Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “GoPro Hero 4 Session Review!”.
Hey what is up guys mkbhd here and every single gopro from the first one. All the way through to 2015 has been a rectangle until now. So this is the newest gopro. This is the gopro hero4 session. I really want to like it, but here’s what it’s all about.
So, first off, yes, it’s a cube. It resembles that 99 polaroid cube camera except a lot less colorful, it’s just all black all around. So this session is a one and a half inch cube. All the way around and has a big lens on the front and just two buttons.
So it’s a really simple camera to use kind of seems like a beginner gopro at first, although it really isn’t, but it just has one big record button up top and a little lcd display. And then the sides are pretty clean and behind the door on the left side is a micro, sd card slot and a micro usb port for charging and data, which is kind of nice, that you can use your phone charger, unlike with other gopros that use mini Usb and there’s only one other button on the session on the back and that’s the info, slash wi-fi button. So it lets you view the settings you’re recording in or set up a wi-fi connection to your phone and that’s it. Oh.
It has two microphones, one on the front top corner and then one on the back near the bottom button, but then yeah, that’s it no other buttons, no removable battery it’s packed and all of this by itself out of the box, is fully functional and waterproof, and That is the main selling point: the fact that the fully waterproof gopro hero4 session is 50, smaller and 35 percent lighter than a fully waterproof gopro, hero4, silver or black. So alright, it’s a little bit smaller and lighter, but the other gopros i already thought were already pretty small and light anyway. So what are the other differences between the session and the others? Well, first of all, since it’s a square that means you can orient it any way you want in its mount. So if you want to side mount it on something, instead of top mounting, it doesn’t require buying new accessories.
You can just take it out and rotate. It in its mount put it back in sideways and boom you’re good to go so that’s actually really convenient, but then on the other side of the spectrum, not having any real display is kind of inconvenient. The small lcd on the top just displays your settings as you’re recording, but in order to change any of your recording settings, you kind of need to have your phone with you paired with the gopro app and that’s where you can change. You know your video resolution or time lapse, speed or anything else like that. The gopro app is really where all that stuff is found. It also works as a viewfinder with a pretty minimal delay, so that works really well. But when you’re going out for like an adventure with a gopro like this, you probably don’t also have your not waterproof smartphone with you. So you’ll want to pick your settings ahead of time, so you can leave your phone somewhere safe, so to record a video with the gopro session.
All you do is pick it up and press the red button on top wait a few seconds and then it turns on and just starts rolling, so press it again and it stops recording and then turns off. So there’s no standby mode. It’S just either on and recording or off, and it does this actually to save battery, so i actually found it.
It worked really well. The smaller battery in here lasted just as long as the hero4 silver, but then again that four second delay when trying to record the action when it was off, might also feel inconvenient if you’re in the middle of something you don’t have that delay on other gopros. Where you can have it on, but not recording, you can also hold down the red button for three seconds to start a time lapse with whatever interval you chose in the app with up to eight megapixel photos and the quality.
Ah, the quality is okay, but it’s definitely not as good as even the other gopros or some of the other action cameras out there like sony’s or panasonic’s. It looks about as soft and muddy as you’d expect from any tiny handheld camera that maxes out at a widescreen 1080p. Not that 1080p is a bad thing. It’S plenty for most people, but it just doesn’t look like a good 1080p colors are a little bit.
Dull, dynamic range is definitely limited and it still has that super wide angle. Look people love, but it’s not exactly team crispy and one might think that it would make maybe a really good vlogging camera, since it has the improved microphones for the underwater helping and it’s a really super small form factor. Then again, the gopro hero4 silver is the same exact price and has much better video quality and has switchable batteries. If you want to vlog for more than two hours of this battery lasts so again, it’s kind of one-upped by his brother. So, that’s why it’s so hard to recommend this little guy. It’S not like it’s a bad product or anything.
It’S built really! Well, it’s dense. It’S waterproof! This stuff works perfectly, but at 400 bucks it’s not exactly cheap and at that price i start to also look for good video quality on top of just being well built. Here’S a shot i took with the gopro hero4 silver, not even the black in 4k, but the silver which is the same price as the session and then the same shot with the session. It looks totally different.
You can see in the side by side that you’re clearly getting you know, sacrifice and some detail with the session. Some people will care about this detail more than others, but it’s not just detail the color. It’S the exposure, it’s the dynamic range and neither of these images is edited honestly. Looking through the session footage made me appreciate the gopro hero 4 black. That much more turns out. That thing is a seriously impressive camera with a killer image for 500 bucks, and we already knew that, but the comparison makes it way more clear and then the hero4 silver is a great buy for the same price as a session 400 bucks.
So, at the end of the day, it got me thinking who are these gopros for who is this session, for i originally thought it was sort of like a beginner gopro. You know it’s smaller lightweight, waterproofed out the box, you’re just good to go with this and then, if you want to step up your game later, you pick up a regular gopro, but at a 400 price tag for this one. No, so basically, this is just better for water sports things like water, skiing or like swimming, where it’s attached to you underwater or i guess when it really needs to be light and weight like like when you’re, maybe attaching it to a pet or something or they’ll Notice, the weight of a larger gopro, and even for that, the regular gopros are still pretty good and for everything else, i’d still recommend the regular gopros or even other action cameras. So there you go.
That’S basically it thanks for watching. This is the gopro hero4 session feel free to leave a comment or hit that like button. If you enjoyed talk to you guys in the next one peace, you .