Contour HD helmet camera - Review

[maria41]

I got a contour HD helmet camera last year from Amazon. I bought it specifically for our next holiday to the US where we planned to rent 2 bikes for 3 weeks and ride the BearTooth highway and go up to Glacier National park, via Yellowstone. Awesome trip.
Now would you like to see me riding any of those roads? Well, no luck as the camera failed us completely.
Now I tell you, it is a very simple camera, there one On/Off button and one on/off filming sliding button. So 2.
When switched on, you know the filming is occurring as a green light turn red and you hear a double bip. If this is not occurring when you slide the button “filming”, you know you’re buggered!

I contacted the help desk at Contour and got the usual patronising conversation:

- Is the battery in? Yes it is.
- Is it charged? Yes it is!
- Is there a memory card in? Yes there is!
- Is the memory card the correct one? Well it was the one provided with the camera so I would think so!
- Update software. Done, no changes.
- Remove battery, insert again. Done, no changes!
- Do a sacred dance while chanting in tune around it . Ok I am making this one up!

Anyhow, after all of this, the help desk asked us to send the camera to the US (we were living in Brazil at the time) at our cost. They sent a replacement camera back to the UK where we originally bought it and we picked it up last Christmas.

Great, we were planning to ride across Europe to Romania this summer. We’re just back from there!
SO would you like to see me ride the Best road in the world (According to Jeremy Clarkson!) aka the Transfagarasan? Well you can’t … guess why? Oh yes the new camera failed again.

I recharged the battery and replaced the memory card by one I got from Amazon. This time it seemed to work! Yayeee! So we decided to go back to the Transfa.. and ride it again. Would you think this time it filmed? No! It died again!

So in conclusion, after owning 2 of the same, I can confidently report that this camera is a monumental piece of crap and I would advise you not to waste your money on it as it will fail you at the worse moment. We have 2 holidays without hardly any records and no record of our best rides because it failed again and again!

[Toyark]

No pictures or vids Maria? they didn't happen then! I feel your pain-
After the first duff one, you're a brave girl to buy a second!
Maybe consider the DRIFT HD Ghost no worries- great kit

[maria41]

Originally Posted by Bertrand

No pictures or vids Maria? they didn't happen then! I feel your pain-
After the first duff one, you're a brave girl to buy a second!
Maybe consider the DRIFT HD Ghost no worries- great kit

Hi Bertrand,

in the US we did not take as many pictures as we tought we would get some filming.
We did not buy a second one, we got a free replacement for the fualty 1st one. But second one is shaky too. We took many pictures though, this time!
I will check out Drift, thank for the advice. I would definitely like to get a decent camera for filming.
Cheers.

[MT350]

Contour is now out of business. It closed a few weeks ago.

However, make sure the problem is not a bad connection to the battery. Some were made the wrong size and vibration breaks the contact.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[maria41]

Originally Posted by MT350

Contour is now out of business. It closed a few weeks ago.

However, make sure the problem is not a bad connection to the battery. Some were made the wrong size and vibration breaks the contact.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Out of business? Wow not surprised though considering how bad the cameras are!

[pheonix]

Sorry to hear the contour failed you on 2 amazing trips, I've been thinking of buying a video camera & was just browsing info on the Drift so I'm glad I came across this thread!

[craneguy]

As a counterpoint, I have 2 of them and they work great. I'm tempted to buy more now that they are heavily discounted.

I don't thing any consumer product is immune from having bad units. I'm sorry you ended up with two in a row!

[JustMe]

I had a Contour Roam with GPS and stuff for the trip to Romania last year. We never got it to work properly; the first one was DOA, the second (both purchased from Amazon) did fail on us dozens of times by shutting down after a few seconds of recording, more often than not unnoticed (I cannot constantly listen for some odd beep when I´m riding). Replacing and formatting cards, updating software and firmware and even the secret dances did not help long. When it worked, it got excellent results, but I expect reliability for this amount of dough.

I finally gave up after it failed on us again during this years´ trip to the UK and sent it back to Amazon. Man am I happy now that I asked for a refund instead of a product replacement.

If I ever go back to making roadmovies, it will be a GoPro, whether I look like a Teletubby with one on my helmet or not.
Cheers
Chris