The good: Handy underwater enclosure; low distortion; good white balance; mounts really well and is small enough to be concealed if necessary; and takes stills plus videos.

The bad: Sluggish; takes very soft images; resolution only good enough for viewing on the internet/ computer.

The Action Cameras bottom line: The GoPro Motorsports Hero is a great extra toy to add to your racing car, motorbike, helmet, go-kart, or anything to capture the speed and fun that you get up to!

Since we here at www.actioncameras.co.uk became the UK’s distributor we have had the GoPro MotorSport Hero coming into the office and selling out quickly and now we’ve finally decided to give it some well deserved scrutiny and put it up for review. So we here we are giving our opinion on the wickedly cool Motorsports Hero (£135) -a wireless, mini digital video camera system for in-car and all-over-the-car images.

It’s no secret that video of race cars in action on the race track and in the street is becoming more and more popular on the Internet, thanks to Web sites such as Streetfire.net, YouTube, and PowerTV. When we saw the images this brilliant setup produces, we knew we would be telling you more about it right here.

For the most part, it seems the universal mounting point for video cameras is behind the driver, on the crossbar, or on the main hoop of the rollcage. The vantage point offers a view of what the driver sees when the race car is being driven, but because of this unofficial standard camera location, a lot of the motorsports clips we spend hours watching look similar.

This is where GoPro’s Motorsports Hero shines. The Hero is a small (2.5×1.5×0.75 inches), 30-frame-per-second, 3-megapixel, digital video/still camera that’s designed to capture amazingly cool, first-hand footage from just about anywhere on or in a race car while the it’s travelling at any speed. There’s no need for duct tape, clamp-style rollcage mounts, or any other form of jury-rigged camera stand. The unit is easy for one person to use, which spares friends from having to ride along with wide-open drivers and attempt to hold a camera steady as a speedster is being put through its paces at high speed.

The intent of this particular review is twofold. While we wanted to give the Motorsports Hero a thorough assessment for our Web site’s benefit, it’s more important that we give you all the ins & outs here and now, as we realise many racers and enthusiasts are looking for an easy way to capture high-quality video and still images of their done-up cars in action while they’re driving on the track days or just around the area. And there’s no need to worry about wasting your day away setting it up because the kit is all-inclusive, and setting up the camera literally takes 10 minutes.

The Hero isn’t a part that will make your race car run faster or handle better, but we definitely think this new camera system’s high level of cool makes it an accessory that should be in every car enthusiast’s ride.

The GoPro Motorsports Hero is a true example of something big that comes in a small package. The wireless palm-size camera is capable of capturing 30 frames per second of TV-quality video/audio (NTSC or PAL playback), as well as 3-megapixel still photos.

What you see is what you get. Each Motorsports Hero kit includes a camera and housing, flat- and curved-surface stick-on mounts, standard and vertical quick-release buckles, a high-grip suction cup, and a USB/RCA cable used for downloading images and video to a computer or viewing material on your television.

Although the kit includes two AAA alkaline batteries, we recommend stepping up to Lithium or NiMH rechargeable cells such as the Energizers (preferred brand) shown here, as either type of battery performs well under the stresses of in/on the moving vehicle motorsports photography. The Motorsports Hero features a miniscule 16 megabytes of internal memory (approximately 25 seconds of video), so a 2-gigabyte SD memory card is a must for expanding the unit’s recording capability to two hours.

Once the batteries and memory card are installed, the Motorsports Hero is placed inside its polycarbonate housing. The air-tight case is strong, road-durable, and waterproof up to 100 feet.

After reading the detailed instructions and dialling in various operating settings, taking photos or recording video is as simple as pressing the shutter button. The Motorsports Hero features a self-timer, triple-shot sequencing, photos in 5-second intervals, upside-down still/video image capture, HI and LO audio recording, and more.

This high-grip suction cup mount is perfect for in-car and on-car photography. We experimented with ours by sticking it to the inside of the coupe’s windshield. The camera didn’t budge at any time during a quick test spin, which included several hard throttle mashes. Having multiple Motorsports Heros mounted all over a car will probably produce some cool footage.