As far as action cameras go, GoPro is pretty much the biggest name in the game. The company has been making action cameras for years and is well known for its high-performance cameras with a huge ecosystem of accessories and mods, and obviously, the HyperSmooth stabilisation. This year though, GoPro launched the Hero 9 Black and as you’d expect, it has better everything… and a color display up front as well. I have been using the GoPro Hero 9 for quite some time now, and if you are wondering whether you should get the GoPro Hero 9 for your action-cam footage, and if its worth the price tag of Rs. 49,500, here’s my review of the new camera.
For this review, GoPro sent over the Hero 9 bundle over to me, so I got a few more accessories in the box than you would if you just buy the camera. In my box, I got the following:
To be honest, I didn’t quite use the floating hand grip during my review. Mostly because the pandemic has forced me to not really step outside for walks. That said, it’s nice to have, especially if you’re going to be vlogging with this camera — something that’s easier now thanks to the front display, but more on that later.
First things first, the GoPro Hero 9 is a remarkably well built camera. That’s not surprising, after all the GoPros of the years past have never been poorly built. It’s still the same GoPro you’d expect — small enough to be carried in your pocket, and strong enough to take quite a beating. It’s also waterproof up to 33 feet out of the box, which is great for anyone looking to shoot water-sports footage.
The rubber finish all over the metal build of the camera gives it a nice, grippy feel in the hand, and the camera, while small, feels substantial to hold. On the bottom, you get the built-in mounting feet, same as the GoPro Hero 8. These fold into the camera when not in use, and can be pulled out when you need to mount the camera.
We can talk about a number of things in the GoPro Hero 9 Black, but video modes and quality is arguably the most important aspect of this camera. After all, it is an action cam.
The Hero 9 Black offers a huge number of possible settings for videos, so you can pretty much find suitable options for your needs. There are some preset settings available out of the box as well in case you just want to power on your camera and start recording.
The Hero 9 Black also offers a Scheduled Capture feature. With this, you can set up a time and your GoPro will automatically turn on and start recording at that time. That’s gonna be useful if you want to shoot videos of the sunrise but don’t want to wake up at 5am. I mean, I can sympathise with that.
Coming to actual video footage, well, I’m not an extreme sports person, so naturally I did not jump off a cliff with a GoPro attached to my head. I did, however, mount it on my car and recorded 5K footage from it. Here are my takeaways:
I also noticed that the Hero 9 does a pretty decent job handling exposure changes as you can see in the video below as I was entering the underground parking structure at Select City Walk.
There’s also a ‘Boost’ feature which can get you even more aggressive stabilisation. In usual scenarios, such as driving a car, ‘Boost’ feels too aggressive for the kind of footage you’re shooting. However if you’re horse riding, skiing, or doing something where there’s a lot of shake in the video, this Boost feature will definitely help get more usable footage.
The GoPro Hero 9 shoots 20MP stills and while I’m not one to use a GoPro as my still shooting camera, the pictures do turn out decently good enough. I only took a few pictures with this camera before I came to the conclusion that it’s easier to use a smartphone, and that the GoPro’s camera quality for images, while decent, is usually not at par with most flagship and upper-mid-range smartphones of today.
In an attempt to improve the battery life of the GoPro Hero 9 as compared to its predecessors, the company has increased the battery capacity to 1,720mAh. That’s a pretty solid jump over the Hero 8’s battery capacity of 1,220mAh. With that, the Hero 9 should definitely last longer.
Now, since I was shooting in 5K, obviously the camera died really quickly, but in 1080p or in 4K, you should get much better battery life. Personally, I noticed the GoPro lasting around 90 minutes shooting 1080p footage with Hypersmooth on. There are a lot of settings under the hood here, so battery life will vary depending on what you’re doing.
Essentially, the Hero 9 is what GoPro has always been — an impressive action camera that does its job really well. However, this year, the GoPro Hero 9 is taking multiple leaps to make itself a lot more convincing as a purchase option than I would normally expect. It has a bigger sensor which can shoot 5K30 videos, and 20MP stills. Hypersmooth 3.0 is just insanely good. It has a front-facing colour display that can be your viewfinder for vlogging, and it has a bigger battery. Those are all solid improvements, and if you are looking for an action camera, the GoPro Hero 9 Black makes perfect sense at Rs. 49,500.
