GoPro - HERO4 Session (CHDHS-101)

I think the way to look at it, is that GoPro was so far ahead for so long, there was no real competition for them for over a decade. Even DJI had GoPro mounts built in when the Phantom 1 came along. Historically, GoPro perfected their 1080P then moved to 2.7k on the Hero 3 Black. They had the best 4k on the Hero 4 Black. Then they made the whole camera waterproof and added the built in touchscreen on the Hero 5 Black, then they went 4k 60 with moderate stabilization on the Hero 6 black, built a tiny camera on the Session 4 and 5. With the Hero 7 black, they finally got stabilization in camera that started to compete with 3 axis gimbals. On the 8 they had the mount built in so you didn't have to have a frame and changed to a larger form factor with the Hero 9 black and got resolution to 5.3k. They perfected features like Timewarp and Hyperlapse where all the work was done in camera instead of post. They made GoPro labs available for most of their cameras and gave amazing levels of customization that no other cameras have even to this day. Then they really started to stagnate and features were more incremental and evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Sure they had the 8:7 sensor and got video resolution up to 24.7 megapixels, but they still use a tiny sensor and low light performance is still very bad. They also had to deal with the rise of DJI and Insta360 who started to release competing products. Dji matched 10 bit the same year as GoPro, The Action 5 and Ace Pro 2 use much larger sensors and do much better in low light. GoPro was late to the party with magnetic mounting systems and Insta360 even put 8k into their Ace Pro versions. Insta360 has the Ace Pro Line, their Go series mini camera and even had the modular R series which could be an action cam or a 360 camera. In the time since GoPro released the Max, Insta360 has released 5 consumer grade 360 cameras that get better each year and now do 8k. We have no idea when the Max 2 will be released. GoPro stock is hovering around 50 cents a share and the market cap of the entire company is only 75 million dollars. It used to be almost 11 billion dollars, so it is 145 times smaller than it was shortly after the company went public. They have had to lay off staff and that has a huge impact on R&D. They are clearly falling behind competitors with no real path forward. Depending on which site you listen to, they rate the probability of bankruptcy at 33 to 62% in the next 24 months. That is not the sign of a healthy company. They botched the launch of their Karma drone and ceded that potential marketplace to DJI in the process. The reality is that the DJI and Insta360 cameras do a lot of things better and much easier. Low light is a real thing for a lot of people and the Action 5 and Ace Pro do a very good job in the space and GoPro isn't on the same playing field. I love the new GoPro lens system, but I am an advanced user and have been using ND filters, Anamorphic lenses, and macro lenses for years with the GoPro. The new anamorphic lens is great because it does the desqueeze of your footage automatically in camera. What is annoying is that they announced the lens in September of 2024 and I was finally able to get it 7 months later. GoPro is a great camera, but for many people who never touch labs, don't care about 10 bit or color grading, never do reframing 8:7, like to shoot in lower light conditions, or won't spend the $129 on an anamorphic lens, the GoPro is not really the camera for them. Insta360 are releasing much better cameras each year and GoPro is falling further behind. I really want GoPro to come back strong, but I fear they don't have the finances to compete unless they have an absolutely amazing technical breakthrough in the action camera space.

I had Hero 4 Session before it got stolen from my bag at work. It was awesome, and i would love to own 5 aswell

