Upon opening the MotoRadds FLEX Slim GoPro motorcycle helmet mount, it is clearly a more cut-down offering. Most crucially it no longer has a standard GoPro slide-in mount, rather just the triple brackets to bolt the GoPro directly too. This negates the need for the GoPro slide-in bracket reducing size and weight. On the scales the Flex Slim weighs in at just 34g (including thumb bolt). Compared to the older MotoRadds mount, which weighs 25g, but then needs 23g of GoPro slide-in mount and thumb bolt.

The next key difference is the older models’ hinged arms which allow it to fold around your helmet’s profile, have been replaced with flexible arms that you bend as needed. These provide more flexibility with moulding the mount around the contours of your helmet. You’re still going to need a fairly rounded helmet chin, my Shoei Neotec works fine, but a pointy helmet like some of the AGVs would not suit.

The mount is available in either black or white variants.

Installing the MotoRadds Flex Slim GoPro Helmet Chin Mount

Installation is a breeze, with good info provided, including links to the manufacturer’s YouTube videos walking you through step by step. Essentially, it’s a case of cleaning your helmet well first to ensure good adhesion from the double-sided tape, using some wipes provided. Then you bend the mount around your helmet, giving it an extra kink to better balance the weight. Finally, you remove the double-sided tape cover and stick it on. Overall, it shouldn’t take you more than 5-10 minutes.

Attaching your GoPro helmet camera is then just a case of slotting it into the triple bracket and tightening up the thumb bolt. An extra mini elbow joint is also supplied, which you may or may not need depending on how low an angle you attach the mount. I did as I had to attach the mount quite low beneath vent switches etc on my Shoei.

MotoRadds Flex Slim Motocycle Helmet Mount GoPro in Use

In use, the reduced weight of the MotoRadds Flex Slim was good, though given the overall weight of a GoPro it was a subtle difference. I certainly appreciated having some less bulky on my helmet, especially if riding without the camera attached.

Given that the mount is smaller and doesn’t extend down as far as the older mount, it means when I put my helmet down on a flat surface, the mount is no longer taking the weight, which over time stressed the double-sided tape adhesion.

One downside is that without the slide-in GoPro mount, fitting or removing my GoPro from my helmet is a little more faff, as I have to fiddle with the thumb bolts. Faff because these thumb bolts need to be pretty tight to stop the camera from flopping down when out riding, and because I have two thumb bolts close together when using the elbow joint to extend the mount.

The supplied 3m VHB tape is nice and strong and is still holding the mount rigid to my helmet after a couple of months of use. It has pried away in a couple of small spots, but given the much larger contact patch this new design has, it’s still holding strong.

Conclusion

Concluding this MotoRadds Flex Slim GoPro helmet chin mount review, I definitely prefer it over the previous version. The smaller size and lighter weight design get my thumbs up. Install is easy and it’s definitely a better design than the prior version. My only very minor bugbear is the slight extra faff of unscrewing the GoPro on/off the mount, vs the quick slide-in clip of the old design.

Rating 4.5 / 5

→ More details and buy direct (in the US) from the MotoRadds website

Buy the MotoRadds GoPro helmet chin mount from Amazon

Alternatives either bolt the GoPro sticking out at the side of your helmet or near the chin. Both often use some convoluted sequence of brackets off a sticky pad on the side. All because the GoPro’s do not have a rotatable lens or a side mounting like the Drift cameras, so require mounting upright from a pad on the base. The problem with all these scaffolding brackets is a) you need to buy them separately b) they add extra weight to your lid and c) too many can introduce a source of wobble screwing up your footage. That’s when I came across the Motoradds GoPro Motorcycle Helmet Mount chin bracket which appeared to be a far better solution.

