If you have been on YouTube lately and who hasn't you will notice how many of the videos are made using GoPro cameras. GoPro has a firm grip on the action camera market and their cameras are used for all kinds of action shots from amateur online action stars to action shots for TV shows. With their reasonable affordability, various models and tons of accessories they can be used by anyone to make some great videos. |
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There are many companies that make handlebar mounts for GoPro cameras including GoPro themselves. The GoPro mount is decent but there are better choices out there like the popular K-Edge camera mounts. Another newer company that has been making some unique mounts for things like cameras, lights and GPS is Raceware out of the UK. Raceware does things a little differently because they make their mounts out of nylon using a 3D printing process allowing them to make custom mounts quickly without the need for specialized manufacturing procedures. This makes for a really light product that is reasonably strong although not as strong as the K-Edge mounts which are aluminum.
The Raceware GoPro mounts come in 3 different sizes for different diameter handlebars. You can get them in 25.4, 31.8 and 35mm. There are not a lot of mounts you can get for 35mm bars so if that's what you have this is a product you may want to look at. You can also get them in a variety of colors such as black, blue, green, yellow, pink and so on just in case you are one of those types that need everything to match. The mount comes with a rubber gripper to avoid slippage and a stainless steel bolt to clamp it to the bars. One thing we noticed is if you want to put the camera below the bars then you may run into an issue of having the brake and shifter cables being in the way and either getting in front of the camera or binding on the camera when turning the bars. This is where the K-Edge Pro model is better because it sticks out a couple of inches in front of the bars allowing you to put the cables behind it and actually zip tie them to the mount to keep them out of the way. We did also notice how it seemed like you had to tighten it pretty tight to make sure it was snug. The part of the mount where the camera slides in was pretty snug as well making it a little work to align the hole for the mounting screw.
As for how the Raceware GoPro handlebar perform it's decent but it will depend on what type of riding you are doing. For smoother riding it does just fine and stays in place. When you get to rocky sections of the trail then it starts to suffer a little. If you are going slow and doing some rock crawling its fine but if you are flying over the rocks at a high rate of speed then the video will come out a little on the shaky side. We tested with a GoPro 4 Silver at 760p and 60fps so it wasn't like we were using an outdated slower camera. We think the shakiness is because the camera is right on the bars because the K-Edge Pro that sticks out from the bars makes for smoother videos.
Check out this demo video we made using the Raceware GoPro handlebar mount.
So if you are looking for something really light that does a good job of holding your GoPro in place then the Raceware mount may be for you. If you want something a little more durable that offers better performance (and still light enough) then check out the K-Edge Pro model. As for pricing the only place we could find the 35mm mount was from Raceware themselves but that came at a cost of $40 plus shipping. Then when looking for a 31.8mm version we found one on Amazon for $9 with free shipping so you do the math. It does look like the price has gone down to $30 on the Raceware site so maybe they got the hint that it was a little expensive for a plastic mount.
