By Brady Betzel
Every year GoPro offers a new iteration of its camera. One of the biggest past upgrades was from the Hero 4 to the Hero 5, with an updated body style, waterproofing without needing external housing and minimal stabilization. That was one of the biggest… until now.
The Hero 7 Black is by far the best upgrade GoPro users have seen, especially if you are sitting on a Hero 5 or earlier. I’ll tell you up front that the built-in stabilization (called Hypersmooth) alone is worth the Hero 7 Black’s $399 price tag, but there are a ton of other features that have been upgraded and improved.
There are three versions of the Hero 7: Black for $399, Silver for $299 and White for $199. The White is the lowest priced Hero 7 and includes features like 1080p @ 60fps video recording, a built-in battery, waterproofing to 33 feet-deep without extra housing, standard video stabilization, 2x slow-mo (1440p/1080p @ 60fps), video recording up to 40Mb/s (1440p), two-mic audio recording, 10MP Photos, and 15/1 burst photos. After reading that you can surmise that the Hero 7 White is as basic as it gets, GoPro even skipped 24fps video recording, ProTune and a front LCD display. But that doesn’t mean the Hero 7 White is a throwaway; what I love about the latest update to the Hero line is the simplicity in operating the menus. In previous generations, the GoPro Hero menus were difficult to use and would often cause me to fumble shots. The Hero 7 menu has been streamlined for a much more simple mode selection process, making the Hero 7 White a basic and relatively affordable waterproof GoPro.
The Hero 7 Silver can be purchased for $299 and has everything the Hero 7 White has, plus some extras, including 4K video recording at 30fps up to 60MB/s, 10MP photos with wide dynamic range to bring out details in the highlights and shadows and a GPS location to show you where your videos and photos were taken. .
The Hero 7 Black
The Hero 7 Black is the big gun in the GoPro Hero 7 lineup. For anyone who wants to shoot multiple frame rates; harness a flat picture profile using ProTune to have extended range when color correcting; record ultra-smooth video without an external gimbal and no post processing; or shoot RAW photos, the Hero 7 Black is for you.
The Hero 7 Black has all of the features of the White and Silver plus a bunch more, including the front-facing LCD display. One of the biggest still-photo upgrades is the ability to shoot 12MP photos with SuperPhoto. SuperPhoto is essentially a “make my image look like the GoPro photos on Instagram” look. It’s an auto-image processor that will turn good photos into awesome photos. Essentially it’s an HDR mode that gives as much latitude in the shadows and highlights as well as noise reduction.
Beyond the SuperPhoto, the Hero 7 has burst rates from 3/1 up to 30/1, a timelapse photo function with intervals ranging from .5 seconds to 60 seconds; the ability to shoot RAW photos in GPR format alongside JPG; the ability to shoot video in 4K at 60fps, 30fps and 24fps in wide mode, as well as 30 and 24fps in SuperView mode (essentially ultra-wide angle); 2.7K wide video up to 120fps and down to 24fps in linear view (no wide-angle warping) all the way down to 720p in wide at 240fps. s.
The Hero 7 records in both MP4 H.264/AVC and H.265/HEVC formats at up to 78MB/s (4K). The Hero 7 Black has a bunch of additional modes including Night Photo; Looping; Timelapse Photo; Timelapse Video; Night Lapse Photo; 8x Slow Mo and Hypersmooth stabilization. It has Wake on Voice commands, as well as live streaming to Facebook Live, Twitch, Vimeo and YouTube. It also features Timewarp video (I will talk more about later); a GP1 processor created by GoPro; advanced metadata that the GoPro app uses to create videos of just the good parts (like smiling photos); ProTune; Karma compatibility; dive-housing compatibility; three-mic stereo audio; RAW audio captured in WAV format; the ability to plug in an external mic with the optional 3.5mm audio mic in cable; and HDMI video output with a micro HDMI cable.
I really love the GoPro Hero 7 and consider it a must-buy if you are on the edge about upgrading an older GoPro camera.
Out of the Box
When I opened the GoPro Hero7 Black I was immediately relieved that it was the same dimensions as the Hero 5 and 6, since I have access to the GoPro Karma drone, Karma gimbal and various accessories. (As a side note, the Hero 7 White and Silver are not compatible with the Karma Drone or Gimbal.) I quickly plugged in the Hero 7 Black to charge it, which only took half an hour. When fully drained the Hero 7 takes a little under two hours to charge.
I was excited to try the new built-in stabilization feature Hypersmooth, as well as the new stabilized in-camera timelapse creator, TimeWarp. I received the Hero 7 Black around Halloween so I took it to an event called “Nights of the Jack” at King Gillette Ranch in Calabasas, California, near Malibu. It took place after dark and featured lit-up jack-o-lanterns, so I figured I could test out the TimeWarp, Hypersmooth and low-light capabilities in one fell swoop.
