Bike Reviews

After spending a few months research helmet cams I decided to drop the cash for a V.I.O POV.1 helmet cam. It wasn’t easy letting go of the cash I dropped for the POV.1 cam either. I kept thinking… That’s a wheel set, a new fork, all most enough for a new frame, new tires for my Jeep. But I found a place that I could get one and they offered me a discount, so it made the purchase not so painful.

About a week later the POV.1 arrived in the mail. I unpackaged it, checked out all the accessories, changed the batteries and tried to figure out where to mount the cam on my helmet. A couple days later I got my first chance to ride and had my POV.1 mounted up to my helmet to capture some video.

At the trailhead I messed around with the POV.1 for awhile, running through all the video capturing features and settings. After about 45 minutes I felt like I had a good enough handle on the settings to of the device to start my ride. Not wanting to disrupt my ride, I turned off the loop feature to let the video run constantly while riding, tested the video with my helmet on and then deleted my video test and set the recorder to stop. Next I looked for a place to mount the remote controller. I tried my wrist, but figured that wasn’t a good option, because I’d have to reach across to hit the buttons, so I ended up mounting it on my stem. Next I tested the remote and could hear a little beep sound when I hit the record button, capture a little video, reviewed it and deleted the file.

All set, I dropped the POV.1 recorder into my camelback, rolled over to the trail entrance and hit the record button and rolled into the tail. About a mile into the trail I stopped, hit the stop button on the remote and reviewed the video I had just captured. For the first run, it wasn’t bad, but the cam angle was off a bit, because I had not accounted for the angle of the cam while in a riding position. So I made a few adjustments to the cam, hit record and peddled on down the trail.

The deciding factor in getting the POV.1 was the fact that it had a remote. I want to capture video, but I don’t want my rides to become all about capturing video. So I figured having a remote would allow me to hit a button and forget about it… just ride, because that’s what I’m out there for! That’s what I did, just road my bike and never gave the cam another thought and I had actually forgotten I was carrying the cam and recorder until I got to the end of the ride and removed my helmet and felt the cable brush my neck. Wondering what the video I just captured was like I pulled the recorder out of my camelback and started thumbing through the controls, only to find that the recorder had not captured a single bit of video.

After a bit of testing I finally figured out that the mounting the remote on my stem and carrying the recorder in my camelback, interfered with the remote’s signal to activate the recorder. So I replenished my camelback and rolled back over to the trail entrance. This time I leaned in towards the remote, hit the record button and heard a muted beep come from my camelback and rolled onto the trail. As before I gave no thought to the POV.1 and just road.

Back at the parking lot I pulled the recorder out, thumbed through the controls and was pleased to see that I had captured video on my second attempt. But the it didn’t take long for me to realize that the cam angle was still too sharp and capture footage only about 30 foot out forward of my front wheel.

Back at the house I messed around with the cam, tried different mounting options, different helmets and finally got the angle right on one specific helmet. The following week I decided to capture video and grab the recorder and the alternative cam helmet and hit the trail. I’m glad I had taken the cam that day, because I captured a wreck I had that put me in the hospital with a concussion. The impact hurt like hell and the helmet got trashed… so much for finding a mounting solution. but the good news was that the cam survived with flying colors and didn’t miss a beat… captured the wreck, impact and considering it too took much of the impact I was really surprised to find it still worked.

Back to drawing board for the cam mount, I tried all kinds of things:
• Solid core foam, hollowed out for the cam to slip into. This caused the video to be blurry because there was too much cushioning in the foam.
• Strapped down with a velcro strap, but I could never get the cam’s angle right.
• Zip tied the mount that the POV.1 cam with. This worked good, but left the cam riding high and exposed in my opinion.

While browsing the garage looking for something to manufacture a mount for the cam from I found an old bicycle pump mount made of stiff rubber. The cam fit perfectly into the space where the pump would have mounted and I other side of the rubber that was made to wrap around a bike’s frame made for good bracing once synched down to a helmet with velcro straps. So I mounted the cam on my helmet using the bike pump mount, tested the video in a riding position, made a few more adjustments, tested the video more and found that I was able to get a decent cam angle using the pump mount with the cam.

