Review So Far [Drift Ghost S]

Well, I've had the Drift for over a day so far, and used it on my commute to and from work yesterday. Couldn't today, as my back light has went, and there's nowhere in town - that I know of, at present - to get a replacement.

So, I thought I'd post my initial opinions of the Ghost S.

The very first thing is The Packaging...

Utterly beautiful. It's made to be displayed.

It all opens up nicely [although, I accidentally tore a bit of the black off while removing a sealing sticker ):
Then, the base all opens up to reveal the contents secure in place with clips.
It even comes with a couple of stickers for you :D

Battery only had minimal charge, so that needed done before I could use it.

Oh, yes. Important bits of information for prospective buyers of the Ghost S:
It does not come with an SD card [uses micro] nor a charger for the batteries. It charges through USB, yet it didn't even come with a plug adapter.

The lack of SD card I can forgive - people can be picky about storage - but no proper way to charge a device that costs over £300? That's just sloppy.
FYI: You can buy a dedicated charging cradle for the battery, which costs ~£30

In Use
The UI is a bit weird, and not incredibly responsive. It requires solid button presses to be accepted. But, I can see this as deliberate. If the controls were sensitive, then under heavy action, they could be activated when you don't want them to be.

When you record a video, you can play it back, but the way to do so isn't the most intuitive. You go into the menu, then a playback option, then what you want to play back [icons show how many there are for each]. You can scroll through the available playbacks once in, and this is where it gets the "huh?" - selecting a video [for example] then brings up a further menu, where you select whether you want to view it or not.
But since there are only 4 available buttons, and this menu also has the delete option, I can see why they had to do this.

For actually recording, it's simple enough: on the camera itself, same button starts and stops. And there's a light to tell you what it's doing.
Or, you can use the wireless remote that you can strap round your wrist. One button starts, the other stops. And it slow flashes red to let you know it's recording [and it's not distractingly so]

The Recordings
The recordings themselves, then?
I've got 2 examples - unedited at present, so can't post - one in the morning during daylight, and another in the evening in darkness.

The initial issue is the internal mic. It's pretty much useless. It claims to be noise reducing, but when moving - even down at ~10mph - there is nothing but wind noise in the recording.
But, I've received by external mic, so I'll see how that handles soon.

The daylight video is very clear. And I'm definitely happy with it. Can't complain.
The night video? Hmm... as a photographer, I can only imagine that its ISO response is, well, shit. Dark areas were just noisy as hell. And as I picked up speed, the noise went across the video. But hey, in the case of insurance purposes, it's fine.

Still, for a £300+ camera, I would expect a bit better ISO response. I'd not be surprised if it could be fixed by ISO, or possibly another setting like dropping the resolution


Well, that's my initial impressions. I'll hopefully make some proper videos soon, and let you all judge for yourself.