GoPro Hero 8 Black Review: Hey Guys, here and today I'm going to give you 18 Things To
Know about the new GoPro Hero 8 Black. I am gonna go into a little bit of the
detail and stuff, kind of the under the covers of how things actually work on
these cameras and I am gonna talk about the good, and the bad of these cameras.
They are definitely not perfect and there are some things that I love, and some
things that drive me absolutely bonkers. Also note that I have a ton of sample
footage in this video but I also have a dedicated footage video up there in the
corner. That’s like the extravaganza of sample footage.
GoPro Hero 8 Black Review
Comparisons of four different cameras at once, all sorts of
cool stuff here. So check that out as well as the in-depth review that you see
on the screen right now.
With that let's get into a bit of a freebie that is not
included on my 18 Things, which is the pricing on this. The Hero 8 Black is at $399,
the Hero 7 Black moves down to $329, the Hero 7 Silver goes to $199, and then they introduced a new Hero Max at $499, which
replaces the older GoPro Fusion 360 camera. Still 360 degrees, and I'll talk
about it at the end of this article. So with that let's get into #1 on the list,
which is the new frame. Or rather lack thereof: the new case design. So in the
past, you had to put a frame around the camera in order to go ahead and mount it
to a GoPro mount.
Now the mount is built into the bottom. Its a small metal
mount that unfolds outwards so you can put it flat on the table without the
mount, which is pretty awesome. Or you can just simply pop the mount out and
then attach it to an existing GoPro mount. It works with all existing GoPro
mounts, so if you already have mounts out there, that stuff works great no
problem.
But it won’t necessarily work with all cases. So if you had for
example an underwater case, not so much there. If you have one of the rubber
silicone type cases, that does actually fit around a camera you just need to
make a little hole for the mount at the bottom but that at least still kinda
works.
But if you are one of the five people left still flying one of the GoPro
Karma drones – that’s not compatible with this. Neither is the Karma Grip
gimbal that came out the same time frame You could maybe kinda make it work but it's honestly not
worth it anymore. While on the whole, this design is definitely an improvement,
there are some downsides.
Number one is that opening up this battery door is
miserable. Especially in the cold, in kind of a windy scenario - like up in the
mountains: That really sucked. You need to put your fingernail down there, and
it's easy to kind of...its not good at all.
The other catches there is no
smaller door access to the USB charger [port]. You have to have the entire
door. You can take this off if you want to. But then you have the battery just
chilling there.
It's not really ideal, but that probably gets to the next one on
the list which is the new GoPro Mods. These new mods, or accessories as the
rest of the world calls them basically extends the functionality of the GoPro
itself from an integrated electronic standpoint.
Now there are three
mods, the first one is a Media Mod. That most notably includes a shotgun mic,
so it's pointing directly at you - ideal for vlogging, or any sort of holding it
out, like holding it out type setup. It also has a 3.5-millimeter adapter in
case you find that [included] shotgun mic sucks.
And then it has a USB-C
pass-through so an additional USB-C port there, as well as having a mini HDMI
because this camera itself no longer has meaning HDMI on it the second mod is a
flip-up screen so its 2-inch screen that flips up off the back to allow you to
see yourself.
Again holding out in front of you again really design kind of for
that vlogging snare or anything where you want to hold and kind of walk and
talk and then thirdly there is a new200 lumen light as well that you can add to
this whole entire kit now the downside here is that none of these modes are
available today or anytime near today GoPros talking sometime later on this
year.
So that’s a huge disappointment there and of course as you may have
realized with these new mods GoPros actually taken out features from the hero 7
black that are not in the hero right black for example there is no more mini
HDMI port on the side of this in addition if you want to charge this on the go
that kind of sucks compared.
The way it was in the past with that smaller door
that made it really clean to keep the battery locked tight but you could still
access that USB charging port so all in all I’m excited by the mod’s I think
they are really gonna be cool.
Once I get my hands on them but I’m also
disappointing the fans they we taken some of those features away from the hero
8 next on the list is the new hyper smooth 2.0 now hyper smooth was introduced
in the hero 7 lineup and it dramatically improved.
The stability of the GoPro
camera it was pretty much a game-changer for a GoPro hyper suppose 2.0 is a
modest upgrade to that it goes ahead and extends hyper smoothing to every frame
rate in every aspect ratio now for certain groups of people this is gonna be a
pretty big deal for those that you are doing 4 by 3 and then re-framing and post.
This is solid for those that are shooting at 1080p 240 frames per second you
can now leave hyper smooth on and then slow down that footage when it gets the
right point of footage as opposed to have to make a decision between having
really stable footage in really smooth footage for that one split second that
you wanted to slow down into slow-mo so that takes us right into the next
feature which is anew hyper smooth boost.
What this does that basically crops in
the picture just slightly and it goes ahead and offers like even higher level
stability this isn’t offer in every mode but it is offered in things like 4k 30
for example and you definitely notice the difference its much smoother compared
to just regular hyper smooth 2.0 or otherwise in boost mode GoPro says they are
leveraging more the accelerometers and the gyros in the camera itself to kind of
predict what’s gonna happen in the scene
and then go ahead and smooth based on that now just a little tip here double
check and always ensure that the blue icon is on if its blue you got a boost if
there is no blue there is no boost now its a good time to mention if you are
funny this video useful or interesting or whatever go ahead and just watch that
like button the bottom there it really helps with the video and the channel
quite a bit okay next on the list are a few things that are definitely making
me as a video heat pretty darn happy number one on the list is the ability to do 4k
linear which is awesome so now I can mix all my footage from a normal camera.