It was really incredible. I used a clamp mount to hold it onto the kids’ wagon and just hit record. When I stopped recording, the GoPro finished processing the TimeWarp video and I was ready to view it or share it. Overall, the quality of video and the low-light recording were pretty good — not great but good. You can check out the video on YouTube.
The stabilization was mind blowing, especially considering it is electronic image stabilization (EIS), which is software-based, not optical, which is hardware-based. Hardware-based stabilization is typically preferred to software-based stabilization, but GoPro’s EIS is incredible. For most shooting scenarios, the built-in stabilization will be amazing — everyone who watches your clips will think that you are using a hardware gimbal. It’s that good.
The Hero 7 Black has a few options for TimeWarp mode to keep the video length down — you can choose different speeds: 2x, 5x, 10x, 15x, and 30x. For example, 2x will take one minute of footage and turn it into 30 seconds, and 30x will take five minutes of footage and turn it into 10 seconds. Think of TimeWarp as a stabilized timelapse. In terms of resolution, you can choose from 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratio; 4K, 1440p or 1080p. I always default to 1080 if posting on Instagram or Twitter, since you can’t really see what the 4K difference, and it saves all my data bits and bytes for better image fidelity.
If you’re wondering why you would use TimeWarp over Timelapse, there are a couple of differences. Timewarp will create a smooth video when walking, riding a bike or generally moving around because of the Hypersmooth stabilization. Timelapse will act more like a camera taking pictures at a certain interval to show a passage of time (say from day to night) and will playback a little more choppy. Check out a sample day-to-night timelapse I filmed using the Hero 7 Black set to Timelapse on YouTube.
So beyond the TimeWarp what else is different? Well, just plain shooting 4K at 60fps — you now have the ability to enable the EIS stabilization where you couldn’t on the GoPro Hero 6 Black. It’s a giant benefit for anyone shooting 4K in the palm of their hands and wanting to even slow their 4K down by 50% and retain smooth motion with stabilization already done in-camera. This is a huge perk in my mind. The image processing is very close to what the Hero 6 produces and quite a bit better than the what the Hero 5 produces.
When taking still images, the low-light ability is pretty incredible. With the new Superphoto setting you can get that signature high saturation and contrast with noise reduction. It’s a great setting, although I noticed the subject in focus cannot be moving too fast or you will get some purple fringing. When used under the correct circumstances, the Superphoto is the next iteration of HDR.
I was surprised how much I used the GoPro Hero 7 Black’s auto-rotating menu feature when the camera was held vertically. The Hero 6 could shoot vertically but with the addition of the auto-rotation of the menu, the Hero 7 Black encourages more vertically photos and videos. I found myself taking more vertical photos, especially outdoors — getting a lot more sky in the shots, which adds an interesting perspective.
Summing Up
In the end, the GoPro Hero 7 Black is a must-buy if you are looking for the latest and greatest action-cam or are on the fence about upgrading from the Hero 5 or 6. The Hypersmooth video stabilization is incredible. If you want to take it a step further, combining it with a Karma gimbal will give you a silky smooth shot.
I really fell in love with the TimeWarp function, whether you are a prosumer filming your family at Disneyland or shooting a show in the forest, a quick TimeWarp is a great way to film some dynamic b-roll without any post processing.
Don’t forget the Hero 7 Black has voice control for hands-free operation. On the outside,the Hero 7 Black is actually black in color unlike the Hero 6 (which is a gray) and also has the number “7” labeled on it for easy finding in your case.
I would really love for GoPro to make these cameras charge wirelessly on a mat like my Galaxy phone. It seems like the GoPro action-cameras would be great to just throw on a wireless charger and also use the charger as a file-transfer station. It gets cumbersome to remove a bunch of tiny memory cards or use a bunch of cables to connect your cameras, so why not make it wireless?! I’m sure they are thinking of things like that, because focusing on stabilization was the right move in my opinion.
If GoPro can continue to make focused and powerful updates to their cameras, they will be here for a long time — and the Hero 7 is the right way to start.
Check out GoPro’s website for more info, including accessories like the Travel Kit, which features a little mini tripod/handle (called “Shorty”), a rubberized cover with a lanyard and a case for $59.99.
If you need the ultimate protection for your GoPro Hero 7 Black, look into GoPro Plus, which, for $4.99 a month, gives you VIP support; automatic cloud backup, access for editing on your phone from anywhere and camera replacement for up to two cameras per year of the same model, no questions asked, when something goes wrong. Compare all the new GoPro Hero 7 Models on their website website.
Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on Life Below Zero and Cutthroat Kitchen. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.
