Design
There's no doubt that this thing's mighty compact for what it does. One of biggest gripes about the HD170 was its girth, and Drift's obviously gone to great lengths in order to trim this fellow down. Hardware-wise, the unit feels sturdy enough, and the twistable lens does a phenomenal job of holding tight once put into place, but we couldn't help but feel that a few corners were cut. The embedded 1.5-inch LCD, while mightily appreciated, is of fairly poor quality; it serves to showcase what you're viewing, and the top / bottom bars inform you of the current settings, but we found it rather difficult to see under direct sunlight.
The back panel is covered by one of two lids, both of which are included. The first is a solid covering that serves to seal out dust, dirt and just about anything else you could think of; the second has two covered ports that can be popped open for easy access to the microphone input jack (3.5mm) and the mini-USB socket. That's decidedly useful for those who have a mini-USB charger in the vehicle with 'em, as it allows the camera to be tethered to a constant source of energy rather than having to run off of batteries alone. Careful when tightening either on, though -- we had to break out a pair of pliers at one point to get it open after over tightening with our Sasquatch-like paws.
There's also a micro-HDMI port back there, with the only other input mechanisms being just beside the LCD: up, down, menu and play / stop. Overall, the 104.14 mm (L) x 50 (D) x 33 (W) mm device felt like a semi-serious piece, but for $369, we expected a far more premium fit and finish. At just 4.23 ounces, it's not exactly a heavyweight, but after you strap on a helmet mount (or one of the other sticky solutions included in the box), it's not something that'll easily slip into one's pocket.
Software and usability
There's just no two ways about it: the user interface here is spartan, and if we're being candid, it's fairly unsightly. Of course, it's not like you'll be spending hours on end digging through the interface options, but we will confess that it's not the most intuitive thing to use; granted, having only four buttons doesn't do Drift any favors, but a little polish over on the software side would've gone a long way. Boot-up was respectably quick -- the camera could go from off to shooting in under five seconds. We noticed that the "beep" sounds emitted when recording was started and stopped were around two seconds too late, but it's a quirk we learned to live with in time.
For our purposes, we shoved a 16GB microSDHC card in and left it on 1080p. After all, if you're shelling out $369, you'll probably be after the finest resolution possible. The bundled remote (which can be worn on the wrist) worked on the first try around 70 percent of the time, and while Drift claims a five meter range, we found it far more useful when we were within three meters of the device. Just so you know, the camera stores each clip on the card in a standard .MOV format, making it dead-simple to import into just about any movie editor known to man. Windows users can simply connect a mini-USB cable to export files, while OS X loyalists will want to have a card reader nearby.
The assortment of mounts (helmet, curved sticky and flat sticky) thrown in were quite useful, and the fact that the battery can be recharged via a mini-USB port warmed our ever-loving hearts. One less charger in the travel bag is never a bad thing. Speaking of battery life, we routinely saw our unit record around 50 to 80 minutes of 1080p footage on a full charge, largely depending on how much idle time we had between each clip.