So
you don’t have that kind of fisheye look
at all that used to be required for the 4k mode snow, you can do straight linear
and on top of that, there is now the ability to do 100 megabit per second a bit rate
you can select that within the pro tune options and you will notice the protein
options also a little bit cleaned up here as well now you go down and you just
see all the options you choose what you want you don’t feel like you are
enabling everything you just choose what particular settings you want to switch
and you are off and running next on the list is probably one my favorite
features which is the new live burst mode now the rest of the world again calls
this live photo mode or at least Apple does anyways and that allows you to take
a picture but actually get the frames before and after it so every time you
take a picture in live burst mode it records 1.5 seconds before and 1.5 seconds
afterward its actually taking a three-second long video clip and then it goes
ahead allows you to pull out the exact frame that you want its been super handy
for me because I take my camera a lot of times when I’m running and riding and
stuff like that I just take photos along the way for Strata and other social
media apps but this allow to get the exact right frame which is useful again
when you are in action scenarios next on the list still in the photo realm is
the updated super photo mode.
So one of the things I said they worked a lot on
is reducing ghost in grate facts and ghosting happens when you take a super
photo which is usually a very kind of HDR like photo and it merges those photos
together but there is these weird ghosting artifacts that don't quite line up
and you see trails it just you know it when you see it sort of thing and GoPro
says they done a lot of work both at the
processing side as well as the algorithm side to reduce or eliminate those I
have yet to see a ghosted image on the here right black thus far versus Ive
seen him a fair number of times on the hero 7 black over the last year in
addition they also enabled the ability to go
ahead and manually toggle on and off HDR as kind of a subset of that so in case
you did or didn’t want that you can now do that next on the list were gonna
slide back to the video side of stuff and talk about the updated time work
GoPro introduced time warp in the hero 7 black and what that allows you to do
is essentially do a hyper-lapse so it's taking a time-lapse and kicking up the
next level where it stabilized but we thought you had to choose a toggle of
exactly how fast to make that hyper-lapse and for a lot of people myself
included you weren’t really sure how long that one that to be so what GoPros
done is that new auto mode so instead of choosing an exact timing you just
choose auto and well figure out for you which has been pretty useful I found in
my testing thus far its actually nailed kind of what I wanted its sped up and
slowed down were expected so that's pretty good stuff if you want the manual
modes don’t worry it's still there they didn't go anywhere next we got the new
digital lenses now this is probably more of like a marketing term but you'll see
it different in the user interface.
So I'm counting it as a new feature here
digital lenses essentially gives a marketing term to what used to be wide super
wide linear narrow etc so GoPro has kind of made this whole digital lens
concept where they ve moved stuff to the forefront it made it much more clear
as to which mode you are and made it much easier to switch between those
different modes next up the new capture preset snow one of the things that
GoPro said people generally struggle with the past if they were new to GoPro is
figuring out which mode they should be in so they've simplified that down now
where you these capture presets and by default there's four of them out of the
box that allows you kind of pick what you want based on what kind of activity
you're doing but what's cool about this you can extend this now and create your
own capture presets so in my case I can create one that is for 4k linear that
I'm shooting when I want to mix in you know DSLR cameras footage and then I can
shoot something for slo-mo and so on all this though is more or less a take on
what DJI did with the Osmo action having camera presets there which in turn is
it take on what Garmin did with the verb ultra series back like two years ago
so kind of what's old is new again from someone else and then someone else
before that up next on the list is the new 1080p streaming option last year
when GoPro introduced live streaming for the GoPro cameras they did it at 720p
which was a bit weird since the rest of the internet often streams at 1080p but
they did that and now it's up to 1080p here which is awesome in addition to that
you can go ahead and live stream directly to YouTube now just simply select
that in the live options.
There at the bottom and you are good to go next there is
a new battery on the hero right black but fear not it's still compatible with the
hero five six and seven batteries you'll notice the difference right away that
one has blue pants and the other one is the black one for the past they both
working interchangeably in either camera so you can use a hero 8 battery in
hero 7camera or vice versa the only difference is that GoPro say soon some
hyper smooth 2.0 modes and particular with Boost it may not work as well on the
old batteries as a new batteries also I have tested third-party batteries I
tend to use myself a ton of third-party batteries and all those seem to work
just fine I haven't seen any of the issues that the GoPro is talking about on
either older batteries or third-party batteries with hyper smooth 2.0 next on
the list there is a new lens now this lens GoPro says there's two times stronger
in the past.
so just keep that in mind it’s a different type of camera
which is a great camera potentially so stay tuned for later on in October when
it comes out and I'll go ahead and do a kind of a full new things review on it
then okay so there you go that is all the new things on the GoPro Hero 8 black
you know from my perspective if you are trying to slide between buying a hero 7
and a hero 8 for the extra 70 bucks Idea silly go hero 8 I don’t think its probably
to be worth it for most people to upgrade from the hero 7 to the hero 8 and I
think you know for me personally I really love the new stabilization of the
hero 8 but I'm also a bit bummed about some of the trade-offs they made around
this especially around some of the accessories stuff and finally if you found
this video interesting won't forget hit subscribe Dereks I got more videos on the
way of course including eventually the GoPro Hero Max when it comes out and
then down the road the new mods and plenty of details on all that goodness as
soon as they are out have a good one.
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