GoPro HERO9 20MP 5K Ultra HD Action Camera Black

This is the GoPro Hero 9, the latest action camera from the popular manufacturer that comes with significant improvements, especially in its new front screen, its 5K resolution, and Hypersmooth 3.0 stabilization.

However, despite these lights, the camera has some important shadows in terms of usability and the settings that come from the factory and that affect the final quality of your videos (which, luckily, can be changed). Do your successes weigh more than your mistakes or vice versa? Let’s find out.

Technical Characteristics

An elegant yet robust design

In terms of design, this GoPro Hero9 Black seems exquisite to me. It is elegant and with a feeling of being well built. It feels a bit heavy but it doesn’t get uncomfortable even if you use it in your hand for a long time. In addition, it gives a good impression of robustness. And I can already tell you that it is.

Because, after all, being an action camera, what we can expect is that at some point it suffers some small mishap and that is what happened to me when I was thrown from the remote control car that GoPro provided me to carry out the tests. The camera only suffered a small, almost inconspicuous scratch on the lens frame, otherwise perfect.

Going back to the design, in terms of buttons we have the two classic ones: the power button on the left side, which will also do the function of changing modes if we don’t want or can’t use the touch panel, and the shutter button on the top right, that pressed together with the other button will allow us to change the recording mode. If we move to the right side, we find a tab behind which the slots for the battery, the microSD, and the USB-C port are hidden.

On the back, we have the 2.27″ touch screen, without a doubt one of the weakest points of the camera, which we will see later. And on the front, we will have the lens and another 1.4″ LCD screen. One feature that comes back is that we can remove the lens cap to put another one on.

Finally, if we place ourselves at the bottom of the camera we will see two handles where we can hook the mount that will make it possible to attach the camera to all its accessories. In my case, I have had a handle, a clamp, a clip with adhesive to be able to attach the GoPro to a helmet, for example, and the jewel in the crown: a remote control car.

The possibilities of the GoPro Hero9 Black

Having seen the design, we are going to talk about the different possibilities and options that this new model offers us at a technical level. We have a sensor that goes up from the 12MP of the Hero8 Black to 23.6MP. This allows us to take 20MP photos and record 5K resolution video. At this resolution, the maximum FPS that we can record will be 30, but in 4K we can go up to 60 and at 2.7k and 1080p we can get 120fps and 240fps respectively.

5K resolution and Hypersmooth usually give us very good and stable shots

As for the viewing angles, we have a novelty: the linear with alignment with the horizon. In terms of vision, it is exactly the same as the linear one. What this new model will give us is that it uses the horizon itself to stabilize the image and correct small curvatures of the camera. The truth is that it works quite well, and combined with the 5K resolution and Hypersmooth, it usually gives us very good and stable shots. Of course, the lateral turns are corrected very abruptly, so for more “creative” shots, it is better to leave it deactivated.

The superview, wide-angle, linear, and narrow angles are maintained and, as always, the higher the angle we select, the more pronounced the fisheye effect will be. At the photo and video level, we have the already known settings: shutter speed and activate or deactivate Protune that gives us control over compensation, white balance, minimum and maximum ISO, sharpness level, and color profile that can be normal or GoPro -flat profile- with the addition of Hyper smooth 3.0, Timewarp 3.0, Hindsight and programmable capture in this model.

As I said before, Hypersmooth 3.0 will help us to get more stable shots while with Timewarp we will be able to make time-lapses with the novelty of being able to change between speeds in real-time (1x or 0.5x). It’s a cool feature but personally, I don’t think it’s very practical and it’s always going to be easier to edit the speed ramp afterward. Perhaps for users less willing to go through clip editing, it will be useful.

On the other hand, Hindsight is another new function that will allow us to capture the 15s or 30s before pressing the record button. It is a tool with which we make sure that we do not miss any moment before starting to record. Something that I would have liked is that this function was also present in photo mode and to have a small video before the photo itself. Which, for example, we see as standard on some Samsung mobiles.

Finally, the programmable capture is just that: we can program a time at which we want the camera to start recording. The interesting thing is that we can have the camera turned off and it will turn on by itself to start recording.

Underwater shots will also be possible on this GoPro without the need for any special housing. A pretty cool and useful feature for all those who focus on water sports and that, in short, makes the camera an all-rounder. Unfortunately, I have not been able to take a dip with it but I have been able to submerge it in different places and even put it under a fountain.

An improved user experience

The first version of this GoPro’s firmware that I tried really scared me and that is that choosing or changing a setting became a real challenge. The touchpad seemed to be struggling to do the opposite of what it wanted. Unresponsive key presses, swipes that don’t open the menu, and anything that ends up responding ends up doing it rather slowly.

