Contour+ Review

Introduction

The Contour+ has an MSRP of $499, and that price includes 3 mounts, a 2GB MicroSD card, an HDMI cable, and a 3.5mm cable extender for connecting an external microphone. Contour sells additional adventure cams as well—like the ContourGPS and the ContourHD—at lower prices, but the Contour+ is the current flagship model from the company.

Design & Usability

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Using the Contour+ is entirely different than working with a traditional camcorder.

Even if you're a pro at using camcorders, you may still have trouble working with the Contour+. The camcorder is simply that different in the way it functions, and it requires the knowledge and use of certain technologies that goes beyond the traditional camcorder realm. The Contour+ is also not meant to be held like a traditional camcorder. In fact, the mountable plates that ship with the camcorder are meant to be its primary “handling” method (i.e. the camcorder is meant to be mounted, not held in your hand). The mounts that came with the Contour+ were generally effective and durable, but I was very disappointed that the package lacked a basic tripod mount of any kind.

By all means, the Contour+ is a light camcorder, but it was hefty enough to tilt my helmet in an awkward direction while riding. You could correct this by mounting the camcorder to the top of your helmet, but the provided mounts don't make that too easy—they're specifically designed for mounting to the side of a helmet. But wait, that's where the camcorder's rotatable lens comes in perfectly handy. It doesn't matter how you mount the camcorder, as you can just rotate the front of the lens to record at any angle you want. So, if the Contour+ is mounted flat on its side, you can turn the 90 degrees to record an image that is right-side-up!

{{photo_gallery "Front Photo", "Left Photo", "Left Open Photo", "Back Photo", "Right Photo", "Top Photo", "Bottom Photo", "Lens Photo", "Lens Photo 2", "3D Lens Photo", "Media Photo", "Easy Mode Photo", "Manual Controls Photo", "Zoom Photo", "Zoom Photo 2", "Ease of Use Photo", "Battery Photo", "LCD Photo 1", "LCD Photo 2", "EVF Photo 1", "EVF Photo 2", "Mic Photo", "Mic Photo 2", "Ports Photo 1", "Ports Photo 2", "Ports Photo 3", "Ports Photo 4", "Ports Photo 5", "Ports Photo 6", "Handling Photo 1", "Handling Photo 2", "Handling Photo 3", "Handling Photo 4", "Box Photo"}}

Features

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Pairing the Contour+ with your smartphone is a fantastic idea on paper, but we found plenty of flaws with the system.

The buttons on the Contour+ are terrible, but the good news is the camcorder only has a few of them. There’s the power button, which you can almost never tell whether you’ve pushed or not, and there’s the Bluetooth button that is used for syncing the camcorder with a mobile device. Thankfully, the most important button, the record button, functions by sliding the large button on the top of the Contour+ forward. It lights up when recording begins, so you can avoid that awkward moment where you are unsure if you’ve pressed the button hard enough to begin recording.

One thing that really bummed me about the Contour was the fact that you can’t start or stop recording using your smartphone. In fact, once you start recording with the camcorder, you lose the Bluetooth contact with your mobile device, so you can only use your phone as a remote viewfinder prior to recording video. This is really lame. Actually, the entire Bluetooth-phone pairing system with the Contour+ is really lame. The feature just didn't work consistently in our testing. According to Contour, the camcorder had an 80% success rate with synching to an iPhone 3G. With our iPhone, the Contour+ synched about 20% of the time. Even when it did work, the image shown on my iPhone was incredibly sluggish and low-quality. The delay was around one full second from the time you move the Contour+ before it would register on the iPhone, and I also repeatedly lost connection between the two devices. To re-synch, usually I had to restart either my iPhone or the Contour+ itself.

If you don't have a smartphone, you can still connect the Contour+ to a computer and adjust settings that way. A free application, called Contour Storyteller, lets you make all sorts of adjustments to things like white balance, exposure, and record modes. Especially cool is this: the camcorder has a little onboard switch that lets you switch between two pre-set modes. For example, position one could be set to take continuous still photos, while position two could be for video. That's one way to get by without using the phone-synching feature.

Performance

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The Contour+ had some major struggles with motion and low light performance.

Performance may not be the most important factor with a camcorder like this, but we put the Contour+ through our rigorous tests anyway. The results that came out weren't always pretty: tons of noise in low light, choppy motion video, and drastically overexposed images. In all of our tests, there was only one area where the Contour+ outperformed your average $500 camcorder—wide angle. By design, the Contour+ records with a very wide field of view so you don't miss any of the action in your shots. How wide, exactly? The Contour+ lens sees and records an image roughly twice as wide as your average camcorder.