→ Buy the MotoRadds GoPro helmet chin mount from Amazon

The MotoRadds GoPro helmet chin mount is a US-manufactured product that comes in at around £30 but doesn’t feel like cheapo flimsy plastic like many far Eastern accessories you see littering Amazon. It comes in three parts, a central GoPro mount plus two hinged arms that extend on either side. All three parts have strong 3M adhesive pads on the back. It’s this articulation that is key, it means the arms can be moved to follow the contours of whatever helmet you have, whether it has a rounded or more pointy chin shape. Although it has a lot of flexibility, it may not fit all helmets especially really pointy chins. Check the MotoRadds website for a list of helmets known to be compatible or not.

I fitted it to my Shoei Neotec flip-up lid with no hassle. I had to place it quite low down to leave access to the chin vent and switch, but the central pad and arms of the MotoRadds GoPro motorcycle helmet mount still nicely sat flat to give good adhesion. However this low angle of mounting using a simple P bracket on the camera left it aiming too low, it was just too close to my helmet to angle back enough. So I had to opt for a short 35mm bracket to place the GoPro far enough forward to let me angle it up straight.

On the road, the MotoRadds GoPro helmet chin mount has held up fine with no issues. The adhesive has held strong and shown no signs of coming loose. I’m getting great stable footage at a good angle (and no helmet spoiling the shot). It’s streamlined and only adds a mere 50g of additional weight. Considering the GoPro Hero 9 with a bracket weighs 200g, so really just a small proportion. I didn’t notice the combined weight being unduly uncomfortable when riding, though it was very noticeable once I flipped my helmet open.

Trying to use the camera or clip/unclip is quite tricky whilst wearing the helmet, but this will apply to any helmet mounting and can be overcome by using the GoPro phone app or remote. The only downside with this chin mounting is I can’t keep recording good footage with my flip-up helmet open – I’d just get sky shots! But that’s not a complaint you can level at the MotoRadds mount, it’s just a downside to a chin-mounted camera.

MotoRadds GoPro Motorcycle Helmet Mount Conclusion

It is not the cheapest mount on the market, but it’s a quality product that fits a niche very well and comes with a lifetime warranty. If you’re after a chin mount for your GoPro, you can’t go wrong with the MotoRadds, I highly recommend it.

Rating 4.5 / 5

→ More details and buy direct (in the US) from the MotoRadds website

Buy the MotoRadds GoPro helmet chin mount from Amazon

MacBook Pro

I have a preference for Macs, simply because they’re generally well-designed, last well and have good migration and recovery features. I’m currently running a Mid-2014 15″ MacBook Pro Retina, with 16GB RAM, 250GB SSD drive and 2.2Ghz Intel Quad-Core i7 processor. Now before you cry ‘But boy they’re super expensive!’, I picked MacBook up refurbished from Music Magpie in November 2019 for £650 (but did have to buy a power supply at £80 on top). At the time of writing a similar spec brand, a new Windows laptop will set you back over a grand.

I’d recommend the Retina display, as its high resolution is perfect for inspecting video in a small preview pane. But note, RAM is not upgradeable on recent Retina Macs, so do get one with 16GB already in it. I also went for the fast Intel Core i7 chip, to help blitz through video rendering and processing. Overall, it’s plenty fast enough to work on a long 1080p video, and possibly 4k video at a push.

Cameras

On the bike, I currently use a Drift Ghost X action camera. A good quality 1080p camera priced at about £120. It has great battery life (4-5hrs), is waterproof, has a slimline profile and a rotatable lens perfect for helmet mounting. You can also plug an external mic into it via a supplied USB adaptor.

For other photography, I either use my old Moto G5 Plus mobile (which had the best camera reviews of all cheap phones at the time), or a  Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-H10 digital camera, which is really getting on a bit but has a great Carl-Zeiss lens with 10x optical zoom in a nice small form factor.

Do also consider picking a tripod for setting up static shots and a selfie stick for all your Insta’ shenanigans. You can also get phone clamps to bolt to the top of a standard camera tripod which can be useful too. For the Drift, I have a thumbscrew clamp and loads of mounting plates to attach to whatever bike I’m riding (or renting). To reuse Drift mounts, get yourself a reel of 3M VHB tape. I’d also advise buying a stack of SD cards (label them up one per day of adventure planned) and a good battery pack for recharging on the road.

