GoPro is pretty much the most popular brand name on the market for action cameras – a market which started out as an extremely tight niche, but has since progressed to a very active, populated and competitive field, one that many companies are trying very hard to get in right now. GoPro have managed to establish a solid reputation for themselves through a line of reliable, durable products, and now they’re gearing up for the release of the next installment in the Hero series, the Hero 5.
The camera is expected to hit the market sometime in October 2015, although this might possibly change in the next few months. The new model will be an improvement in various regards, including video recording and still imaging, and it will also upgrade the software capabilities of the device and make it much more user-friendly.
It’s been reported that the new model will be capable of recording 8K videos, although it’s not known what kind of framerate it will offer at this resolution. However, 4K recording has been stated to output 60 FPS videos, which is already quite amazing by itself, so we should see some great results with the camera in 8K mode as well. Even if it records at 30 FPS, it should still be great – although 15 might be pushing it a bit too low for some enthusiasts.
When the Hero 4 came out, it was offered in two versions, one capable of recording 4K videos at 30 FPS, and the other at 15 FPS. It seems that the company’s engineers have managed to overcome that limitation for the new model, so they have obviously made quite a lot of progress in their work on the camera’s sensors.
The exact price for the new Hero 5 is still being speculated by some publications, but the most likely version is that it will cost $499.99 when it’s released, as this is the price point the company has been trying to maintain for their newly released devices so far.
With the rising popularity of action cameras, GoPro have recently found themselves facing a lot more competition than they used to have. And while some companies would make the mistake of relying on their past success in these cases, hoping that their customers will keep buying their products, GoPro seem to have realized that this never works out, and are working hard to maintain their popularity through actual improvements in their products. If the company plays its cards right, we could see the Hero 5 and subsequent models staying around on the market for a very long time.