They sneaked it in under the announcement earlier this week of the brand spanking new Hero 4 Black and Silver editions, but GoPro have come up with what’s probably the most interesting addition to their range in years: it’s simply called the Hero.
If all you’re going to use your purchase for is one or two weeks amateur shredding a year – this is the camera for you.
Yup 4K at 30fps is awesome if you’re a professional videographer or need to shoot magazine cover quality shots on the fly, but for most consumers spending upwards of £300 on a camera to film footage they probably don’t even have the computing power to process or the screen to fully appreciate it on is slightly, well, mad.
Yes, there’s also the Silver edition that packs a hell of a punch, but it’s still aimed squarely at the ‘prosumer’, a Canon 6d to the 5d MkII if you will. With other less tech-packed but – crucially – cheaper alternatives like the recently announced CONTOUR ROAM3 there was a gap in the market.
No longer, the Hero is the everyman’s GoPro. Priced at just £99 it has the same specs as the above – 1080p at 30fps, 720p at 60fps – plus some of the new bells and whistles from its high-end brothers: QuickCapture, quality audio, optics and the new low light settings.
At almost half the price.
Really, the resolutions and frame rates this packs are still far more than you actually need for editing and uploading videos to Facebook, Youtube or Vimeo. The latter currently does not even allow you to upload videos in higher definition than 1280×720 unless you front the cash for a pro subscription and most laptops are incapable of displaying more than 1080.
If all you’re going to use your purchase for is one or two weeks amateur shredding a year, there is absolutely no reason not to make this your go to purchase for showing off to folks back home. Damn.