Microphone

If you want to do any kind of voice-over, you really need to get a proper Lavalier microphone, but you don’t need to spend a fortune. I have a Purple Panda Mic Kit (~£50), which although it looks like it’s come from Lovehoney, is good quality and includes all the adaptors you need to mic up your Drift, phone or Mac. Unfortunately, this mic appears to be less readily available in the UK these days, so I’m open to suggested alternatives.

Software

Apple iMovie

I’ve used the Apple iMovie app for all my video editing. It’s free with recent Macs and capable enough for most things, I’ve only found it limiting when wanting to layer multiple videos or sprites. If you want to go more professional, you could look at Adobe Premiere Pro (£20/month) or Apple Final Cut Pro (£300), both heavyweight software used throughout the video editing industry. However, I’ve never had the inclination to spend that kind of dosh.

Apple Photos

Free with any Mac, a straightforward app to organise photos from rides, adventures or general product reviews or howtos. I can perform basic touch up, enhancement and cropping, such that I rarely feel the need to use anything else. However, if you have a proper DLSR camera and want more control, working with RAW photo files etc, you might need to look elsewhere.

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)

Being a cheapskate, I use GIMP as a free open-source alternative to Photoshop (which costs £20/month). It’s my go-to app when I need to do more edits than I can in Apple Photos. I find it plenty powerful enough for most stuff, ideal for multi-layer compositing or working with transparency for still overlays needed in videos. GIMP is a free download for Linux, Windows or Mac, with recent versions much better integrated into the Mac OS.

WordPress

This blog is a fairly standard WordPress installation. A great, simple-to-use blogging application that is the de facto standard for blogging. It’s readily available for free at WordPress.com (albeit with some commercial limitations) or from almost all web-hosting providers, with basic setups costing as little as £3-4 / month. Perfect to start out small, then upgrade later when you become an internet sensation and need to handle more traffic (although, I’m still waiting for that one…)

Extra Computer Kit

The other kit I have on my rig is not 100% essential but is very useful.

An external USB3 RAID drive box filled with two 1TB drives striped (RAID0) to double speed, which is my main video working drive. The MacBook only has a smallish 250GB SSD drive, so to manage the large volume of video I use this very fast external drive. I picked up a Silverstone/Teratrend SST-TS231U empty drive box second-hand on eBay for £40, then just shoved some standard 3.5″ drives into it (1TB drives under £40 each these days).

A second screen is always very handy, as you invariable have countless windows and apps open. Prices vary depending on quality, resolution etc, but £50-100 will buy you something basic that’ll do the job. As I’m using the MacBook Retina display for critical visual work, the second screen doesn’t need to be super posh.

A Thunderbolt or USB dock is a handy way to plug everything in, so I can quickly walk away with my MacBook without needing to unplug loads of cables. It also avoids needing a dongle for the ethernet cable and I find it great to swap my work Dell laptop into this setup for my day job. These docks can get pricey (~£250), but I picked this older Elgato Thunderbolt 2 second-hand on eBay for £100. The latest Elgato Thunderbolt 3 dock uses newer USB-C connections which can also deliver power to your laptop but aren’t compatible with my older MacBook. Check what connections your laptop has to work out what’s best for you here. OWC and Belkin also make very good docks.

FYI the Apple Thunderbolt 2 to USB-C adaptor works a treat to plug my Dell work laptop into this dock, as the Dell has a ThunderBolt compatible USB-C socket.

Backup and Archiving

When working with video you all too quickly find yourself with tonnes of footage you want to keep hold of and huge storage and backup nightmare. My solution was a big server in the loft filled with many huge drives.

