GoPro Hero4 Silver: One year later, is it still worth it?
So it has been just about one year since GoPro announced their latest and greatest line of action cameras. I had never had a GoPro before and thought that I would give the Hero4 silver a try, I chose this GoPro purely because of the built in touchscreen which was its only advantage over the Hero4 Black edition in my opinion at the time.
When I received the camera I was very excited and couldn't wait to start using it, but there was an intermittent issue with the screen of the camera, randomly the camera would freeze up and the screen would be black and I wouldn't be able to use the camera. Fortunately I contacted GoPro and their efficient customer service allowed me to claim on the warranty and receive a new camera just a few weeks later, luckily I got a free battery out of it so I was not too annoyed by the situation.
In the box comes the camera itself and a series of pivot arms and thumb screws, along with the standard waterproof housing and a selection of rear doors. What you get in your box may vary because GoPro offer many versions of the GoPro hero 4, while the camera is identical the accessories vary, I bought the standard GoPro but you can also get a surf model which includes some surfboard mounts, and a music model which does not incident Any waterproof housing but an array of instrument mounts.
The picture quality of the GoPro is stunning and the angle of the lens is so wide it almost always captures everything that you could possibly want it to, the Hero4 has many different modes, still picture, with different megapixel options, but 12 megapixel being the preferred setting, there is also video mode which is where the GoPro excels, this little camera offers 4K filming and HD slow motions video at 120 frames a second, if 120fps is not enough then there is a brilliant free tool that GoPro offers called GoPro studio which has a feature called flux, this feature lets you slow your film right down by filling in the missing frames resulting in buttery smooth slow motion.
In addition to these settings there is a time lapse setting which gives you a range of capture timings and also you can edit shutter speed right from the screen on the GoPro.
The last feature I am going to talk about is the burst mode which is my favorite for capturing stills, the burst feature allows you to capture 30, 12mp photos in one second, this is great for capturing say a jumping dog (which is what I probably use my GoPro for the most).
This GoPro incorporates pro tune right into the UI of the camera which is very useful but the be perfectly honest I rarely use it on the camera, I use it in GoPro studio to get the colours that I want out of each photo and video. GoPro studio, in my opinion is why GoPro is such a big success, it is so simple to use and it creates such professional looking films.
Finally I wanted to talk about the range of accessories that you can purchase for your camera, including dog mounts, suction cups, selfie sticks and the like, this is another reason why the GoPro is known as the most versitile action camera on the market, to see the full range for youself, check out the gopro website.
In conclusion, the Hero4 Silver is one of the best action cameras for the money, especially in comparison to its smaller, lower specced cousin: the GoPro Hero4 session I would truly recomend this camera to anybody and I am anticipating great things from GoPro in their soon to be announced range of new flagship action cameras.
Buy here: | GoPro Hero4 Silver |
