just about every month i'm testing a new
camera but the months that i get an
action camera are by far my favorite
anything for the verge
all right we are headed up into prospect
park because i shot all the test footage
on the hero9 in nature and
totally my apartment's just not going to
cut it on camera
let's do it the gopro hero 9.
it is more robust in almost every single
way it's got a bigger battery a bigger
body
it's got bigger batter photo and video
resolutions and
for the first time ever it comes in a
reusable case that is completely
plastic free which honestly thank god i
i love to see that but first bigger
thing it's actual physical size
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it is noticeably larger than last year's
hero8
a bit thicker a bit wider a bit taller
and this never got in the way of where i
wanted to mount it or how it felt to
carry it around and
it still has the same size dual mounting
prongs for use with all previous
action camera mounts you might have with
the larger size comes a larger back
touchscreen
too it's 2.27 inches diagonally it has
that same usbc
microsd card slot and battery
compartment on one side along with the
start stop button up on the top
and the power and mode button on the
side underneath the mode button there's
also this like weird latch
looking piece that i really thought was
removable it is
it is not gopro explained that this is a
drain mic
basically it's the first mic to drain of
water when you go from being underwater
to above water so you can get that sweet
underwater to above water audio switch
done
quick how'd you do
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tech is a tool and i certainly treat it
as such and within my two weeks of using
the hero9 and absolutely not going easy
on it there's
no scratches or dings to be found
overall the fear of breaking this camera
is just
non-existent if the lens were to get
scratched though gopro brought back a
feature that the 8 didn't have but the 7
did
and uh well i missed it on the eight a
removable
lens cover i think this creates a much
better way of mounting nd filters and
lens mods which i'll get to in a little
bit but unfortunately if you have nd
filters for the hero 7 they will
not fit on the hero9 there's no
backwards compatibility here
okay and the next bigger thing which
also comes in the hardware department
and
my favorite new feature to the hero9 is
this front screen i would say 80
of the time when i'm using a gopro i am
facing the front of the camera when
framing the shot which leads to my
favorite tradition of shooting with a
gopro and that's what i call the gopro
face it's like
that first frame that you get when you
click record and you're like still kind
of like hoping that the shot is like
framed well
if you shoot on a gopro you know what i
mean
i'm usually putting the camera in a
location that i can't get behind to see
the frame and
i'll be honest with you it takes too
much time still for me to pull out my
phone to check the frame to make sure
it's all good and
i always just kind of risk it but with
having a front-facing screen
i can actually see my frame while
mounting the camera
and that is huge like dudes i cannot
stress this enough that is huge and the
osmo action had this and i
loved it on that camera and i'm just so
happy to see it come to gopro's line
within the settings menu you can also
change the screen ratio of the front
screen what information it displays
or toggle it on and off there's a bit of
a lag on that front screen when you're
recording but otherwise the colors are
vivid and i was able to see all the
information i needed such as battery
life
and card space very clearly with more
screens though comes more power use so
gopro bumped up the battery from
1220 milliamp hours on the hero 8 to
1720 milliamp hours on the hero 9.
for heavy use two batteries will still
be needed to get through a full day
much like on the hero8 but during my
very chill vacation days when i was only
turning it on to use it and then turning
it right off
and really only watching playback once i
was back at the cabin at night
i was able to get through one day on one
battery which is right on par with the
hero8 oh and i also always had both the
front and back screens on because
why not okay the next bigger thing
resolution this camera's 20 megapixel
sensor can record
in all right here we go 5k 3024
4k 60 30 24 2.7 k
120 60 30 24 1080
240 120 60 30 24.
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wowie it's almost too many options like
i just don't think i could possibly use
all of those but i'm sure there is a use
case for every single one
now that 5k that that's new and it is
crisp personally i dig the gopro color
option that is super punchy in the
saturation and keeps a high level of
contrast
and pair those vibrant colors with the
amazing in-camera stabilization and
bingo bango you have some really nice
looking footage
that if you're outputting in 4k you can
even punch in and re-frame a little bit
with
and speaking of stabilization there is
even a
bigger i guess more robust
hyper smooth 3.0 as opposed to the 2.0
that we had in the 8
and it's still incredible i mean i am
constantly
impressed with hyper smooth and new this
year is an in-camera horizontal leveling
option when shooting the linear frame
which is
a bit cropped in from the wide frame to
a point this keeps the horizon
level on the screen straight out of the
camera there's also a new duration
capture and a schedule
capture mode for time lapses and also a
hindsight mode which
can save the last 15 or 30 seconds of
video that happened before you hit the
shutter button
now the one kind of downside to this is
that it does run the battery down just a
bit more because
technically the camera is constantly
recording
it's beautiful
the photos from the 20 megapixel sensor
are pretty good and i was a bit
disappointed with the speed at which the
hdr photos need to process and
i was not overly impressed with how the
shadows are brought up to a bit of
extreme levels in hdr mode in my
personal opinion but
with the hdr turned off the photos are
punchy they're bright and they're crisp
the next step would truly be adding an
astrophotography mode to this thing
hidden hint nudge nudge gopro last but
not least gopro is releasing some
mods with the hero 9 and more
specifically the max
lens mod now last spring they released a
media mod for the hero
8 which had a directional mic on it it
had hdmi port on it
it even had like a cold shoe mount on it
which is really cool and they're going
to have one of those for the hero 9 as
well but
for the first time ever they're
releasing a lens mod and that's this
max lens mod that i currently can't get
the case off of hold on
yeah okay there it is anyway this
creates a little bit wider frame
on your hero9 and it also allows for
complete horizontal leveling no matter
the orientation of the camera
because it creates a spherical image
onto the sensor now
with that you can only record up to 2.7
k
which is a bit of a downfall but if i'm
being honest my
favorite use case of this mod was
putting it on the hero 9 and not
telling the hero 9 that i put it on and
then it created this like
awesome circle image that looked like a
you know og
fisheye look oh
i feel like i'm in a music video
good morning buds this video goes live
in 24 hours and i just got the final
firmware
for the gopro hero 9. uh what you've
been seeing from the hero 9 is
pre-production firmware so let's go out
and shoot
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so right on yeah gopro claims that this
latest version of firmware has some
crisper image quality
it has improved exposure and then it
also
improved touch sensitivity i found those
all to be true
footage looks great camera's super touch
responsive um
and the images is of course hella crisp
so uh
yeah firmware looks good gopro
so the hero9 wowie i mean they brought
back the removable lenses
and they're rolling out mods it's got a
bigger battery larger sensor
it does 5k video and most importantly
they finally
made the front screen useful but for
all these big improvements there is a
bigger price tag
it's available today starting at 449
or 349 on gopro's website when you
also purchase a one-year subscription to
gopro plus
now in my mind 449 is still a reasonable
price for bigger
everything sure you can grab the hero8
black for 350
or dji's osmo action for 250 but
neither of those cameras can shoot at 5k
and then there's insta 360s 1r with that
one inch sensor mod
for 500 but that's 50 more expensive
and i prefer the color that the gopro
puts out add that all
up and well the biggest baddest action
camera in the game right now
i think it's the gopro hero 9. is the
gopro
back on top in terms of action cameras
is it thinking again
let me know down below thank you guys so
much for tuning in it's officially
september we are gonna have
so much coming your way so be sure to be
sure
so be sure to tune in and check it all
out and okay
bye buds