GoPro Motorsports Hero Wide Camera
A few issues back we reviewed the original GoPro Hero camera and raved about its compact size, ease of use and trick mounting options. Well, GoPro has done it again. It took that same great concept and kicked it up a notch by adding some great features with the all-new Hero Wide.
First off, the new Wide version of the Hero camera features a 170-degree fish-eye lens. The new lens obviously gives a more panoramic field of view, but it also helps smooth out the video and makes all the bumps and jolts less apparent. Ever notice how shaky your footage looks when zooming way in with your Handycam? The same concept applies here; the wider the lens, the smoother the footage.
The Hero Wide also sports a new 5MP sensor; that means 60 percent more resolution than the previous model and photos that will look sharp printed up to 5x7 inches. The new sensor also has better low-light performance, which is great for riding at dusk or in shadowy areas like dense forests. The new Hero will also shoot a still photo every two seconds, if you want to grab some still photos in the action.
The Hero Wide camera is available in both a Helmet and Motorsports kit, each with different mounting options. The Motorsports kit is the best bet for ATV riders and off-roaders as it comes with the Hero Wide camera, a shockproof/waterproof housing, two curved stick-on mounts, three flat stick-on mounts, a suction cup mount, sidearm assembly, vertical bracket and USB/RCA combo cable.
The guys at GoPro hooked us up with one of their units used at the press intro for the new Yamaha YFZ450R, and boy, did it come in handy. The standard helmet-mounted footage looks even better now with the wide-angle lens. We like being able to see more of the quad, and the smoother footage is much easier on the eyes. The quality is also surprisingly good for such a small camera. The frame rate is smooth-it doesn't stutter or look like a bad web video-the colors are saturated, and the auto adjustments for brightness and color are pretty much spot-on. There's a bit of pixilation, but isn't very noticeable when watched on a TV screen, and any higher-quality video would result in a much less amount of space, so with 56 minutes being able to fit on a 2GB card, we think GoPro has struck a good balance.
The simplicity of the camera and the various mounting options made it easy to stick the camera wherever we wanted and get a ton of footage. We stuck it backward on the helmet to shoot riders behind us, we stuck it to the hood and got shots looking back at the rider, and we even stuck it to the radiator shroud and got shots of the suspension working! One of the best features of the Hero Wide is how easy it is to experiment with different angles and get great footage. No wires to run, no recording unit to mount or Handycam to carry in a backpack; just stick it on and go.
Our only major gripe was that it took a little trial and error to set up the shot angles since the Hero Wide doesn't have an LCD screen or the ability to live view what it's recording. But you can play back the footage on a video camera with RCA inputs, so we'd just do some test recordings and change the angle as needed. There are cameras with technically better video quality, but the price and ease of use of the Hero Wide make it hard to beat. For $199, it's only $20 more than the original Hero, and by far the cheapest solution around, since many other units require you to purchase a camera separately.
-Ray Gauger
| HARD PARTS | 95 |
| Installation | 19/20 |
| Function | 48/50 |
| Durability | 9/10 |
| Design | 9/10 |
| Price | 10/10 |
Bottom Line: The new Hero Wide builds on an already great concept; it offers surprisingly good video out of a unit that is impossibly compact and is infinitely mountable.