A first look at the new multi-sport, multi mountable, video or stills camera from GoPro
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Price:
£189.99
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Weight: 139gm
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Features: Waterproof, 30fps video, SDCard
storage, shock and vibration proof,
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What's It
For?
A multi-sport, multi mountable, video or stills camera for outdoor use.
The Helmet HERO Wide, claims to be "The world's smallest, wireless
helmet and gear-mountable video camera for outdoor sports"
The
Techy
Bits
Most of us enjoy the video clips of scrambles, climbs and camps we see
on YouTube and the Friday Matinee slot on OM, but sometimes the picture
can be a bit...well, low definition. Mobile phones have cameras as
standard, and most will let you catch a YouTube size chunk of video
footage but it's not really what a mobile's best at, and over the last
couple of years there's been a few "bullet cam" devices you can attach
to your helmet that give a bit more flexibility - but these have been
restricted to 640x480 at frame rates around 30fps. The only way of
getting decent quality footage has generally meant using domestic, or
for big productions commercial, dedicated video cameras. Well for the
amateur there's now a reasonably priced alternative that not only clips
to your helmet, but can be used on your bike, kayak or pretty much
anything.
The Helmet HERO Wide claims to be "The world's smallest, wireless
helmet and gear-mountable video camera for outdoor sports" and
"features the industry's widest 170º wide angle lens and 5
megapixel
sensor for the most immersive point of view video and photos possible
from a wearable sports camera" - pretty impressive claims! Like the
bullet cams the HHW saves footage to SD cards, and a software update
due shortly will increase the capacity you can use from 2Gb to 4Gb -
giving you nearly two hours of video. A new circuit design takes care
of ultra-high vibration environments and it seems to handle a fair
shaking, as well as standing up to white water kayaking. Using lithium
AAAs you can get 3 hours of video record time and 2 hours using
NiMH
rechargeables.
It's not going to give you large screen, professional quality, videos
to make your name with at the Kendal Film Festival, but it's a big step
up from previous affordable helmet cams. Video is shot in MPEG and
saved as an avi file, ready for loading onto your PC or YouTube and the
results can be pretty
impressive. You get four quick-release adhesive mounts, a vented helmet
strap, headlamp style head strap, and associated accessories in the
box, with handlebar/seatpost, chest harness, roll
bar, and surfboard
mounts available as add-ons.
If you don't want to use it as a video camera, but don't want to stop
continually to take pictures you get the option of setting it to take a
photo every 2 or 5 seconds, or burst of 3 pics at a time. Of course
attaching something to your helmet's always going to take some getting
used to, but at 139gm it beats strapping a home camcorder to your
helmet to get the same quality footage.
How
It
Performed
We've only just got this in so not had time to do some serious testing
as yet, but looking at some of the sample videos on GoPro's website it
looks up to the job. We'll come back with some footage and test results
when we've had chance to test it in a choice of weathers and
activities, but it's looking promising so far.
Initial results look good, and if sample
footage quality can be matched it makes it a great choice for use
pretty much anywhere in the outdoors..
Buy
if you want TV resolution videos of your scrambles or MTB trips
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 Good quality footage at a reasonable price
point
only saves files in avi format
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Performance
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Value
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Know more or want to?
If you'd like to add your own
experiences of this
product check out our user review system and post your opinions to
the world. If you have questions you can mail
us direct, ask
Richard Gear or try
a posting to our
gear
forum.