Fortunately, it is something that has improved with an update that GoPro has provided us. The performance is not perfect but it is not as frustrating as before. They also ensure that a new update designed for November will further improve this problem.

After the update, the rear panel becomes much more comfortable to use and we will soon be changing from one setting to another.

For occasions when using the touch panel is impossible (underwater, for example) we have the option of controlling the camera through the buttons themselves. With a press on the side, we can move between the timewarp, video, and photo modes and if we press the recording and the side at the same time we can change between the different video settings.

We have as an alternative or complement the mobile app that allows us to control the entire camera through our phone. We also have a preview (in low quality, yes) of what we are about to record. And it is that once we press the shutter, the preview disappears from the mobile. The application works very well and on many occasions, it will be more comfortable for us to control the camera from our phone.

The front screen is undoubtedly a success and one of the most anticipated additions. Being able to see exactly what you’re recording when you have it pointed at you is a hell of a lot more useful than seeing the recording settings you’ve selected. For many content creators, I am sure that it will be a fundamental feature when deciding on one model or another. To give it a snag, if we record at maximum resolution (5K), we will notice fps losses in the image that, although annoying, do not make this screen useless.

Good image quality hidden in its settings

The results we can achieve with a GoPro are not perfect. It is not a camera with which to aspire to film quality (although for certain shots it can be very useful), this is an action camera and its virtues are different. We only have to see its great resistance, its wide range of accessories, its ultra-wide-angle, or the HyperSmooth.

But what I didn’t expect to find was some low-quality recordings. Sure, on the small screen of the camera everything looks great, but once you play them on the PC you realize that something is wrong. And it is that after several tests in various resolutions and with different viewing angles, the only acceptable results that I achieved were in 5K, something that simply seemed impossible to me. And it was.

With the camera comes a card with the “ideal settings” for what we want to record, whether it’s an activity or something more cinematographic. Well, in it we are told that we better put the sharpness filter on low, a setting that comes on high by default. And voila. Now we do have some good shots. Of course, what the sharpening filter does in broad strokes is to try to leave all the elements of the image in good focus, which ends up creating a watercolor effect, a noise in the image that completely destroys the video. Perhaps the ideal would have been to include those ideal factory settings.

Once this step is over, we do find what we could expect: good quality and, above all, very stable shots. It is true that perhaps the color profile that comes by default, and they also recommend us, is guilty of forcing the contrast too much. I think that if we are willing to edit our clips afterward, it is better to leave it in flat color profile and then give it a color adjustment ourselves. In addition, with this profile, we will gain a dynamic range. Here, more color profile options would not have been bad at all.

In my experience, the best settings have been:

• 5K at 30fps and 4:3 aspect ratio. Yes, 4:3 is not ideal but it is how we will be able to use the sensor in its entirety. In addition, later we can easily cut to 16:9, thus achieving the most cinematographic shots possible.
• 2.7K at 120fps wide-angle is the ideal setting when it comes to giving the camera sports work. We already had this configuration since the seventh model and I would have liked to find myself here with 240fps at this same resolution (still available only for 1080p) but at least we can use HyperSmooth.

To finish this part, I want to briefly tell you about the sound that has surprised me for good. Although the background noise is still present in the shots, if we speak to the camera our voice is surprisingly clear (and I have tried it, especially with a mask) and if we activate the RAW audio option, the camera will generate an audio file separately that we can edit to taste. In my tests, the wind filter has not made a big difference, but it is true that in no situation have I had a very pronounced wind.

An improved autonomy that is noticed and appreciated

With regard to autonomy, I have a few complaints. We have a removable 1720mAh battery, 30% larger than the previous model. I am not a “core” user of the camera, so long sessions of climbing, surfing or any other similar sport escape me, but I think that the duration of almost three hours (recording intermittently) seemed more than enough.

Unfortunately, the charge is not very fast and, although we can reach 30% in just over half an hour, the full charge takes two hours and we will miss a fast charge option like the one we find on most smartphones. current. Charging is done through the USB C port that we find when opening the side tab.

Worth Buying GoPro Hero9

There is no doubt that the GoPro Hero9 Black is a great action camera with important new features, highlighting above all the front screen and HyperSmooth 3.0. Its design remains elegant as well as robust and its versatility of accessories and mounts (compatible with those of previous models) will mean that we cannot complain about options when recording.

Thanks to the update, its performance is now closer to what is expected from a camera of this caliber and we hope that with the next update that sensitivity that is still somewhat behind what it should be will be completely resolved. My confusion with the factory settings is something that I have not been able to get rid of, but at least it is easy to solve and the ideal settings card makes it easy for us to get the most spectacular shots.