(groaning)

[Man] Brent, you alright, buddy?

Alright is a relative term.

Hey guys, I'm Brent Rose, writer and now blood donor.

Today we're testing the brand new GoPro Hero7 Black.

We're testing it really, really thoroughly.

(clapping music)

So this is the new Hero7 Black.

As you can tell, it looks a lot like the Hero6 Black.

In fact, it's got the same image sensor,

the exact same body, they're both waterproof to 33 feet,

but also there are some other key differences

and that's what we're gonna focus on today.

So the banner feature here is the improved electronic image

stabilization mode, which GoPro is calling Hypersmooth.

Now, it works across just about all of the frame rates

in the camera, but it does crop about 10% off of the image.

GoPro is saying it offers Gimbal-like stabilization

inside the camera body and that is a bold ass claim,

which we're gonna test last.

For now though, we can say it's definitely

an improvement over last year's image stabilization.

Here you're looking at the taller 4x3 format.

It's good for biking because you get a lot of the bike in

and you also get a lot of the trail.

Now pay attention to the horizon line.

You can see in the new version,

there's way, way less bounce.

You can see it working especially well

on the smaller bumps that just rattle things a bit.

It's not night and day, but it's

definitely an improvement over last year.

The difference is a little bit less obvious

in this waterslide, but if you look again at the horizon

and the trees in the background and even at my face,

you'll see that there's not quite as much bounce.

Oh, yeah. That's some good spray.

Oh my god.

Why am I doing this?

This clip was shot in 4K at 60 frames a second,

which the Hero6 here cannot stabilize.

Now, when we switch over to Hero7,

you'll notice that there's almost no vibration.

You'll see it here in the black bar at the top

and the orange slides as I'm going down.

It really does a great job

of minimizing those little shakes.

Handheld is actually a very realistic use case

'cause a lot of people take their GoPros while traveling

and they just wanna shoot the sights and you can see

the new version actually has way, way reduced shake.

Now we're getting into testing against the Sony X3000V,

which is the only action camera

that has optical image stabilization

so it's uncropped and it's best in class.

The Hero7 really does a pretty good job against the Sony.

There's a bit more bounce with the GoPro.

You can see a bit more up and down movement,

but the Sony has a little bit more wobble.

That's exaggerated in this bike test,

but honestly, that's not fair to the Sony

because Sony's bike mount was just a lot looser

than the one that GoPro makes.

For all of the handheld tests, I was holding both cameras

in the same hand so they should be analogous.

In general, I'd say they both do a really good job

here at eliminating little, subtle shakes.

The next feature is called Timewarp,

which takes last year's timelapse video feature

and merges it with Hypersmooth.

So you've got stabilized timelapse videos.

Now this is something smartphoness

have been able to do for a while,

but with this wide GoPro lens,

it actually looks really, really good.

The stabilization works, the horizon stays pretty steady,

and generally it's a pretty awesome feature.

Basically just makes the timelapses way, way better

and it's definitely an improvement over last year.

For people who actually want to listen

to what's happening on your GoPro,

you'll be happy to know that the mics have been redesigned.

The base is way more full, the mids are a little bit lifted,

and in general it sounds clearer.

Now, it's still not as good as a camera

that isn't waterproof, but for a waterproof camera,

it definitely sounds better than the last version.

How's the audio?

[Man] Let's see.

[Brent] How's the audio?

[Man] Let's see.

[Brent] Ooh, hoo-hoo.

That was closer to the edge than I wanted to be.

(exhaling)

Ooh, hoo-hoo.

That was closer to the edge than I wanted to be.

(exhaling)

High notes. (vocalizing)

Low notes. (vocalizing)

High notes. (vocalizing)

Low notes. (vocalizing)

Now here it is against the Sony, which remember,

has no waterproof membrane on its microphones

so you'd expect the GoPro to sound a lot worse,

but really it's pretty comparable.

(vocalizing)

(vocalizing)

And now back to the two GoPros.

