Drift HD Action Camera

Comments about Drift HD Action Camera:

Having used / borrowed Go-Pros several times to film in car shots on rally stages and circuits, I was set to buy one when I was asked to film a short car review for a web based magazine. That's when I became frustrated by various aspects of the Go-Pro's design, and bought myself a Drift HD instead to overcome problems I'd faced. The Drift's built in colour screen may be small, but is good enough to allow you to line up your shots. You're not left guessing what you are aiming the lens at. The ability to then rotate the camera within the body to ensure you get level horizons is great. The remote control makes it easy to operate the Drift when it's set on a roll cage or rear window, out of your reach, and there's an audible beep (you can silence it I think) so you know it's operated even when you can't see the signal LED.Essential to me was the ability to use an external mic. I bought a low cost lavalier mic but it does the job and is essential if recording in a convertible car or with the windows open in a tin-top. Also it's real simple to connect into a Peltor comms set in a rally or race car (or aeros aircraft radio which is a forthcoming project). If you are mounting the camera externally, you can reduce the internal mic's sensitivity down to zero and add sound later, or run the external mic to the engine bay so you get engine notes not wind noise. Careful where you run the mic cable - they melt!The settings menus are exactly that - menus you can read. You don't have to memorise dozens of different abbreviations and try guessing if you've set the camera right. It's plain English.The universal tripod / monopod / Gorillapod / ball mount standard 1/4" thread is far more useful than a design specifc to one camera. I can fit the Drift to all my existing SLR stands / equipment.I messed up by ordering the long life battery for the HD 170. It's not for the Drift HD. My mistake, I didn't read the description carefully. Don't do what I did. I also bought the charger kit and thought I was getting a cable to plug into a cigarette lighter in a car and from there into the camera. It's not. It plugs into the lighter and from there to a charger, so you can only charge a battery that's not in the camera. You can buy 12V - Mini USB connectors that would permanently power the camera, elsewhere. Image quality is as good as the Go-Pro, sound quality is up to you to sort out but that's a lot easier with an external mic. I bought a 2.5 male to 3.5mm female adaptor that turns through 90 degrees (on B&H) so you can mount the camera closer to a windscreen than if you used a straight adaptor. Or unplug the mic and you have a 'silenced' camera.I'm not knocking the Go-Pro, they've almost exclusively created the action camera market, and I've used them for years, but I think the Drift HD has been better thought out and is a better 'film-making' tool.

Comments about Drift HD Action Camera:

The camera is very good with great quality video but the clips and mounts break very easily, I don´t understand why an action camera made to abuse has poor quality plastics on the mounts.

Comments about Drift HD Action Camera:

Well its better than the GoPro I just sent back, but not by much. It looks a lot less dorky mounted on the side of your helmet, unlike the Go Pro which got plenty of stares, even on trails. The downside of that side mounted positioning is that part of my helmet ended up obscuring my footage. Maybe it was my helmet, but I could not figure out a way to get an unrestricted viewing angle.

Comments about Drift HD Action Camera:

I've had a chance to try the new Drift HD camcorder for a few weeks now and I really like it a lot. In brief, Drift's latest point-of-view action camera takes the design of the Stealth HD 170, and streamlines it, but also makes it even smarter. The body is more compact, literally smaller than the palm of my hand, which means it can fit into even tighter spaces, but it still retains the features that make Drift's POV cameras stand out among other, similar, products: the rugged design, the rotatable lens, the convenient and flexible mounting options, and the on-board LCD screen that allows you to see what you're going to get ahead of time.

What's new are a removable and replaceable lens, a standard 2.5mm microphone input (rather than the proprietary external mike input on the Stealth HD 170), the use of Micro SD rather than SD, a new rear cover that allows for using microphone and USB inputs without removing the cover.

The video quality is comparable to that of the larger Stealth HD 170, with a slightly wider angle due to the sensor being closer to the lens. It's better in low light situations than before, but seems not to do quite as well going from dark to light (as in when the sky peers in through the trees of a forest), and the bright patches seem to wash out a bit and lose detail.

Like the other models, the sound is not good, and you really need to use an external microphone if you want to capture sound with this. I use it mostly to capture footage in situations where I would be afraid of damage to a more fragile camcorder, and usually in those situations sound isn't as much of an issue, since I can capture sound separately. Still, it's valuable to know that it is easier than before to capture sound with an external mike, due to the non-proprietary input and the modified rear cover.

Note: I received this product from the company as a pre-release trial in exchange for providing feedback and agreeing to post an honest review.