This camera suffers from some flaws which have rendered it unfit for purpose for me. The first being that the 1080p picture wasn't as in focus as other, singificantly lower budget 1080p helmet and dash cameras I've used. The video stabalisation feature doesn't seem to work very well at all. Don't expect it to remove a great deal of shake and expect it to do this at the expanse of the smooth flow of the video recorded (i.e. video will look jerky as if frames are being dropped or if you'd converted the frame rate on a pc or something like that). These points were enough to cause a dissapointment. However the camera saves video to a new file every 5 mins. This wouldn't be a problem for me except that there is a 3 second gap between saving one file and starting the next. This may not sound like much but you're losing over 30 seconds of an hour recording which for helmet cam application is simply unacceptable. I bought this camera to replace a cheap ebay camera which also loses 3 seconds of video (but only every 20mins) after having an incident when a car made a dangerous manoeuvre in the 3 seconds of video which were missing. That's unfortunate but moving the chances of this happening from 3 times and hour to 12 isn't really what I was going for.
On the plus side there are a lot of mounts, a spare battery and decent manual with this camera. It's just let down by optics, stablaisation and short file rotation problems.
If you think that you're always going to get missing video when files are rotated, a friend has shown me his old Drift HD which records video into a new file about ever 25 mins or so with no frame loss at all. It can be done and not tackling this issue in the firmware of a camera designed for helmet mount use is simply very very bad software design.
1st off, after having owned the contour and GoPro, I considered those 2 cameras to be the best professional HD helmet cameras on the market. The GoPro is bulky, but gives great video. The contour wasn't waterproof and for several applications I needed a waterproof, professional HD camera. So I was on the search a few months ago. I came across the BulletHD and like all other cameras, it sounded too good to be true. Not so. After I ordered the BulletHD Pro 1080, I was completely surprised how small it was. Smaller than the contour and way smaller than the ugly GoPro. The Bullethd unit is all aluminum and is very tough. It has just about every possible mounting solution available on their website and can mount to literally anything. There is no buying a waterproof housing for the unit. It is waterproof to 33 ft for snorkeling and wake boarding. It also has a built in stabilizer which no other helmet camera offers. I was able to strap it to my double horse RC helicopter and got some amazing shots of my neighborhood with its wide angle lens. I like to use the 720p at 60 frames per second for the cool slow motion shots. It is also selectable to 1080p at 30 fps. It can also take 12 mp still pics. It comes with a rechargeable battery and a spare and some basic mounts, but like I said, there are a LOT of mounts available on their website. It does have audio also which works well if you use the water resistant cap ( the one with the small hole in it). But if you use the waterproof cap, (no hole) there is no audio as this cap is used for underwater. As far as I have found, the bullet HD is the smallest HD helmet camera that offers 1080 and 720. You won't be disappointed. If you don't want to spend just under $300 for the BulletHD Pro 1080, they also offer 2 other models that shoot 720p and look almost the same, but are under $180. There are hundreds of videos on YouTube of the BulletHD, and most of them seem to be European countries. It's just now starting to get popular over here in the USA. Again, an excellent camera and as of now, I would only change the battery life to more than 2 hours.
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This camera functions fine as a waterproof camera. The problem is that it does not record audio very well. I tested it by speaking directly into the camera, both front and rear facing, and the audio was barely audible when played back. If you don't want audio, then buy this, but what is the fun of recording yourself going through class 4 rapids when you can't hear your reactions?
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This camera is not worth the money. Very glitchy. Cannot update firmware after several tries and cannot set time. Emailed the manufacturer twice with no response. After calling amazon about it they finally emailed me with a generic email that was no help so I sent back to Extreme Gadgets. Still waiting for my refund.
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