The Good: The VholdR has excellent new features; is very durable; has shock regulatory technology; plus the twin lasers to line-up your filming angel are all brilliant extras.

The Bad: The 2hrs of battery life is limiting

The Action Cameras bottom line: The innovation that has gone into developing this camera and all the new features makes this camera one of our favourites and is a definite up-grade from all the previous helmet cameras that have been available on the market.

After the VholdR was awarded the best design in the CES innovations 2008 ceremony, we were pretty impressed as it was still being launched. Now that we’ve got our hands onto it, we’re even more impressed with the design; it has been created with a shatterproof aluminium anodized body which is anti-shock, waterproofed, dust- and dirt-proofed with anti-corrosion… and it’s still seriously light-weight!

So now we know it looks good, but, more importantly, how does it perform?
Filming at a resolution of 640×480 and 30fps onto mini-SD is not bad for a start. One of the new features that we love is the twin-lazers that allow you to line-up exactly the line-of-sight that you will be filming. This has been a flaw with previous wireless helmet cameras on the market where you would have to aim and hope to be filming what you want to.
Another new feature on the VholdR is the LED lights on the recorder which let you know how much recording and battery time you have remaining; a green light means you are free to record, if it changes yellow then you’re running low on memory and a red light means that you’ve run out. There are also lights that work similarly for the battery life.
And yet another great new feature is the ability for the lens and its picture to be rotated freely around 192º so getting difficult and interesting angles can be achieved with minimum effort.

Recording onto the mini-SD card is another first for wireless helmet cams. The VholdR can take a one or two GB mini-SD card and in the future a simple firmware upgrade will allow you to extend this (watch this space). 1Gb will give you 50mins and the 2Gb an hour and 40mins.
The battery is a removable lithium polymer battery which basically means goodbye to AA batteries and hassles of cold weather reducing the battery time. It will give you two hours of battery life and spares will be available soon so that you can go out all day and just carry a few spares with you.

The guys who created this camera also paid a lot of attention to the mounting abilities resulting in you being able to mount the camera securely onto almost any surface. There is even a trial mount system especially for extreme trail riding.

After all this innovation, the creators still managed to make the camera so simple to use because the recording start and stop is controlled with one button ontop of the camera.

All of this means that the VholdR is a very innovative and impressive kit all the while still being simplistic in its operating so that when you’re out there doing your extreme sports, you can capture those experiences on film without any hassles.

Specs:

Dimensions: 95 x 53mm
Weight: 136 grams
Camera: CMOS sensor type, very sensitive to low light conditions
Lens: ¼ inch 4G type, 3.6mm size, 90º viewpoint
Video: 30fps, MPEG4 (. avi)
Memory: MicroSD (supports MicroSD HC)
Connectivity: MiniUSB 2.0
Includes VholdR Desktop software for organising/ sharing videos to web