Conclusion

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The Contour+ has some strong competition from GoPro in the adventure-cam market.

The Contour+ is such a unique camcorder that you probably already know—without our help—whether its the right model for you. There aren’t many camcorders out there that have an ultra-wide-angle lens, a durable design, and a mountable body like the Contour+. And if none of these things pique your interest, then you should stay away from the Contour+. This is a product for people who want to be able to mount their camcorder on a helmet or vehicle right out of the box, and it is not for people who want a simple video recording device.

Let’s be clear: the Contour+ has plenty of flaws and glitches that wouldn’t fly on a more orthodox camcorder. It doesn’t have any kind of LCD or visual display, its videos are very noisy in low light, and its controls must be set using external software either on your mobile phone or computer. The roundabout control system and the lack of an LCD (or viewfinder) make the Contour+ a challenge to use, although some people may like the amount of techie know-how using the camcorder requires.

With a $499 price tag, the Contour+ is pricier than other ultracompact camcorders we've tested, but it's definitely a more powerful product. One thing to note about that price is this: Contour's most direct competitor, GoPro, sells its HD Hero2 camcorder for around $200 less than the Contour+. We haven't reviewed the Hero2 yet, but its budget-friendly price tag alone makes it worth a look.

Science Introduction

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Other than its ability to record video at a very wide field of view, the Contour+ has no significant performance advantages over a traditional $500 camcorder. Its design, however, is significantly different (and adventurously advantageous), and that's where the Contour+ sets itself apart from those "ordinary" camcorders. Just based on video performance, the results weren't great. The camcorder struggled with color accuracy, showed a very noisy image in low light, and lacks any kind of image stabilization system. Battery life wasn't awful, but with the Contour+ you may be recording for very long periods of time between charges. A second (or third) battery pack is a must for people who want to shoot all day.

Low Light Performance

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The Contour+'s low light image was awash with noise and artifacting. At least the colors looked good, though.

The Contour+ did not fair well in our low light noise test. In fact, its average noise level of 2.9% is one of the highest we've seen from a consumer camcorder. Not only are the numbers very poor, but the image itself looks like its on the verge of collapse. Noise is everywhere, accompanied by huge amounts of compression artifacting, fringing, and blur. Somehow, within this messy low light image, the Contour+ managed to produce accurate colors. The color error in low light was only 3.2 and the saturation level was a high 110%, which means behind all that noise at least you get some vivid color.

The camcorder required at least 20 lux of light to produce a broadcast-worthy image in our testing. This isn't a terrible performance, as we've seen plenty of models do worse, but it means the Contour+ isn't going to work very well after the sun goes down. If you're shooting outside in broad daylight your images will look fine, but once you capture that sunset it's probably time to pack up the Contour+ and go home.

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Wide Angle Recording

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The lens does record at an extremely wide angle, but we got different numbers than what Contour lists on its specs.

The lens on the Contour+ is certainly a unique piece of work. Instead of offering an optical zoom, the lens records at a huge wide angle, which was measured at 95 degrees in our testing, but reported by Contour as being 125 degrees in full HD mode. If you shoot 720p video, the recording angle increases to a ridiculously-wide 170 degrees according to Contour. We've measured a few traditional camcorders recording an image up to 70 degrees wide, but the average is around 55 degrees. And in comparison, the Contour+ records with a much wider field of view.

Recording at such a wide scope does produce a fish-eye effect that warps the edges of the frame in order to accommodate the wide view. This effect can look very cool, but it can also be a distraction—it all depends on your preference.

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Sharpness Performance

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The ups and downs of the sharpness results

The combination of the wide-angle lens on the Contour+ and the fact that the camcorder cannot output video clips to an HDTV made it difficult to analyze the results from our sharpness test. At its best, the Contour+ managed a horizontal and vertical sharpness of 650 LW/PH. These numbers are similar to what the top ultracompact camcorders on the market are capable of.

Of course, that's just the Contour+ at its best, and during our testing there were times when the Contour+ did much worse. It all depends on lighting conditions and lens placement, which could be said for any camcorder, but it appears like the Contour+ has a more difficult time making everything come out as sharp as possible. If your subject is in the corner of the frame, they may appear dull or blurred because of the distortion from the wide-angle lens. Closer to the center of the screen, that same subject will probably be crystal-clear.

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Meet the tester

Jeremy Stamas

Managing Editor, Video

@nematode9

Jeremy is the video expert of our imaging team and Reviewed.com's head of video production. Originally from Pennsylvania and upstate NY, he graduated from Bard college with a degree in film and electronic media. He has been living and working in New England since 2005.

See all of Jeremy Stamas's reviews