Hot on the heels of the GoPro-challenging Garmin VIRB, yet another company famous for GPS devices has ventured into the action cam market. This time it is TomTom, which has today launched its Bandit action camera, priced at £299.99. With so many choices, new cameras need to distinguish themselves from the competitors. TomTom has a couple of novel features in its design.

Instant editing

The first is an instant video editing app which allows you to create full movies on-the-fly. Recognising the time involved in downloading and editing footage before it can be posted or shared, TomTom has built a media server into the camera, which works with an app on a smartphone.

the app editing screen, as displayed on your smartphone’s TomTom app

The app allows you to select footage, you then shake the phone to edit the film. TomTom also allows you to instantly upload the film to social media. This is a step up on the GoPro Hero 4, which only allows you to review footage, not edit it.

Bar-mounted controls

There is also a remote control accessory available that you can mount on your handlebars with a velcro strap. The remote control has a highlights button, which will tag your favourite bits of a ride to allow for easier editing.

It also has all the other controls on the camera, making it easier to record videos when the camera is not mounted in an accessible place.

The camera itself is a 9.5cm long cylindrical design weighing 190 grams and with the controls on top of the camera’s body. It is waterproof to 50 metres and will shoot video at full HD and 30 or 60 frames per second or at 720p with 60 or 120fps. It will also shoot cinematic at 2.7k and 4k15.

TomTom seem pretty keen to attract mountain bikers

The camera is WiFi and Bluetooth enabled and there are in-built motion and GPS sensors too, so that video footage can be searched and tagged by location, speed, heart rate and other parameters as well as manually.

The camera is designed to take a modular, swap-out Batt-Stick – a combined battery pack and USB storage device with a claimed battery life of up to three hours, which can be removed from the camera and plugged straight into a computer’s USB port, to download the video.

TomTom seems pretty keen to get the mountain biking market on board and have signed Danny Hart as an ambassador, check out his edit below.

The camera will be available in May at £299.99 and a premium version with more accessories will be released in June, priced at £379.99. As is often the case, the smartphone app will only be available for Apple phones at launch, but an android version is in development.