TomTom has announced its entry into the action cam market with the TomTom Bandit, a camera with a difference.

TomTom wants to make capturing your action movies as simple as possible, rethinking the action camera from the ground up, solving problems with editing, sharing and connectivity along the way. 

At its core, the TomTom Bandit has a 16-megapixel sensor, offering 1080p or 4K footage, but it is also waterproof down to 50m with no need for an extra case.

Offering many of the skills of the new Garmin VIRB XE, the TomTom Bandit is packed with sensors, like GPS, gyro, barometer, and motion, so it knows what you're doing. It also features Bluetooth, so you can connect it to your heart rate monitor so it knows when you're excited.

On the top of the Bandit is the same display that TomTom puts into its Cardio sports watch, so you can control your device.

TomTom says that the Bandit will offer 3 hours of capture from a single charge, but there's some really clever design. The battery block, SD card slot and a full USB are part of the same unit housed inside the Bandit, so if you want to, you can unplug the lot and plug it into your computer.

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Pocket-lint

There's no need, however, as one of the smartest part of the TomTom Bandit is the app that comes with it. TomTom wants to get around the problem of people capturing exciting footage and then never getting round to editing and sharing it.

Instead, with a shake of the smartphone, you'll be able to get the Bandit app to automatically pull together the highlights of your action footage and spin together a movie. Because it has all the sensors onboard, it knows when in your video there's some action, so it can literally pull out the best bits.

Better still, once you've spun together a movie you're happy with, only the parts you need are transferred to your phone and strung together for sharing.

It certainly looks like an innovative solution. The TomTom Bandit will be available from £300 in May. A premium pack will also be available in June including additional accessories for £380.