All too often a cycle commute or ride on the road is disturbed by a close pass, an aggressive gesture, or a even collision. A camera won’t stop any of those things happening, but perhaps footage of an incident will help prove your case in the event of an insurance claim or prosecution. Increasingly, police forces are accepting camera footage as evidence in cases of poor driving, and commercial operators may provide additional training or take disciplinary action when presented with footage of their employees driving poorly. Which might not save you from a heart in mouth moment, but might improve driving standards in future. Hopefully. In addition, just knowing a camera is recording can give you confidence in the event of a confrontation with a driver – maybe it’ll help you keep your cool too. Whether you’re hoping to educate the driving masses, or help feel you’ve got a witness by your side, here’s a selection of cameras for you to consider.
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Insta 360 Go
- Price: £168
- From: Halfords
This is a small camera with 1080P video capability. About the size of your thumb with a range of mount options, it shouldn’t prove intrusive to your bike set up. However, it’s only water resistant, so you may also want to invest in the waterproof mount.
Cycliq Fly 6 Gen 2
- Price: £170
- From: Pro Bike Kit
This is an integrated rear light and camera, making it easy to fit onto your bike set up. We previously tested an earlier model and found it to have good quality footage and durability. The Fly 6 includes a crash sensor, so if there is an incident the camera will automatically keep the footage immediately before and after it senses a crash – it won’t keep rolling and end up recording over the top of the footage. This Gen 2 model also includes a theft alarm mode, alerting you via a phone app that your bike has been moved, and recording the footage. There’s a front light Fly 12 model too, though you might have your work cut out finding one in stock anywhere.
Go Pro Hero7 Black
- Price: £307.99 (or £297.99 with code CLEAR2020)
- From: Chain Reaction
Possibly the action camera brand that will be most familiar to you, this GoPro Hero 7 offers voice control so you don’t need to faff around with pressing buttons in order to record. Video quality is high at 4K, with hypersmooth image stablisation, and it claims to be waterproof. If you’re just looking to record your commute, this is probably overkill, but if you’re planning on shooting home movie style edits or mountain bike rides too, then the image stabilisation really comes into its own.
Go Pro Hero7 Silver
- Price: £199
- From: Argos
The GoPro Hero 7 Silver is a step down from the Black model, retaining the 4K image quality but losing some additional features, including the Hypersmooth stabilisation. For road use, this should offer you all you need to capture clear footage.
Drift Innovation Ghost XL
- Price: £149.99
- From: Demon Tweeks
With a 1080P recording quality, the footage is not so high quality as some cameras, but it does have ‘event detection’ built in so it will record and save any crashes. Designed with motorcyclists in mind to have a wide field of vision, it’s not the smallest of set ups but does have an impressive 9 hour claimed battery life.
Olfi one.five Black 4K Action Camera
- Price: £148.99
- From: Demon Tweeks
The Olfi comes with 4K recording capability and a waterproof case. If you’ve already got old GoPro mounts you’d like to reuse, the Olfi’s case is compatible with them. Promising similar quality footage to a Hero 7 Silver, but a shade cheaper, this could be worth a look.
Hopefully you’ll be blessed by courteous drivers and protected cycleways, but if that’s not the case then here’s our guide to figuring out just how close that close pass was:
Comments (12)
Comments Closed
Anyone found something cheap enough to entrust to a secondary age child? My son rides to school now and it’s unbelievable (if he’s to be believed and I have no reason not to) how many thoughtless drones close pass him in an average week. Thinking it’s time for some direct action!
@garage-dweller There are three sj4000s on, ahem, amaz… A little over twenty quid. There are a few videos in YouTube for quality assessment.
Whoops! The sj4000s not three!
Chilli tech do a bullet camera that’ll record on a loop that I’ve bought but not used yet. If you find the right link through Facebook it’s just over £30. Feels pretty strong and robust vs my sj4000 Chinese camera thing and actually my GoPro hero session. A number of people have used them to get convictions where they’ve been exceedingly close passed.
It’s sad that we have to feature this at all isn’t it? But then why do cars have dash cams if not to record careless driving…..which reading some social media comments you’d think never happened.
I’ve got the Olfi one and it’s brilliant.
Loads of cheap action cameras out there for this sort of thing, SJ Cam do some decent cameras for around 40 to 50 quid. Also check out the official GoPro ebay store for refurbished GoPro’s.
I think the Chilli camera is an older Sj2000.
@stwhannah The Fly6 ProBikeKit link is trifurcated between Halford insta360 links.
@twisty thanks. Good word!
I just picked up an Akaso camera, it’s ridiculously good… I went with a Brave 6 because it can take an external mic, because I’ll be using it for a bunch of non-bike stuff. It’s not as good as a bike camera as the V50 probably or maybe the Brave 7 but it’s still pretty awesome.
(actually just typing that makes me sorely tempted to by a Brave 7 to supplement it)