Five action cams to capture your half term adventures

Taking photos is a great way to capture and preserve memories from great trips, but sometimes a still image doesn't quite cut it.

Whether you are spending your half term skiing in the Alps, learning to surf or rafting down a river, here are five "action cams" that can help you relive your best jumps, turns and near misses on video.

Veho Muvi HD No Proof No Glory edition - £199

The Veho Muvi HD NPNG edition has a great design, which comes with waterproof housing so you can take it on the wettest of adventures.

You'll get 8GB of storage with the included SD card and it produces high quality pictures, as well as being easy to use. This edition also comes with a range of mounts and accessories included in the box, such as a tripod mount.

There is a small LCD display on the back, a remote control and the Muvi HD has 1080p, 720p at both 60 and 30 frames per second (fps), as well as 960p for recording with a slightly taller image (skydiving or skiing, for example).

Panasonic HX-A100 - £260

The Panasonic HX-A100 is very well designed, but takes a slightly different approach to its competitors keeping the camera section separate from the recorder section, connecting them via a fixed cable.

It comes with a microSD slot, and you wear the device on a head mount, which offers a view that is nearly identical to what you see as you go about your life, meaning you don't have to worry about pointing the camera. Neither the camera nor the control unit has a screen, so Panasonic offers an app that lets you control the camera via any smartphone.

The HX-A100 also offers Wi-Fi, the battery life is over two hours in various modes and although the picture quality is a little on the soft side, the app provides useless features, like a hassle-free way of switching the camera to slow-mo mode.

Canon Legria mini - £269

The Canon Legria mini is a pocket camcorder that comes with one purpose and one purpose only – to capture video and share it with its built-in Wi-Fi.

It looks similar to a tiny projector but it is well built and the menu is easy to get around, plus it packs in some great features such as slow-mo video, with 720p half-speed footage.

In terms of specs, you'll find a 2.7-inch touchscreen on the top, along with an ultra-wide 16.8mm lens on the front that has an f/2.8 aperture and 12.8-megapixel sensor.

GoPro HD Hero3 Black Edition - £360

The third edition of the GoPro Hero series is essentially a HD camcorder in a small body, a really small one, which also comes with waterproof housing.

It produces quality results in a variety of conditions, features Wi-Fi so you can share your recordings and it offers some very useful settings in terms of capture modes.

The GoPro HD Hero3 Black Edition has the ability to shoot in 1080p HD at 25 or 30fps and 720p at 100 or 120fps. Uniquely among these cameras, it can shoot in ultra-high definition 4K, although frame rates are a lot slower - either 12.5 or 15fps, which is a little less impressive.

Sony Action Cam AS100VR - £349

One to consider for your next holiday is the latest in the Sony Action Cam line up, the AS100VR, which will be available in April this year.

It will come with a range of features including Near Field Communication (NFC) so you can connect it to your smartphone with a simple tap and transfer your video, as well as a live streaming option that will be available as an update in summer 2014.

Looking at the numbers, the Sony Action Cam AS100VR offers a variety of settings with Full HD capture at 60/50/30/25/24p, along with slow-motion offerings too.

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