The TomTom Bandit action-cam edits the videos for you
GoPro just got yet another new rival - and it looks like a good one
Apple makes watches, HTC makes a virtual reality headset, and in the latest case of a company coming out with something rather unexpected – TomTom now makes an action-cam.
Whenever this sort of thing happens it’s always accompanied by claims along the lines of “we’re not doing it for the money, we’re doing it because we can bring something new to the table”, but in the case of the TomTom Bandit there does seem to be a bit of truth to the bluster.
That’s because the Bandit’s most interesting feature is that it will automatically, intelligently find the highlights in the hours of video you’ve captured and edit it together into a reel containing only the awesome stuff.
It does this using a whole bunch of sensors, including GPS, gyroscope, pressure meter and accelerometer (it’ll even use your heart rate to find the exciting bits if you’ve connected a Bluetooth monitor) to find the action. Open the companion app on your phone, shake the handset, and those highlights will be automatically arranged into a single video that can be shared on social media immediately.
If you’re a perfectionist you can change the order of the clips with simple taps left and right, and you can add a soundtrack from within the app. And your performance data can be overlaid if you want to show off how darn cool, calm and collected you were as you pulled off that frontside double-cork 1260.
And besides that clever editor the TomTom Bandit’s hardware specs look pretty impressive. It’ll record 1080p at up to 60fps and 4K at 15fps, it’ll take 16MP photos, has burst, slowmotion and timelapse modes.
TomTom also says the battery is good for three hours of continuous shooting, and because a USB plug is integrated into the battery you don’t have to worry about remembering a seperate USB cable.
And it’s waterproof down to 50m and has more mounts than you can shake a stick at, including a stick mount for narcissistic video selfies.
The Bandit will set you back £380 when it becomes available in June, and you can bet we’ll have a review up just as soon as samples become available.
Tom Parsons
Contributor, Stuff.tv 
