features that include “clear view night vision” and the ability to stream footage across the globe.
The Cock Cam is also an excellent example of the dilemmas faced by companies looking at developing electronics-heavy sex toys. Developing custom electronics is extremely expensive, so most sex tech has to be based on existing products, which is often far from ideal. With that in mind though, the Cock Cam does a pretty impressive job, despite a few teething issues on the periphery.
I should also clarify before we dive in that I am an indie porn producer in my free time (as a hobbyist), so in addition to the question of ‘is this a fun toy?’, I was also looking at it in terms of ‘would this make for an interesting tool to use on shoots?’
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The Cock Cam Review: First Impressions
Out of the box, the Cock Cam is a pleasingly high-end looking product. The packaging is discrete and tasteful, the camera and cock ring are a relatively unassuming black.
The camera itself is kind of delightful. It can feel a little plasticky, but not in a bad way – there’s no sense of ‘give’ or poorly finished edges, and the lightness is a definite bonus, especially given it’s intended mounting location.
It’s also magnetic, and the box comes with a bunch of alternative mounting options including a swivel option that you can easily pop the camera onto. It’s not the strongest grip, so if you were to shake it vigorously the camera would come flying off, but I could see this enabling users to mount the magnetic stand somewhere and just pop the camera on it when they want to film something without wearing it.
The camera takes a couple of hours to charge (micro USB cable included, but no plug adaptor) and we got a solid 30 minutes to an hour with no issue. The manual says it can record for 90 minutes, and that certainly seems plausible from our testing.
It’d be easy to describe the Cock Cam as a GoPro for your dick, but that really doesn’t do it justice. It’s far lighter and smaller than a GoPro which is great because it means that you’re not going to feel like your smacking yours or anyone else’s sensitive areas with a solid pebble of dense electronics. The camera itself measures up at around 40mm x 16mm, and weighs just 19 grams.
The overall result when worn is that the weight of the camera and ring is barely noticeable. Another key (and welcome) difference is that the Cock Cam doesn’t have the fish-eye look of most GoPro footage, instead it’s output looks far more like a normal camera. This limits the field of view, but also means that you’re not getting the large amounts of distortion that are typical of extremely wide-angle lenses.
On the downside, it maxes out at H.264 1080p resolution, and 720p is the default maximum. On the plus, there are 6 lightless infrared lights for night vision mode.
The Cock Cam Review: Comfort
In terms of physical comfort, this seems to be a cockring that’s designed to just fit around the cock rather than the cock and balls (individual experiences based on anatomy may vary), which means it’s not as effective at aiding performance as one that covers both, but probably works better for giving the camera a better viewing angle. One slight complaint is that it tended to drift to one side or the other during use, but not by much.
The silicone mount is a little thin at the top where there’s a hole to access the camera’s on/off button, and this did develop a tear during our test. This probably isn’t much of an issue seeing as it’s away from any of a user’s sensitive bits, just remember to always wash your silicone toys properly, folks.
The Cock Cam Review: Setup
Connecting the Cock Cam was a bit of a faff. It uses a WiFi connection which means that you need to go through two stages of connection, first connecting to the camera’s WiFi (using a password in the instruction manual) then you need to go into the app (available for Android and iOS) and connect using a second password that is only available on the thecockcamera.com website… just after you’ve just disconnected your smartphone from your home WiFi.
The company does push you to change the default password ASAP, which is good, but having the second password on the website seems a little confusing, as it’s publicly accessible so it’s not really any use as a two-factor authentication. The connection process also requires users to, counter-intuitively, tap “No” on a dialogue box asking if they wish to connect to the router.
In short, the Cock Cam is definitely one of those devices that’s worth sitting down with to get to know before you’re in the throes of passion.
I spent several hours trying to get the camera to connect to my phone. Cock Cam’s customer service was really responsive, getting back to my emails in a matter of minutes – on a Sunday afternoon – and ultimately sent out a replacement. The replacement also wouldn’t connect to my phone (an Android-based Nokia), but connected to my friend’s phone first time. I’m not quite sure why but this is the kind of teething issue that can be fixed with a software patch or app update.
Not being able to connect was frustrating, but as soon as we were over that hurdle everything became infinitely easier. The app itself is easy to use and runs pretty smoothly. It streams video and audio from the camera to the phone and stores it there (there is also an option to record directly to a microSD on the camera).
The Cock Cam Review: Shooting
The default setting is to shoot in colour in 720p. The camera defaults to these settings, so if you want to use the full 1080p of the camera and/or night vision mode (more on this below) you need to remember to set these before you begin recording.
The app displays a live feed from the camera when connected and during recording, which can be fun to see and helpful if you’re trying to get pretty angles on what you’re doing.
The standard colour mode has a couple of issues. Firstly, the camera’s red/blue LED flashes during recording. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue but when you’re very close to something (which is pretty much all the time when using the cock ring) then this means you get quite noticeable red and blue circles projected onto your partner’s skin. Also, the low-light performance of the colour mode is pretty poor. We were using it in a moderately well-lit hotel room and the footage was a little grainy to begin with and during penetration the screen was black with occasional flashes of red and blue from the LED. Shots of other activities worked quite well, although the fixed perspective makes it look a little like a deleted shot from a SpaceX launch.
Switching over to night vision mode was a complete game changer. The camera has an infrared array, which illuminates whatever it’s facing. Even better, in night vision mode the sensor didn’t pick up the flashing red/blue LED.
Night vision output is black and white, but being able to see what the camera is looking at is so worth it.
The camera does have a built-in microphone, which is a little hit-and-miss. It’s nice when you catch moans and other happy noises, but these tend to be overwhelmed by movement closer to the camera. In particular, thrusting tended to sound like someone walking across fresh fallen snow.
One of the limitations of the camera is that it’s a fixed optics device and the minimum focal length seems to be, well, more than a few inches. It could capture most of the room in crisp HD, but things happening at the distance you would imagine for an item like this appear a bit blurry. Not indistinguishable, not unwatchable, just not the crisp high definition gorgeousness that you might hope for.
Streaming to the phone worked pretty well although it would be a bit laggy at times – and during longer shooting (circa fifteen minutes) – the audio became out of sync from the video towards the end. These issues would probably not occur when recording direct to a MicroSD card in the camera but, from what I can tell, that would mean having to use the default shooting mode of 720p and normal colour, which isn’t really the Cock Cam’s strong suit.
Ultimately I feel like the Cock Cam is a really nifty little device that’s slightly hamstrung by its intended use case. I suspect the users who will get the most out of it are people who look at it as a cool night vision camera for recording sexy fun times that comes with a cock ring mount, rather than a cock ring with a camera.
To answer the other question, yes I can absolutely see myself using this camera for film shoots. The light weight and night vision properties mean that it could be easily put to use shooting scenes where many other cameras would struggle.
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