GoPro Helmet Hero HDA long name with plenty of provocative nouns and an acronym: that's a good start for a gadget already.
This is the ideal kit to let you indulge your inner action hero. Or perhaps your inner action-movie director, particularly if you’re a biker, climber or skier. It’s a wearable, high-definition video and stills camera that can be mounted on (surprise, surprise) a helmet.
The camera itself is armoured in a tough polycarbonate casing which is waterproof to 60m and can take plenty of rough and tumble. The case connects to a multi-angle, pivoting arm – and then to a variety of super-adhesive mounts that bond it to your helmet or another surface.
There are also straps to allow you to wear it headlamp-style or attach it through the vents of your helmet.
The pictures are suitably impressive, shooting at up to 1080p and at 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios, with an ultra-wide 170-degree view angle. The 5MP stills can be set to go at intervals of between two and 60 seconds, allowing you to capture professional quality images of yourself crashing and burning – in as many ways as your imagination or your body allows.
GoPro claim you’ll get 2.5 hours from the rechargeable lithium-ion battery.
Once you have the camera and casing, you can accessorise with a range of other mounts for everything from your surfboard to your rally car (though there doesn’t appear to be an equine adapter yet). If you don’t want to spring for full glorious HD, the standard resolution version is about 40 per cent cheaper. But can it showcase the full hero in you?
- Cost €329 (surfdock.ie)
Burley Travoy Urban TrailerMany committed cyclists will already know the US brand, Burley, as the company makes some of the best child trailers around. For the uninitiated, these are like kid-sized caravans that are towed behind your push bike.
They’ve just launched the Travoy, which is not for human goods. It is a cargo trailer that hitches up behind the bike seat, rather than low at the rear hub as usual. It detaches in a jiffy to give a mobile, wheel-around trolley that you can roll into a store for shopping, or use to haul papers or tools to work.
It’s designed to take 27kg – that’s 60lbs in old money. So the Travoy is practical enough to handle, say, a crate of beer and its aluminium frame folds up neatly into a tote bag for stashing away when not needed – or when you’re still not sure whether you’re embarrassed using it or not.
Burley is betting on their smart offering riding the swelling wave of commuter cycling – a veritable tsunami here – as the centrepiece of an “urban trailer system”. This consists of the Travoy and a lot of their pricey, specialist-use bags. On the other hand, you can just use your own not-so-co-ordinated luggage and strap it in tight. It’s the start of something new.
- Cost $289 (burley.com )
Clean BottleNo definite article here, but a very straightforward declaration of intent. The product is aimed at cyclists, but runners and walkers who use refillable bottles will also know that cleaning them is surprisingly frustrating. No one likes to leave mouldy-looking gunk unshiftable down at the end.
Clean Bottle’s solution couldn’t be simpler: a leak-proof, screw-off bottom for total access washing.
Made from 100 per cent non-toxic, BPA-free plastics (another unsubstantiated, but increasingly-noted scare issue), you can stick it in the dishwasher time after time. And living up to its clean mission, 10 per cent of all Clean Bottle profits are donated to eco charities. Takes 650ml.
Cost $9.95 (cleanbottle.com)
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