There are many approaches to backups, I’d just recommend you have something in place in case a drive dies or your MacBook gets stolen

The server runs Enterprise Linux Centos 8, which is guaranteed to have security updates for 6 years odd, unlike other Linux distributions that expect you to upgrade everything every few months. The server itself is home-built, based on a low-power Intel Atom board with 4TB of disks in a mirrored setup (RAID1), i.e. everything is written to two disks, mirror images of one another, in case one fails. I have Gigabit Ethernet wiring around the house (with a second-hand 3Com Baseline Managed Switch 2924) to ensure fast file transfer too.

This server acts as a network file share to store older footage and video projects and hosts TimeMachine backups for the household’s MacBooks. I also shove all our music collection on it, hosted in a Plex server (which is awesome BTW) and it hosts a Minecraft server for the kids (just for kids, honest!)

The server regularly backups to an external USB drive and selected current data to BackBlaze B2 cloud storage. For finished videos and projects, regular cloud backups don’t make sense as the data shouldn’t change, so I have scripted anything added to an ‘Archive’ file share to be copied once to BackBlaze B2 cloud storage. Don’t underestimate the time it takes to upload and archive finished video to cloud storage over household broadband!

There are many approaches to backups, I’d just recommend you have something in place in case a drive dies or your MacBook gets stolen so you can recover. Then consider a separate plan to archive finished work for future reference.

Conclusion

I hope you found this peek behind the scenes at Beginner Biker Adventures interesting. Maybe it sparked some ideas, maybe you have better suggestions. I’d love to hear from you and find out more about the computer rig you’ve built.

The Drift Stealth 2 is definitely larger than my old Road Hawk RIDE bullet camera but does feature more buttons and a screen to indicate what it’s doing.  Considering how much more it does, these are essential. The Road Hawk was really a one-click – one-function camera, whereas the Drift lets you shoot in many different modes and has far more configuration settings to play with – no comparison really.

The helmet mount is straightforward enough, a sticky back pad goes on your lid, then a rotatable mount screws onto the back of the camera and slides into the helmet mount. I like this setup as when riding with no camera, you only have a slimline pad stuck to your helmet. With the camera in place, it’s still fairly aerodynamic and has no noticeable drag until you hit illegal speeds. The camera lens can be rotated to find tune alignment, really quite nifty. But the lens and mount only offer rotation in two axes, so some thought into mounting position is still needed, unlike the Road Hawk which had a ball joint mount to angle in any direction.

When the battery is flat, I mount the camera under the fairing of my bike and run off a USB socket I’ve fitted. The swivelling lens is great in this setup allowing for the camera to be mounted any way up. However the Stealth 2 can only be plugged in when the waterproofing back cover is removed, so not an option in wet weather. Also, the recorded footage has quite a bit of vibration-induced ripple from the fairing, but still plenty good enough for an insurance claim.

Operating the camera with gloves on is fine, though turning it on needs first a long press of one button, then waiting several seconds to boot up, then another press of the record button to start off.  Doable with gloves on when attached to your helmet, but it is easy to inadvertently press the wrong button and toggle to a lower-quality recording mode. In some ways I prefer the more tactile button sticking up on the Road Hawk. I almost always shoot at 1080p @ 30fps and find the results very reasonable. 60fps is an option, but only at 720p. It records MP4 files in 5 min chunks (configurable) at about 650MB each for 1080p, so with a 32GB SD card (max supported), that’s approx 4 hours of footage. Usefully the recorded MP4 files are playable in Quicktime straight off and need no converting first (unlike Road Hawk). Battery life is around 2.5 hours which is pretty impressive. It is however fussy on the charger and will only charge properly with a 2 amp USB charger (not provided).

Reliability hasn’t been too bad, but not without incident. The initial one I purchased had the LED light cover loose in the box. The second refused to charge after 9 months, Drift Innovation wanted lots of info for a warranty claim, but in the end, did nothing and told me to go back to PC World who then took weeks to get a replacement in… The third is holding up fine so far, but the LED cover has come off. There has also been the odd occasion where it has locked up, needing a reset; or just decided to stop recording for no apparent reason. Possibly related to overheating on very hot days, but hard to say for sure.

