Raw Danger!

I got a GoPro Hero 3 White a few months back, and I still haven’t decided exactly what I want to use it for, but I knew that unless I am doing any kind of mounted footage on a helmet or whatever, I wanted a screen so I could see what I’m looking at. So Santa brought me an LCD Touch BacPac, and I finally made some time to fiddle with it some today. I have to say, I’m pretty impressed by the whole package.

The unit itself is small and mounts perfectly on the back of the camera, with a little molding to hook it on, then it plugs into the port on the back of the Hero 3 itself. It makes the entire unit larger as a result, and only slightly so, but people looking to carry around the smallest unit possible may not like that. I think it’s a worthwhile tradeoff, because even with the BacPac added to the size of the package, it’s still quite compact in its design.

There were no instructions, just a fact sheet with warning information about where to use electronics and safety with batteries, but really, there are no instructions needed. Once you have it attached and the unit is on, the menus are easy to navigate with numbers and symbols, and don’t deviate from the menus on the camera itself. These can be navigated with the touchscreen, which is responsive and works as well as I had hoped it might.

Also included are multiple backdoors, to account for the added size of the BacPac. There’s a skeleton one which is open for direct screen touching, a windowed one that will still allow for touching while being waterproof, and then a third which I didn’t try, but I believe it’s a solid backdoor that covers the entire unit and makes it waterproof as well. Nintendo doesn’t even ship their handhelds with charger cables in some regions, so seeing these doors as part of the package with no additional cost is a nice gesture, as they easily could have sold them separately only, but chose not to. Even if you did want to buy them separately, the pack of three is ten dollars, which is a good price.

All in all, this package is about eighty dollars, and for someone who prefers having the large viewing area, it’s quite a nice thing to have. The camera by itself is already a cool piece of technology, but seeing that there’s a high number of add-ons and that they’re all priced very reasonably is making me a fan of this company’s approach, for sure.

Only question now is: what should I record with it?