A smaller action camera
Cramming most of the essential parts of an action camera into half the size is quite an achievement. The point of these devices, after all, is to be as small and light as possible, to clip on to your equipment while you run, ride, sail or surf. In fact, GoPro were so pleased with themselves, they decided to charge the same price for the Hero4 Session as they do a full-size Hero4 camera (around £330).
That didn’t go down well, because it does still lack a few full-size camera features, including an LCD screen. To be fair, you can’t usually stop to peer into your action camera and frame a shot as you snowboard down a black piste. Even so, this looked like selling ‘less is more’ (for more) when it was actually just less. So now GoPro has pulled off another miniaturisation trick by halving the price.
At £159, the waterproof Hero4 Session will please action-camera veterans and newcomers alike. It really is quite tiny, but shoots Full HD video at up to 60 frames per second (fps). You can use this higher speed to give movement a crisper look. Alternatively, reduce it to 30fps in your editing software to get 2x slow motion. Knock down the resolution to 1280x720-pixel HD, and you can get up to 100fps (more than 3x slow motion). Or stick to 30fps and you can increase the resolution to 2560x1400, giving you room to crop the frame later or add optical image stabilisation.
The camera lacks built-in optical stabilisation, but our footage didn’t look too shaky, and although picture quality wasn’t quite as good as on GoPro’s other Hero4 cameras it was more than acceptable, with vivid colours and effective automatic exposure. The Hero4 Session even captures decent audio, switching between its two microphones to pick up the sounds you want, such as voices, while cutting unwanted background noise.
One drawback is that the rechargeable battery can’t be exchanged. It lasted us just under an hour and a half, so you’d need to take a USB battery pack with you and allow recharging time for longer sessions.
VERDICT
If you’ve always been curious about action cameras but were put off by the price and complicated features, this would be a good first purchase.
SPECIFICATIONS
1080p Full HD video • 8-megapixel photos • Mono audio • MicroSD card slot • MicroUSB port • 35x35x35mm (HxWxD) plus mount • 74g • iOS and Android apps available • One-year warranty