Overall, the Stealth 2 has held up pretty well, more than enough for some insurance claim evidence and fine to get you started on some VBlogging. Prices have come down a bit and you should be able to pick it up for about £100, making it very good value.

Score: 4/5.

The Drift Stealth 2 is now discontinued and has been replaced by the Drift Ghost range.

Buy the latest Drift Ghost XL Action Camera from SportsBikeShop

The Ride is supplied with an assortment of cables and adaptors, including wires to run from a USB socket and directly from a 12V power feed. Better still, the Ride will automatically start recording on receiving power and automatically stop recording when power is cut. Along with its auto-looping feature, it’s perfectly feasible to hard wire it to the bike and literally just forget about it, which is exactly what I recently did.

I chose to tap power from the side lights on my bike, such that the Ride would only record when the ignition is on. On the Fazer, this was dead simple as the wire to sidelights can be unclipped from the loom so all the awkward stripping of wires and soldering could be done away from the bike. The last thing you want to do is melt a hot soldering iron through the plastic fairing!

The first step was to strip the insulation away from a segment of the wires, preferably without cutting the core. Then I confirmed polarity with a multi-meter, twisted the leads for the Ride around and soldered them together. I then wrapped each wire in some heat shrink wrap and then finally wrapped some self-amalgamating tape around the lot. The heat shrink wrap was tricky as I had to cut this down the length and manually wrap it around, rather than threading each wire through it.

Finally, I used a supplied sticky pad to mount the camera underneath my front fairing. Only one mount is supplied that can accept the camera such, the others require the camera upside down due to the button on the camera.  Annoyingly the 12V wire terminates in an extension lead connector, which then goes into a USB lead, so I had over a metre of wire to wrap up and tuck away in the fairing.

In use, I came across a number of issues with the camera in this position. It picks up a lot of vibration, the audio is horribly raspy and the recording keeps cutting out randomly. Although oddly, the cutting out has become a great issue more recently. Maybe it’s the vibration that is causing the SD card to come loose, maybe there’s a fluctuating power supply coming from the bike, or maybe just not enough current and thus it’s relying still on the battery.

When it records from this position, the footage is less jerky and smoother due to no fast movement from your head.  Obviously, it doesn’t show any lifesaver glances you make, when you use indicators or your speedo, all of which may be useful in an insurance claim. However, I found the low-down position is much better at capturing registration plates on other cars. Overall, it’s swings and roundabouts, but it’s good to have somewhere to plug the camera in to charge and continue to record when on a longer ride.

So back last autumn, I spotted this Roadhawk Ride camera on special offer in Halfords and decided to join the vblogging band wagon. With the insurance claim from my incident in September turning sour as the third party falsified a witness, I only wish I had purchased a camera sooner. You will probably have seen some of the footage from this camera on my YouTube channel already, but after a few months of use, here is my proper write up. The Roadhawk RIDE is a dinky little cylindrical camera, just 80mm long and 25mm in diameter, that comes with a plethora of brackets for mounting it pretty much anywhere you like. The rear of the camera unscrews to reveal the memory card and USB socket.

The Roadhawk RIDE records 720P HD video at 30fps. It’s supplied with an 8GB micro SD card, which will store about 2 hours of footage, however it’ll take up to a 32GB card, to store around 8 hours. Video is written to the card as sequential 5 minute MOV files, but what I like about the camera is how it will overwrite the oldest MOV file when it runs out of space, so you never have to worry about cleaning out old files. With a 32GB card in it, I know I will have the 1.5 weeks worth of video from my commute to work, no matter what. Although the camera records to MOV format, these files can’t be played natively by Quicktime. VLC will play them, but you will likely need to transcode them (with Handbrake for example) before you can import them into iMovie etc.