(vocalizing)

If you're always doin' it for the 'gram, you'll be happy

to know that vertical video is now supported.

Now you were always able to shoot like this,

but that meant you had to rotate

the video in post-production.

Now the way the shots come off the card

are exactly the way you want them to look.

Up next is SuperPhoto, the new auto mode for stills

that basically applies intelligent settings on the fly.

So if it's got a lot of dynamic range,

it may go ahead and put it in HDR mode.

Or if it's a dark scene, it might do some noise reduction.

That's all good in theory, but ultimately

remember, we've got the same image sensor in here as

the Hero6, so photos don't really look all that different.

Personally, I try to always shoot from RAW

because you have way more flexibility in post,

but if you're wanting to just transfer it

straight from the camera to your phones

and pop it onto Instagram, this could come in handy.

GoPro has also revamped the UI to make it

a little bit more phones-like so now

a lot of things are accomplished by swiping.

It puts some of the more frequently used features

front and center, but for people

who are coming from previous versions of GoPro,

it might take a little bit of relearning.

The 7 Black is also the first GoPro to support livestreaming

to a number of platforms including YouTube, Facebook.

Basically anything that has an open API,

you can stream directly from your GoPro to it.

Now we weren't able to test this

because while we were reviewing this,

this whole thing was under embargo

so we couldn't publicly post something online.

But in theory, that's an awesome feature.

I like the idea of being out there on my mountain bike

and live broadcasting my own injuries.

Now let's get back to the somewhat outrageous claim

that you can get Gimbal-like stabilization

in this little camera body.

Now you can't say something like that

and not expect people to test it out so we did.

This is the Hero7 Black with Hypersmooth

compared with the Hero6 Black in GoPro's own Karma Grip.

This is the view from the grip

and you can see it's very, very smooth.

Look at the power lines in the background.

There's definitely more bounce with the Hero7 in Black.

You can see it's cropped in a lot more on my face

and there's definitely a lot

more movement in the background.

This is the Karma Grip on a chest mount

and on another chest mount is the Hero7 Black.

It actually does really well on this mountain bike test.

You can see how much my arm is bouncing,

but the horizon is very, very smooth.

It's very impressive.

This is running, both cameras in the same hand.

The Gimbal is just extremely smooth.

The Hero7 Black, it's doing a pretty good job,

but there's definitely a lot more bounce.

What I'm seeing is that the Hero7 does a really good job

of eliminating vibration and subtle shake,

but when it comes to larger movements,

it definitely can't compare to a Gimbal.

So after three weeks of testing the Hero7 Black

in different situations, right before we were done

with this video, GoPro sent me a firmware update,

the final one the camera will ship with,

which it claims improves the image stabilization even more.

Now obviously we couldn't retest everything,

but I did do a quick test against the Gimbal again

and honestly, I'm not seeing much

of a difference from what we saw before.

You can see the big bumps on the right

and it's nice and smooth on the left because it's a Gimbal.

Maybe it's further improved, but it's still not a Gimbal.

So what did we learn here today?

Well the Hypersmooth feature is cool.

It's definitely a step above last year's image stabilization

but you can't say that it has Gimbal-like stabilization

when it doesn't have Gimbal-like stabilization.

But it does compare pretty favorably

to the current king of smooth, the Sony X3000.

The Timewarp video is a really cool feature

and the improved microphoness actually make a huge difference

in a lot of different scenarioses.

So if you're considering buying your first action camera,

this is a really good way to go.

The image quality is excellent, the stabilization is nice,

and it's actually very intuitive,

especially with the screen in the back.

If you've already got a Hero5 or 6

and you can get a decent price for them,

then yeah, it actually might be worth the upgrade.

What do you think?

Let us know in the comments below.

Subscribe to Wired if you haven't already.

With all that being said,

there's really only one thing left to do.

(techno music)

(crashing noise)

(groaning)

That sucked a lot.

Shit!