Since we reviewed vHoldr’s ContourHD headcam last month, Drift have brought their new X170 offering to the market. Whilst it’s not the first to feature a super-wide 170º lens, it offers a colour LCD to frame the view and adjust settings. This is really good news for reviewing footage with your mates after filming. Before going any further we should point out though, that this headcam doesn’t shoot HD, not even semi HD, but plain old 720×576/480 4:3 footage (both PAL and NTSC flavours). This has been fine so far and the norm in this market, but things are moving on rapidly and any camera, be it point and shoot, or video camera, needs to at least shoot 1280×720 HD to look good on our latest widescreen TVs and computer monitors.

We took the X170 for a bit of Club 100 karting first: the supplied headstrap was tightened to maximum and slipped over our racing suit around the lower leg, just below the knee. We then used the goggle strap mount and slipped in the camera pointing back at the driver. After warnings from the kart mechanics that headcams always fall off due to vibration, we decided to add some gaffer tape just to be sure; this camera is kindly on loan from actioncameras.co.uk , so better not get it mangled by 18 karts running it over!

click through to next page to see karting video and much more!
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