Wow. I am willing to bet you’ve never done a side by side comparison or gopro, insta360, and dji. It has NOTHING to do with influencers. It has to do with GoPro quality and functionality compared to the their competitors. I started on GoPros with a Hero Session 4 (small cube camera). I loved it. After a while i bought GoPro 8. The resolution was an upgrade and still enjoyed using it. But cracks started appearing in my enjoyment. Battery life was horrible. I had to buy 3 extra batteries (off brand) with a charging case that allowed “action” with my action camera. The chargers that come with GoPro dont allow that. Overheating was also an issue. Then i got a GoPro 10. I used both together to get varying shots like outside car / inside car simultaneously. The 10 would shut off automatically when i placed it on the bumper of my car. Still have idea why. Its an action camera, it shouldn’t do that. Overheating on the 10 is WAY worse. And battery life is terrible. Bought 3 more (off brand) batteries with same “action” charger. Then i bought a Max 360. Absolute trash. The color was horrible. The bit depth was so bad a blue sky looked like it was “printed” from a 1990s printer. I used it for like 6 months then sold it. Since i bought that 360, they have been “announcing” a new 360 for over 5 years. Still hasn’t happened and the competition has not only come out with better 360 cams, but taken the market lead away from GoPro. About 7 yrs after buying my GoPro 8 the 2 batteries that came with it failed. They deformed and expanded out of their case. One was in the camera at the time and luckily i was able to get it out before it caused damage. Now 4 yrs after buying GP10, one of the original batteries deformed. Now I stopped using the ones that came with it and have 2 enduro batteries and 3 of the off brand (Telesin) batteries. So my love of GoPro has gone from a high point to ultra low because of the companies lack of quality(overheating, bad batteries, etc), and not keeping up with the competition.

I use a GoPro 4 I bought used and cheap on eBay, I switch the battery every time I ride. Good quality footage, many successful “positive action taken” responses from OpSnap. But I’m intrigued by the Redditor above using an Insta360, their case is compelling. Most important thing is that the camera is visible to motorists, I can clearly see improved behaviour whenever the red light is flashing. It’s

Due to the quality of the products. I am now on my third GoPro 10, as the previous two failed for mostly the same reasons. But give GoPro some credit, as they replaced them without much issue. On the other hand, I still have my GoPro 4, which is over 10 years old and works perfectly—used it recently whilst waiting for the second replacement GoPro 10.

I would say Hero 4 and 5. I know dozens of them still in use without any troubles. Unlike newer ones that got replaced quite soon

I'm shooting just underwater footage since GoPro 4, I've never get this result even in auto mode. Low life competitior pays "i can ben over for money" so called "influencers" just to try to make their products look good. Even if you give me anything else but no GoPro , I'd just use it for my nobrain videos. Yes I'm very aggressive because I'm sick and tired of this stupid nonsense comparisons

I just bought my first go pro and I'm loving it. I had seen them back in the day and thought they were really cool, and I finally decided to buy one, no regrets. I will tell you this: I'm glad I bought the GoPro hero 13 because it's rugged and waterproof and has really great filming options. When you hold it in the hand, you can tell you have a nice piece of hardware that will be able to withstand everything you can throw at it. I'm not sure you will have this same feeling buying a cheap alternative, maybe it feels cheap in the hand. Had my go pro 4 days now and really really glad I spent the extra money. I'm even starting to look at lenses.

I took my old GoPro hero 4 but Ill be first to admit I’m a fairly fresh diver I only have around 35-40 dives so that go pro is always secondary to the dive and safety of the dive itself

I still have the 4 and it was/is rock solid for the years it has.

Hero 4 was peak GoPro for me. The launch video. 4k video, The skeleton mount, and social media was still in its Goldilocks era.

You got downvoted for commenting about DJI in a GoPro sub but as a regular GoPro owner who tried an Action 4 on the field for a day, it was by far the most reliable action camera I've ever used. It turned on quickly, never crashed and always worked.

I definitely agree with you - there are some fishy bots around and tbh I still think that GoPros are the best action cameras on the market....for now. There's no denying that DJI are a serious threat though. Like yeah, there's some janky bitrate issues and other things I didn't like on the Action 4 when I tried (not a fan of colour science and hardware, interface was a bit weird). But I would hard disagree that they are far behind - and a good reason why DJI/Insta360 are gaining marketshare.

I use a good pro hero 4 as my face cam on twitch I really like the wide angle you get makes for better zoom if you can get a cheep one off ebay like I did I'd say it's worth over a web cam imo

I still use my go pro 4 from time to time. Normally to strap to the top of the car. No such thing as an out of date camera to me!

a "hack" is buy a generation or two older go pro. like do some youtube searching for video content makers, on which older go-pros are the best. i bought i think a hero 4. was dirt cheap but still well regarded for it's video/specs. all i was doing was recording my trips when i lived in nyc, as i was afraid of being killed by shitty drivers. wanted a "dash cam" of sorts. i feel like mindless recordings of riding about is a very niche thing.

