Smell that pumpkin spice in the air? That means the fall is coming, and with it, new action cameras.
GoPro—aka the Band-Aid/Kleenex/Q-Tips of action cameras—is here with the latest entry in its category-defining camera platform, the Hero7 Black. I’ve spent the last few weeks banging around (and getting banged up) with it, and while it feels more like an iterative upgrade than a sea change, it’s gotten noticeably better in a few key ways.
First, you’ll note that the Hero7 Black looks almost identical to the Hero6 Black, aside from a slightly different-looking mic and a darker finish. It’s still waterproof to 33 feet without a housing, and it works with all the same GoPro mounts and accessories you've been using for years. Even on the inside there are more similarities than differences. The Hero7 has the exact same image sensor, and it shoots at the same resolutions and framerates as last year, maxing out at 4K60 or 1080p240. What it does have, however, is twice as much on-board memory, which it uses to make some smarter decisions on the fly.
You can pre-order a Hero7 Black now for $400 (GoPro has wisely made it $100 cheaper than the Hero6 was at launch) and it will be available globally on September 27. It will arrive in the US three days later, on the 30th.
The smartest new feature is an improved in-camera image stabilization mode, which GoPro, in its GoPro-y way, has dubbed "HyperSmooth." Now, it’s still electronic image stabilization (EIS), which means it crops 10 percent of the image as it zooms in a little to mitigate shake, so you lose some field of view. That said, it’s a very clear improvement over last year’s EIS. It does a really nice job of eliminating smaller shakes and vibrations. For those who do fast-moving activities (think racing cars), you’ll notice that the notorious rolling-shutter effect is all but eliminated. Even when riding my mountain bike over gravel that was making my arms jiggle like crazy, I found that the Hero7's image stayed extremely stable. It even works at 4K60, which the Hero6 couldn’t stabilize. It’s really quite impressive.
That being said, GoPro is claiming that this is “gimbal-like” stabilization, and that’s definitely an overstatement. It smooths out little bumps and shakes, sure. But when I was going over bigger rocks on my bike, jumping off of things, or even running down a street with a gimbal and the Hero7 in the same hand, you can see a very clear difference in the stability of the output. Gimbals are much, much better at eliminating the shake from big bumps and jolts. Of course, there are a lot of disadvantages to using a gimbal: A good one is going to run you at least a couple hundred bucks, they’re bulky, you have to charge them, they suck in high wind, and you can’t take them in water. So yeah, stabilization that even approaches gimbal territory is great… but I still would stop short of calling it “gimbal-like.”