Review of GoPro Hero 9 for Motorhome owners

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The GoPro Hero 9

Over the years I have always been into outdoor adventure, travel, nature and building wooden canoes or boats of various sizes and types. I am, after all, a geographer and explorer at heart and recently with the time given to me in retirement, I’ve started writing articles for various outdoor journals and magazines (both print and online) as well as running my own dinghy cruising blog and vlog 

https://arwensmeanderings.blogspot.co.uk  and www.YouTube.com/c/plymouthwelshboy

Like many outdoor enthusiasts, I invest carefully in my equipment and so it lasts years. My down sleeping bag was bought in 1982 and is still going strong today although the interior is tea stained after an encounter with a gerbil like rodent at Kibo hut on Mt Kilimanjaro. I’m still not sure who was more surprised, me finding a rodent in my sleeping bag, or the cute rodent finding me in his warm soft hiding place. Either way, waking from a deep ‘post summit success’ sleep, I was rather shocked to feel something crawling up the inside of my thermal long johns! In a rapid exiting of the mummy style sleeping bag, tea went everywhere. A slight tea stain still remains on the off-white cotton interior, a reminder of great times. I also possess a first generation Gortex bivvy bag and a small Trangia stove bought at the same time as this sleeping bag. They are collectively, my most treasured outdoor gear possessions (along with the ice axe from my first successful Mt Blanc summit expedition, a manky old climbing harness from the days when I didn’t suffer from vertigo and an old swiss army knife – which I literally never leave the house without).

Which neatly moves us on to my cameras.

Although more recent acquisitions, my GoPros’ too have become treasured possessions. My original Hero 2 is still going strong and has been on many adventures and scrapes with me. The GoPro Hero 5 Blacks’ have been in environments ranging from tropical rainforests to mountain summit glacier fields and from Namibian deserts to wonderful coral reefs.  Nowadays, they are mainly put to work on Arwen, my standing lug yawl or as ‘travel vlog’ recording cameras.  I own a cheap canon DSLR which has proved to be bomb proof and a small Sony HX-90, brilliant for just slipping into a pocket when on a quick walk.

However, there is now a more recent addition to the camera bag. I’ve finally succumbed to buying a new GoPro – a Hero 9 Black.  It is early days and I am only just playing about with the buttons, menus and pre-sets, but so far, despite some reservations expressed by some youtubers, I am impressed.  Below I describe my initial impressions of both the positives and the negatives of this action camera. Over Christmas, I will get out on the mountain bike over Dartmoor and use it onboard Arwen in Plymouth Sound to get a better feel for it and I’ll post any further findings as a post script on this blog.  My cameras are all well looked after but they do get a hammering throughout the year, so this GoPro 9 will be put through its paces!

Firstly, let’s talk price. Would I have bought it if I hadn’t spotted a crazy cyber-Monday deal? Answer – probably not – I’d have happily settled for a cheaper GoPro – a Hero 7 or 8.

However, I managed to find a bargain by opting for the GoPro Hero 9 Black package on offer from GoPro themselves. This was the camera, a year’s GoPro subscription service, a GoPro handle, battery and spare battery and a 32Gb sim card along with some mounts including a clever magnetic one. Catching some other last-minute heavy discounting on Cyber Monday, I added the media mod pack and three other batteries and a two-battery charger unit. In total I saved just over £300 on the complete set of equipment. Finally, ‘in the right place at the right time’, something that rarely happens for me!

An hour later and all the deals were finished and gone, prices had returned to their normal retail level.

 

Anyway, here are the spec’s of their flagship Hero camera:

The spec’s:

·        20 MP with 1/2.3 sensor

·        HyperSmooth 3.0 stabilisation and horizon levelling

·        1720mAh battery

·        2.27 inch rear screen with 1.4 inch front screen

·        10m water resistance

·        4K/60 fps and 5K/30 fps video recording

 

The pros on initial assessment and play about:

·        Much longer battery life than Hero 5’s – I got an easy 90 minutes filming out of one battery

·        Useful colour front display showing either a preview or the actual settings of the video/photo function in use; makes vlogging and shot composition far easier – a real winner for me

·        Replaceable lens covering should you scratch it

·        Flip-out mount fingers at base which can be folded away making the camera easier to store

·        Huge rear screen – much easier to see and use

·        Ability to create video pre-set menus - resolution, lens field of view, frame rate, stabilisation mode etc – allowing the personalisation of my Gopro

·        5K/30 video capture and 20 MP sensor leading to high quality images. (I’m not sure where I will use 5K but I would be able to crop in further during editing for precise framing)

·        First impression – video and photo exposures seem well judged, colouring fairly accurate and footage detailed

·        The new sensor size allows the grabbing of 14.7 MP stills from video footage – fantastic as it means I can grab high quality images for my magazine journalism

·        HyperSmooth 3.0 boost mode gives very smooth footage given it is a non-gimbaled camera

·        Horizon levelling is impressive in video mode

·        Timewarp Hyperlapse at several different speeds – looks really good and will pep up my dinghy cruising videos

·        Hindsight and Liveburst allow video and photo capture even before you press the shutter button – I know it’s hard to get your head around but it works! No more missed shots of jumping Atlantic Blue Tuna

·        The subscription gives unlimited cloud storage for your footage, discounts in the GoPro store and total camera replacement if it gets damaged out on a shoot. You can also get trade in discounts on older gear

·        Larger mode and shutter buttons – much easier to operate especially with gloves on

·        Audio sounds good and you can record audio RAW track as well

·        Schedule Capture means I can set up the shot, leave the camera outside, go to bed and not have to get up to capture the sun-rise next morning. Sounds a brilliant idea

My initial concerns:

·        Pricey – without the bundle or discount it comes in at £429 – that could be considered too much – there are equally as good Chinese alternative action cams out there for half that price – but with similar features to the Hero 9

·        Poor night time video image quality – my footage so far has been quite grainy  

·        Far larger camera size and weight than previous GoPro’s - can’t use old frames or waterproof housings

·         Lots of empty space around the rear screen – wasted? Why not make the screen even bigger?

·        Can’t independently alter the brightness of each individual screen – they are linked – frustrating waste of battery power

·        Rear screen interface is laggy compared to the old Hero 5. There are so many setting choices that you need to be very careful with finger placement. I’m finding some gestures are ignored on occasions

·        5K/30 requires use of HEVC codec and so I need to check that my laptop and editing software can cope with these higher resolutions (up to now I have only shot in 4K and 2.7K)

·        Different battery size to previous GoPro’s - so extra expense again as you can’t use your older batteries

·        Doesn’t fit some of the older accessories as well because of the extra size

·        HyperSmooth 3.0 crops in at 25% on the image – need to remember to take that into account when videoing

·        My camera overheats when using 4 or 5K video modes and others are reporting the same on line – need to keep watchful eye on this

 

As promised, I will test the GoPro Hero 9 more fully over Christmas. I’m hoping that with the sound mod pack it will become my go to vlogging camera, so if you are a motorhome owner into vlogging and are considering getting a GoPro, watch this space.

 

Steve