I've had my hero 4 since it came out. And its a great camera, never heated up the only reason I bought the 13 is because I can't find any batteries that are new for the 4. Well, when ever I try to video anything in 60fps the damn thing overheats and either freezes or turns off. I never had that problem with the 4. That and they got lazy with innovation and let dji take their lunch. Oh and how the hell is it possible that the 13 has worse low light video than the 4?!?! Smh

I personally prefer the log files out of GoPro I have an action 4 too but it looks over processed and lacks details in shadows, where action 4 shines is its night time footage, that too doesn’t look real it looks over processed. Btw I’m using a Hero 10 and 11 and love both of it

I've had a GoPro Hero 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, and 10, as well as the Max. I've go over 2,000 skydives with GoPros on my helmet, including world records and jumps into the Blue Hole in Belize. I've taken them to every continent (including Antarctica) for running and scuba diving and overall travel. So I use GoPros a lot, and I use them in environments that are pretty tough on them. One thing that's been annoying is the heavy push to GoPro subscription. Their cloud storage is just awful. The money is better spent on something like Dropbox or Box. Their software has been pretty terrible too. Hardware wise, they've been hit or miss. Sometimes it's software, sometimes it's hardware. They can corrupt video files, do a weird "gets hot after charging and locks up so that you have to pull the batteries", they can stop mid recording. All of that with the proper recommended cards. Some have just been lemons, probably a bad solder or heatsink contact. Sometimes it's fixed in a firmware upgrade. They're notorious in the skydiving community. "Did you get it?" "No, it stopped recording 5 seconds in." "It froze up". That kind of thing. Not all the time, not even frequent, but enough that it's annoying. And each model seems to have their own little quirks. My Hero 7 and 10 has been solid for the most part. My 9.. not as much. My Max is a piece of shit. My next 360 camera will absolutely not be a Max, and probably won't be whatever they come out with next. My next action camera probably won't be a GoPro.

My hero 12 is unusable in Thailand due to overheating issues. It’s so funny because whatever model I had here 10 years ago (Hero4?)I remember overheating as well. I haven’t owned one in a while so I’m just sitting here thinking really one decade later they haven’t fixed this thing from overheating?

so the smallest gopro was the session or session 5 but in terms of mounting im not sure it would have worked like that. the picture looks like an insta360 go 3 camera and that has a magnetic mount for caps and t shirts. there are other small cameras such as the runcam thumb series but it depends on your budget and use case and if you need it to be waterproof.

I opted for a GoPro session mounted on my chin with sugru. Press once and it starts no issues.

Really big fan of the 11 Mini. Considering grabbing another one, just wish the battery was replaceable. Run into the same issues with it as the Session cameras, which were also awesome.

The 10 and session because it was my first one

if you can find one . . the old gopro sessions are great and i still rock one to this day.

The one that doesn't have glitches. From hero 7 down. The best one that I like very much si session because it was a very small camera

I don't think insta 360 makes good cameras. I just like that form factor. My first GoPro was the session. It wasn't the best camera but my Hero 12 and Max don't fill what it could.

Lots of issues. My Osmo 5 has much much better battery life+charging speed is amazing. I need 2 batteries compared to gopro 4-5. Startup is almost instant.

Many videos shown on YouTube are from the launch periods and are sponsored. Especially the DJI Action 5 was pushed pretty hard in my opinion. But they all make great videos. If you want low light performance I wouldn't go the gopro way. But in good light conditions I'd say the gopro still has the crown. For me the killer features though are 5.3k 8:7 and Gopro Labs which adds features no other action cam even comes close to. Those all help a lot for editing.

For me GoPro always had the best mic/audio balance. insta always sounded baseless and sucked at eliminating wind noise as well