Testing the GoPro HD Motorsports HERO

A couple of weeks ago I woke up in the morning, looked out and it was sunny enough for a ride! That’s good news for April in Romania! Finding a new place to ride though is a challenge, so I went the usual way: opened the map and looked for new roads. I’ve settled for a ride in the Penteleu mountains. Before leaving, I’ve installed the GoPro HD Motorsports HERO mountings so I could give it a try.

I’ve installed one on the front fairing and one on the helmet. The one on the front fairing proved to pick up a lot of movement, especially because I had to use multiple mounting brackets to get the camera in the right direction. The one on the helmet gave a better video, but at speeds above 100km you feel the drag created by the camera.

 

 

First impressions on the GoPro HD Motorsports HERO camera

Looks like a sturdy piece of electronics. It has very little things that can go wrong.

 

The water proof housing gives a lot of protection and it feels strong. It comes with a lot of mounting brackets that allow almost any positioning:

The suction cup looks very good for mounting on cars

There are several video resolutions, I’ve only tested 1080p = 1920×1080 pixels (16:9), 30 fps, 15 Mbit/s data rate so far. However, shooting at this resolution only gives you about 4h of filming on a 32 GB card which can be a problem when you are touring for multiple days.

1080p = 1920×1080 pixels (16:9), 30 fps, 15 Mbit/s data rate
960p = 1280×960 pixels (4:3), 30 fps, 12 Mbit/s data rate
720p = 1280×720 pixels (16:9), 60 fps, 15 Mbit/s data rate
720p = 1280×720 pixels (16:9), 30 fps, 8 Mbit/s data rate
WVGA = 848×480 pixels (16:9), 60 fps, 8 Mbit/s data rate

 

Here is a video with the camera mounted on the front fairing (note: I have decreased the quality of the movie before uploading on youtube, so the actual video is better).

And here is a video with the camera mounted on the helmet (note: I have decreased the quality of the movie before uploading on youtube, so the actual video is better)

Things I don’t like on the GoPro HD Motorsports HERO camera

I’m a bit worried on the battery life: the rechargeable 1100 mAh lithium-ion only lasts for about 2 hours and to recharge it you need to take the camera out of the waterproof housing and recharge it via USB for 2-3 hours.

Also, I couldn’t find a way to see how much time is left for filming on the card. If you have multiple cards you don’t know when to change them. (maybe there is a way but not so obvious?)

Which get’s me to the other point, the menu is not that intuitive (but I can accept this, considering the camera only has 2 buttons and you have to do all settings with 2 buttons only).

And lastly, I was expecting that the Motorsports version of the camera to have the Roll bar mount and the Handlebar Seatpost Mount included.

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