Hmm, not a bad idea on paper as many cyclists put cameras on their helmets anyway for safety, legal, and insurance reasons.
But helmets are, by design, highly disposable single-use items. They will protect your noggin from an impact… once. A lot of people either don’t know this or they assume they “small” fall they had doesn’t count or that time they dropped the helmet 5 feet onto concrete wasn’t that bad. Adding a camera, battery, and $300 price tag is going to make people even more reluctant to replace a helmet for safety reasons, in my opinion. (also something something even more e-waste going to landfills something something)
Definitely don’t like that it’s app-controlled, though. Companion apps for connected products are notoriously awful or even downright broken. Also a privacy nightmare.
I don’t like anything expensive being baked into a consumable item, like a helmet.
Design better cameras that are more compatible with helmet use, but let helmets just be helmets.
I’d be more OK with this if it were a modular system available to other brands so if your helmet gets destroyed you can still pop the camera into another helmet (from another brand if the original maker went under or you just preferred another manufacturer). For now, I’m just going to stick with a Ghost Drift mounted to the top of my helmet.
Sounds like they should license this system out, rather than keep it to themselves.
At least they’d have their idea in helmet brands that people recognize and don’t mind spending a little extra on.
The helmet weighs around 500 grams (17.6 ounces).
This would be a deal-breaker for many, as it’s enough weight to be noticed. This is one reason why I keep my camera on my handlebar.
That’s probably about what my helmet weighs with a camera on it. I like having it on the helmet because it records what I’m looking at instead of whatever the bike happens to be pointed at (so if I look behind me, their license plate gets recorded)
There are pros and cons, for sure.
On my bike, i use a handlebar mounted camera. When I had my previous e-scooter, I had a camera mounted to my motorcycle helmet.
Despite the motorcycle helmet weighing a ton, my head and neck were straight, so this weight didn’t have a negative impact.
But on bike rides, my neck is in a different position due to being bent forward, so even a small amount of weight is felt. And on a multi-hour ride, I don’t want to risk getting Shermer’s Neck.
Ideally, we should be using 360 cameras, but someone needs to make one specifically as a bike dash camera (long battery life, durable, can endure the elements, etc). An insta360 doesn’t cut it.
Drift is kinda neat because you can network the cameras to get front and back (or even panoramic) coverage, but I sure wouldn’t want to try putting more than 1 of them on a helmet lol
I also mount mine to downhill MTB helmets and ebike helmets, which helps a ton with weight.
Oh, man! I love my Drift Ghost X. It’s seen around 20,000km worth of bike and e-scooter rides by this point - hot summers, sub zero winters, rain, hail, you name it! I’ve been wanting to pull the trigger on a newer model, just to get image stabilization and mount one on the front and one on the rear.
But I’m not liking the built-in battery, no matter how long it lasts. I picked up one of their extended batteries, which I can swap out any time to extend the life of this camera for many years beyond "500 charge cycles).
Drift is one of the few companies who actually make affordable dash cams for non-cars.
Any time you can service the battery is OK by me.
I wonder if it will pass impact tests. Cameras on and in moto helmets don’t past impact tests but obviously the forces are higher.
I keep my camera mounted on a plastic mount that will break with sufficient force for this reason.
