Bad Vision (a Campy Only sponsor) recently sent us a pair of their Hotspot video camera glasses for testing, and we've started putting them through their paces. The Hotspot glasses offer an easy way to carry a video camera with you everywhere--they're built into a pair of sunglasses that look pretty much like something Oakley would design. If you're into making videos of your rides (or anything else), they're a great option.Watch for a detailed road test, but for now here are some very quick first impressions:
- The Hotspot glasses wear just like regular sunglasses. The temple pieces are a bit thicker then normal (they hold the Li-ion batteries and electronics), but they glasses are very light.
- Video quality is good, on par with Bad Vision's Spark camera (which we used for a number of on-the-bike videos this year). BV is coming out with an HD version of the glasses, but for now we're using their standard model.
- They're easy to use--one button turns them on, another starts and stops the camera. You can safely use these while riding.
- On the "con" side, we can't get the Hotspot glasses to work on our Mac. The glasses show up perfectly on a PC, but not on an Apple machine. There's a workaround (and we're working on a way to fix this), but it's a bit of a hassle. Update 10-11-11: Bad Vision's Mike Boester reports that his Mac (running OSX 10.6.8) sees his Hotspot camera just fine. We're running Lion, so perhaps that's the problem for us. We'll keep checking into this.
