It was the 25th of July. I went for a walk with my partner, watched the sun go down, grabbed a coffee, had some dinner. Honestly, it was magical — one of those days you actually want to keep. Normally that day disappears behind my phone, or disappears entirely. This time I got home, opened an app, and there it all was: the videos, the journal, a comic strip of my own evening. And the mad thing is, I captured all of it without even thinking about it.

This is the Looki L1, and it's not a GoPro, it's not an action camera, and it's not trying to replace your phone. It's an AI life memory camera — a 32-gram thing you wear that captures your day in the background and hands it back to you as comics, auto vlogs, journals and insights. I've worn it on the beach, through parks, at the gym, working from home, and across a full Gold Coast day. Here's the honest review — what I love, and the bits that aren't perfect.

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Everything below happens on camera — the beach walk, the gym session, and a full walkthrough of the app with the comics and auto vlogs it generated from my actual day.

01The Sunset Walk That Sold Me On It

Let me take you back to that beach walk, because it's the perfect way to understand this thing. I clipped it on. It's 32 grams — lighter than a AA battery, lighter than a piece of toast — and I genuinely forgot it was there. No phone in my hand, no framing a shot, no holding anything up. I'm walking the main beach path, talking about my day, and the Looki is capturing in the background.

We'd had rain and wind on the Gold Coast for a solid week, so getting a clear evening felt like a gift. And that's exactly the kind of moment you normally ruin trying to film it. You either miss it or you spend it behind a screen. The Looki L1 let me just be there.

You can wear it clipped to your shirt facing outward, or turn it around so it's facing you. Either way it captures your life and gives it back in a form you can actually make sense of, which is the part I didn't expect.

02How AI Mode Actually Works — And the Privacy Light You Can't Switch Off

Here's the clever part. It's called AI Mode. You press the button on the top, the light breathes, and instead of filming every single second it records short clips at intervals — reading the light, the movement and the audio, working out what's actually worth keeping.

That's how you stay present. You're not pulling yourself out of the moment to grab a shot you've already missed. You just live it, and it handles the rest. It's also why the battery lasts a full day, which we'll get to.

The privacy side, straight up

There's a privacy light on the front that blinks whenever it's capturing, and you cannot turn it off. It's a little blue light on the top. That's deliberate — anyone near you can see it's recording. This is exactly how a wearable camera should be done, and I want to be clear about it because it's the first question people ask when they see it on my shirt.

03The App: Comics, Auto Vlogs and Your Whole Day Handed Back

Then you get home, open the app, and this is where it stops being a camera and starts being something else entirely.

Everything syncs to the cloud automatically. Open the app and you've got your device media, your uploads, and then the good stuff: the life logs for the day. On the 25th I had "sunset beach walk," "in the city," a whole list of them. Tap one and it plays back what actually happened, with the location attached.

Then there's the journal. Go to the 25th and there's the weekend social dinner, there's the beach walk — and it's been drawn as a comic. Actual panels of my actual evening. You can edit the description, delete a moment you don't want, zoom in on the details. And in the journal it also builds special highlights — an auto vlog, a short edited video of the walk with music, cut for me, with zero editing on my end.

You can also drive the device from the app — take a photo, start a video, record an audio note, or kick off automatic capture. And you can change the device lights, the privacy light, the star light, how it builds the vlogs, the system settings. It's all easy to find, which isn't a given with a product like this.

Editing a highlight video of my day normally takes hours. This does it in seconds, while I'm making a coffee.

04Talking To It: Voice Notes and Asking It Questions On the Move

Here's where it properly clicked for me. I'm out walking, hands occupied, moving — and an idea hits me. Normally that idea is gone. You can't stop, you can't type, you're not getting your phone out mid-stride. But I've got a Looki on my chest. I just press the button and say the idea out loud.

There are three microphones with noise reduction in this thing, and even with wind coming off the water and traffic going past, it's still picking up my voice clearly. Later it's all there in the app, sorted. If you're someone who has ideas on the move and loses half of them, that feature alone is worth it.

It goes further. You can ask it things. Press the touchpad, the corner light starts streaming, and you can talk to it — ask it about what's in front of you. On the walk I pointed at something and asked what it was, and it answered back out loud through the little speaker. It's like having a second set of eyes clipped to your shirt that you can just ask.

The catch: that needs a Bluetooth connection to your phone and an internet connection to work. When you've got both, it's genuinely handy.

05The Gym Test: IP67, Sweat, and Not Being Precious With It

I took it to the gym, and this is where I found out how tough it actually is. It's IP67 rated — water and dust resistant. Rain, splashes, sweat: no problem. It doesn't care, and I wasn't precious with it.

At 32 grams, clipped to my shirt through a full session, I forgot I had it on. It's not bouncing around, it's not in the way, it just quietly does its thing while I train — and then hands me the highlights afterwards.

06Battery, Charging and Storage

This is where the battery matters, because the thing is on you all day. AI Mode is efficient by design — it's grabbing clips at intervals instead of running non-stop. You get 12 hours plus out of it, and that's a full day for me.

Quick tip: there's a battery check built in. Double tap the touchpad and the corner light tells you the level — green you're good, orange you're about halfway, red you're low. I'll be honest, I'm still testing the battery properly across more days, and I'll update this post when I've got more on it.

The charging is clever. The charger is built into the magnetic lanyard. You pop the device onto the lanyard, plug USB-C into it, and that's it — no separate dock, no proprietary cable to lose. And there's 32GB of onboard storage, so it holds a full day comfortably before it syncs across.

07Pi: The Feature I Did Not Expect to Like This Much

Back home working, and this is the one that caught me off guard. It's called Pi — the proactive intelligence engine.

It's not a step counter. It's not a fitness band. It's watching the context of your actual day — your routines, when you're active, when you're heads-down — and it sends you gentle notifications: reminders, observations, insights.

And they're not generic. It's not "drink water, 2pm" from a reminder you set six months ago and now ignore. It's based on what your day actually looked like. After wearing it for a while it started surfacing patterns about how I work that I genuinely never caught myself.

08What It Actually Shoots

People ask about the camera, so let's be specific. It shoots 4K photos and 1080p video at 30fps. And here's the thing — it's deliberately tuned that way for AI life-logging and battery life, not to be a cinema camera.

It's got a 16mm equivalent lens at f/2.2 with a wide 109° field of view, so it grabs the whole scene in front of you. There's a six-axis gyroscope running electronic image stabilisation, so when I'm walking the footage holds together instead of being a shaky mess. And it does HDR to balance a bright Gold Coast sky against the shadows.

Outdoors in good light, it generally looks good. Indoors and in low light it does get softer — more on that in the verdict.

What's in the box

Simple: the Looki L1 itself, the magnetic lanyard that doubles as a charger, a USB cable, and the guides. Pick it up and it feels solid — polycarbonate body, metal buttons that click properly. It comes in black, white or green.

09Looki L1 vs Just Using Your Phone

This is the real comparison, because nobody's choosing between this and a GoPro. They're choosing between this and what they already do — pulling their phone out. So here's how the two actually stack up in the real world.

So it's not a phone replacement and it isn't pretending to be. It's for the moments your phone should have caught and didn't, because you were busy having them.

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