Adventure travel is all about capturing moments that are going to be the witnesses of the adrenaline rush one’s been in. It is usually these times that it dawns upon the traveller that their most important gear aka camera is missing or haywire. As soon this reality gains ground, second reality sets in; their budget is as much as the size of a pea. Not a very pleasant situation to be in? Take a quick look at our pick of 5 GoPro alternatives of their absolutely hi-tech expensive cousins that not only fits the pocket but are as good as them.

Garmin VIRB XE

VIRB action cameras capture all the action in brilliant HD. In addition, they record data from sensors within the camera for speed, altitude, G-force, GPS position and more. They also wirelessly connect to compatible devices and sensors so you can capture even more data.

With 12 megapixel sensor can shoot burst photos at up to 30fps, it captures even more of your action with G-Metrix. However, it loses its screen to the expensive VIRB Elite. Also, it doesn’t support recording in 4K. The battery issues crop up now and then. All in all, this is a good gear when compared to its pro alternative.

Panasonic HX A1

Panasonic  HX A1 has a compact built and is ultra light which enables its usability in various scenarios. Also, the night vision makes it the only action camera suitable for shooting in the dark. It is the right buy in action camera bandwagon for budget –minded buyers.

However, A1’s picture quality gives it a little setback in the adventure photography segment. The camera doesn’t have an underwater case for waterproofing beyond its low built-in rating so underwater filming is restricted. Pedestrian battery life won’t suit those shooting for long stretches of time.

Xiaomi Yi

With powerful hardware and a lightweight compact design, the camera takes outstanding HD videos and crystal clear 16MP photos. The built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity allow you to stream live footage, edit videos and photos and share instantly all from your phone. This being said we can conclude that it offers more than what is asked for at this price.

However availability is an issue with this one. It is available only in some parts of the world yet and it is a little tough to get your hands on one, No memory card, mounts or housings are included and the Yi isn’t waterproof on its own. Battery life could have been better but it isn’t very bad considering the battery life of GoPro.

ClickPro Prime

ClickPro Prime action camera is a lightweight entity in its segment and offers a 1080 picture quality at a 30 frame per second. As it is said, it gives a high-resolution video with a bang for the buck. The auto-exposure part works well to capture the well-lit shots.

The weight of the camera is ultralight making it insecure to be used without casing. The picture quality is as good as your smartphone camera goes, hence, this device is fair to document selfies/family/fun with its 170-degree wide lens.

SJCAM SJ4000

SJCAM’s Sports HD DV 1080P camera, the SJ4000 has taken the same cue in design as its GoPro alternative. It has a field view of 170 degrees and can record videos up to 1080p. It comes with all sorts of mounts and accessories including the waterproof case for all the action packed sequences.

All this being said the camera lacks high fps recording for slow motion videos. The 60 fps mode isn’t true 60 fps and is just frames duplicated to create 60 fps.

What camera accompanies you on your adventure trips? Do tell us about it.

The post Adventure travellers, look out for some GoPro alternatives while on budget appeared first on TravHQ.

If travel is your religion, then you will surely know the tricks of travelling smart and light! Whether you know how to pack everything in a backpack or how not to forget your chargers in hotels, a large number of travellers can find good use of your tricks. Focusing on this essential aspect of travel, Lonely Planet India and Opera came up with an interesting contest called ‘#TravelJugaad’.

This contest started on 4^th November and will continue till 24^th November, 2015. As the name suggests, travellers will have to share their travel jugaads or quirky travel hacks they have discovered to take part in the contest.

Mr. Sesh Seshadri, Director, Lonely Planet India

Talking about this campaign, Mr. Sesh Seshadri, Director of Lonely Planet India, said, “Lonely Planet in association with Opera Mini has commenced an interesting contest for travellers and photographers titled “Travel Jugaad”. Travellers are more and more digitally engaged and this contest encourages them to share their best travel hacks or jugaads, write about them and share pictures. It is our endeavour at Lonely Planet  to continuously engage with travellers via innovative online campaigns. We are very hopeful to achieve higher engagement and success.”

People love to tell stories and share their experiences when they travel but internet connectivity is a challenge. This is where Opera comes in. Opera Mini can be an interesting travel hack as it optimises data use and through the contest, they are getting people to talk about all the tools and tricks for travel.

Mrunmaiy Abroal, Director of Communications – South Asia, Opera Software

Commenting on the objective of this campaign and the association with Lonely Planet India, Mrunmaiy Abroal, Director of Communications – South Asia, Opera Software, said, “The #TravelJugaad campaign is a fun way of learning about hacks that can help travelers make the most out of their journeys. Staying connected when on the go or sharing holiday pictures with friends on social media has become as important as enjoying every minute of your travel. That’s where the Opera Mini browser fits in. We call it ‘the perfect jugaad to go online‘ because it shrinks web pages to as little as 1/10 of their original – leading to faster browsing, saving precious mobile data and helping you to stay connected even in the remotest location.

Lonely Planet India was an obvious choice for us to conduct this innovative jugaads campaign and reach out to travel enthusiasts in the country. By the end of it, I’m sure that we all will benefit from the travel jugaads submitted by participants.”

Participating in #TravelJugaad contest is quite simple. The participants have to enter their details on the contest website and share the description or/and image of their travel jugaads. To earn more points they can vote for the best #TravelJugaad, submit their #TravelJugaad Facebook photos, sign up for Lonely Planet newsletter and retweet @OperaIndia on Twitter. For more details of this contest, check out this webpage.

They have already received a good number of entries.

The winners will be selected by judges from Lonely Planet who will review all the eligible entries. The entries will be judged on the creativity, quality & relevance of the description and included media.

The prizes:

To read about the terms and conditions of the #TravelJugaad contest click here.

For all pro-travellers, #TravelJugaad is an ideal platform to share their travel hacks with rest of the community. While participants will get rewarded for their jugaads, it will be great to see a curation of some of the top travel jugaads. So if you do have a jugaad to share, give this contest a shot.

The post Share your travel hacks in ‘#TravelJugaad’ contest and win amazing prizes! appeared first on TravHQ.

By now almost every adventure junkie knows that GoPro has been working on a quadcopter for quite sometime. The news first came out last year and the reports suggested that we will see the drone by now. Well the actual product isn’t out yet but GoPro has finally dropped a hint (quite a strong one) of what to expect from the upcoming GoPro Drone. Among all the crazy action videos they have put on their YouTube channel, you can also view a footage captured using the prototype GoPro Drone.

The video shows some beautiful landscapes as the drone flies through vast fields and tall trees. Like we mentioned, the footage has been captured using the GoPro Drone and stabilization system. The transitions look very smooth and GoPro proudly claims at the beginning of video that it hasn’t been stabilized during post processing. If that is the case, we might have a very strong competitor to the products already on offer in the market, not that we had any doubts about that. You can check out the video below.

The upcoming GoPro Drone is expected to be available for purchase in first half of 2016. While we are at the topic of drones, it wouldn’t be right to not mention DJI. At this point, most of the enthusiasts and professional moviemakers rely on DJI Phantom 3 which comes with its own camera. The previous versions used to come with the option of mounting the camera of your choice and as expected, GoPro was the choice of most people. With GoPro planning to compete against them, it was pretty obvious that DJI will put an impressive camera on the latest version of Phantom.

The video didn’t show the actual hardware and there aren’t any images available yet. Whatever it looks like, after this video, we are even more excited to see what GoPro brings to the table (or rather the skies). If you want to treat yourself to some awesome drone videos, you can check our list of 10 stunning travel drone videos.

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