Contour Roam Vs Drift HD Stealth

Now before we go any further this really isn't a fair comparison, its new vs old but i though it would be interesting to do it any way

things l like about the contour after a couple of weeks of use is the size, compared to the drift stealth the drift is just plain big. But in saying that its size and design is much better than the GoPro, saw a guy yesterday with a GoPro stuck to the side of his helmet, it had all the aerodynamics of a brick to say the least. bike mounted yes helmet no. the Contours size, weight and the easy on off switch is great, the mounting options a first rate and of awesome quality, Its a proprietary mount as well so they only fit the contour but contour with the roam have included a standard tripod mount built in so that saves me buying all new mounts. the build quality of the contour is poles apart too Contour Aircraft alloy, Drift Plastic

The contour lacks a few things, like you cant set up the roam without a PC so once the settings are set its set till you plug it in again (the two models above are changeable via the android or Iphone app). And it doesn't have a screen or a replaceable battery which is is not a serious issue but are handy. All which the Drift has.

now the real important stuff! video quality, the drift stealth is showing its age but is still no slouch, i found my drift did not like direct sun at all and if i shot 720p 60 frames ( great for that Slow motion stuff) the end result was shit, i found the 1080p 25 frames was the sweet spot with this camera it handled the direct sun better, now running in more neutral light the drift gave me some really nice footage. The contour it lense i reckon is way better than the drift it handles direct sunlight much better its aperture works faster and is more dynamic with changes in light. 720p 25 is the contours sweet spot. but it had an annoying problem where in direct sun light you a get this purple line appear on your video , the drift use to have the same problem but they fixed it with a firmware update, as for more neutral light the contour footage wins hands down.

One thing though is they both suffer from is the vision that they capture can being quiet harsh on a bright day, the only way to fix this is to do it in post production ( editing) I use a Mac and final cut pro X ( the only way to go ) in the software i eased the saturation back a little and added some Gaussian blur. Just use a little like .5 and this will soften the vision, all decent editing software say stuff $100 upwards have this ability.

now both my camera's come from Launch Helmet Cams, Drew is a awesome bloke for starters he gave a me a contour roam, and the drift HD stealth i cannot say that its been a love affair at all, but they are a awesome company to deal with, January this year i chipped the lense on my drift, flying stone. I emailed drift to see if i could get it fixed, they said its not a serviceable item, so we will replace free for you, Geezus how often does that happen, but over the rest of the year my drift has been less than nice switching it self off for no reason whilst recording, becoming unresponsive whislt recording and having to pop the battery to reset it which corrupts my footage
and just recently the battery clip broke, i find this hard to figure cause i never removed the battery. But to Drew at launch's credit i spoke to him over the phone and it was sorted very promptly and due to being a superseded model i get the nice new Drift HD 1080 so hats off to Drew.

So hopefully it arrives tomorrow and the next comparison will be fair