A few days later I was out at the trail and capturing video again. Upon review of the video I found that the cam angle was still a bit low, but exceptable… good enough for now. A few videos later and I was back to fiddling with the cam angle. Tried another helmet and I think I now have a good solution in place. I haven’t had a chance to try the POV.1 mounted on this different helmet on a trail as of yet. But I have tested it in the neighborhood and I think I finally have this thing dialed in.

As for the video quality, I’d have to say it is what I expected. After all it is a bullet cam, but I am pleased with the video’s quality and really like the wide screen capture. The POV.1’s play back screen is a really nice feature and I like the ability to scan through and delete footage I don’t need so as to make room for more video. The clarity of the video is good, sharpness is nice and only on a few occasions have I noticed any artifacts like brightness blow-out. For the most part the video quality is very exceptable and I have no complaints. Now I’m not some video guru, so I can’t shed any more light on the video’s quality. But compared to most of the better quality mountain biking videos I’ve seen on the internet, I’d have to say that you can’t go wrong with the POV.1. It’s not as good as video like what you’d see at Peter Fagerlin’s website, but the POV.1 is a good choice for a bloke looking to capture video.

The loop feature is really nice and allows you to tag your video as you ride. For example while riding if you hit the tag button in the first 1/3 of a 15 minute loop the recorder will save your previous 15 minute loop and the 15 minute loop you’re presently in for a total of 30 minutes worth of video. This is nice because when you’re railing down some sweet single track the last thing you want to do is worry about capturing video. So the loop feature gives you an opportunity to tag and save video even after you just cleared a section of trail that demands your full attention. But you have to remember to hit the tag button… or the recorder will not save what you just captured.

I like the loop feature… but I tend to just set my recorder to capture continuously and forget about it and then swamp out the card about 45 minutes into the trail. This has worked well for me and I capture everything. The only draw back to this is that you either have to watch the entire ride, or know the trail well enough to forward to the sections you want to work with from the video. Watching a hour or two of riding is not something I’m interesting in, so I only use the continuos capture feature on trails I know really well. Otherwise I use the loop/tag feature and just hit the tag button when I finish a section I wish to keep video for.

The microphone is not too shabby. You can control the amount of noise it picks up by adjusting the recorder settings. I set my noise cut out threshold very low, but I found that this caused the mic to cut on and off and this was more distracting and irritating at times. So I eventually cut the microphone setting down as low as it could go to kill off all sound until I found a solution that worked for me. So after som thought I decided to make a fuzz wind muffler for the mic. I found some man made fur at a fabric store and sewed it into a sleeve that I pulled up the cable and around the mic. This worked well, cuts out practically all the wind noise, while allowing me to set the microphone level up to a setting that I’m able to capture all the sounds of the wheels rolling down the trail. If you get a POV.1 you should definitely consider making a sound muffler… it will improve the sound quality. I’ll post up a photo as some point to show you what I did.

As for the battery life. I’ve been using rechargeable batteries and it’s a must! You’ll run through a lot of cash just buying batteries otherwise. I’m able to get about 3 to 4 hours out of my rechargeable batteries and considering you can get a package deal for about $30.00 at the hardware store for the batteries and the rechargeable, you can’t go wrong.

The only thing I’ve been displeased with so far with my video is my video editing software. I still haven’t found any software I really like to edit my videos and I don’t want to drop any large amounts of cash for new video editing software. So I guess I’m stuck with the free stuff that I have on my computer for now. But it works for now.

All in All,
I’ve been very pleased with my POV.1, it’s everything I had hoped it would be and I haven’t given another thought to “That’s a wheel set, a new fork, all most enough for a new frame, new tires for my Jeep”… so this is proof enough to me that I made the right choice.

(4 votes, average: 6.25 out of 7)

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