All video recorded has a date time stamp embedded into the video in the bottom right hand corner. Perfect for insurance evidence, but unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be a way to disable this. Setting the time is also a little faff, as you have to write the time into a text file, save it to the memory stick, then when the Roadhawk is turned on, it will read it and set its internal clock.

There isn’t much in the way of controls for the camera, just one button on top, which you hold in to turn it on or off. That’s it! With no built in screen, the only feedback you get is through some coloured LED’s by the lens. The camera has it’s own internal battery or can be powered directly off a USB power supply. This is where the selection of rear covers comes into play. The standard one is completely sealed to make it water tight, there’s another with holes to allow the mic to pick up sound (no external mic jack I’m afraid), then finally another which has a USB power lead passing through it. Battery life isn’t long, barely an hour or so, but it does charge pretty quickly. For longer rides the supplied USB wiring is what you need and plenty is supplied: extension leads, fag socket adaptors, battery connections, all sorts. There a few different mounts too: one for flat surface, one for curved (e.g. helmet); each with interchangeable clips: one fixed, one large that can swivel.

For the most part I’ve been riding with the camera stuck to the side of my helmet, with the swivel mount, Due to the angle of my helmet, I couldn’t get the video feed horizontal with the horizon with the more flush and discreet fixed mount. With my commute being around 40 minutes I have had to get into the habit of charging the camera at work and in the evenings. No big deal, but it can be very annoying if I ever forget. When powered via USB the camera will automatically startup and being recording, which lend it perfectly for a semi-permanent installation where you just forget about it until your next SMIDSY.

The video quality is excellent in the day.  Even at night with a lot of glare from headlights it’s still very good, although number plates can be tricky to make out. There is no settings that can be tweaked, like exposure or what have you. It is entirely auto-adjust, but it does do a pretty damned good job nonetheless. Footage is recorded at 30fps and was always smooth. Where the camera does get unstuck is in wet or misty conditions. With moisture on the lens you get horrible distortion and it becomes nigh impossible to make things out. Not really much you can do about this, I tend to just get into the habit of giving it a quick wipe now and again.

Pros:

• Small and compact
• Reasonably cheap compared to competition
• Good quality footage, night and day.
• Auto-power on and auto-loop, fit and forget features.
• Generous selection of mounts, wire and connectors included.

Cons

• Short battery life
• Can’t disable timestamp
• Can’t tweak camera settings (exposure etc).
• No external mic jack.
• Not 1080p

Overall, I’ve been very happy with the Roadhawk Ride and can definitely recommend it. It’s a good camera, at a good price. It may not have all the fancy features of a GoPro or Drift, but it’s smaller in size and makes a lot smaller dent on your wallet.

Rating 4/5.

Read full spec on RoadHawk website
Buy the Roadhawk Ride from Amazon

Addendum

The memory stick for the RoadHawk Ride needs to be formatted as FAT32 with 32Kb / cluster. Through trial and error, it seems to only support 512 bytes per sector and 64 sectors per cluster. Failure to format it appropriately will lead to a fast flashing blue light, or a solid blue light followed by solid red then the camera turning off.

On Windows you must select an ‘allocation unit size’ or 32 or 64 kilobytes.

Default formatting on Mac OSX Disk Utility doesn’t achieve this either. One workaround is to resort to the command line:-

First run df (disk free) to ascertain what drive is your memstick and where it is mounted:

$ df
Filesystem    512-blocks      Used Available Capacity  iused    ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2   623463232 483939600 139011632    78% 60556448 17376454   78%   /
/dev/disk1      61816000     44352  61771648     1%        0        0  100%   /Volumes/ROADHAWK

Next we need to umount it, but not eject it:

$ sudo diskutil unmount /Volumes/ROADHAWK/

Finally we format it (correct for a 32Mb card):

$ sudo newfs_msdos -v ROADHAWK -S 512 -c 64 -m 0xf8 -F 32 /dev/disk1