GoPro Hero 12 In-Depth Review: 20 Things To Know!

this is your complete GoPro Hero 12 black in-depth review it's packed full of comparison footage as well as deep dives into all the new features to figure out whether or not those features work well or still need a little bit of love in this video I'm going to take you through not just all the new features on the hero 12 black but also the new Max lens mod 2.0 as well all to figure out whether or not it's worth it and how it compares to their competitors with that let's just dive straight into it with the very first thing which is the price the hero 12 black is 399 US Dollars there is no requirement for a GoPro subscription anymore it's 3.99 for everyone however if you do have a GoPro subscription then it becomes 2.99 on your next subscription renewal so that is a pretty significant savings for GoPro subscribers and of course there's a bunch of other features and benefits there as well with that let's dive into the actual technical features and the first one is increase battery life now in some modes GoPros increase the battery life by two times you can see that on the chart right there if you look at something like 5K on that chart that goes up to 70 minutes basically doubling its battery life where something like 4K 30 is only about a 16 percent increase so then the question becomes are those specs actually true does it actually do what they said in that charge and thus far am I testing the answer is largely yes take for example that 5K claim there so here my wife took the camera out on one of her rides in this case it was configured as 5K 60 so essentially the highest mode and most notably the temperature on a ride was between 80 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit so pretty darn hot and generally speaking hot weather impacts battery life performance across any type of device that you have and Hiroshi landed at 61 minutes before the battery ran out there was no overheating at all on this particular test of course that does fall short of that 70 minutes they claimed but that claim of course is at a lower temperature 77 degrees versus the higher temperature up to 85 Degrees that she was riding in likewise I did test with 4K 60 including the simulation of airflow that's listed on their battery claim specs to the minute it hit their battery claim which is pretty impressive even beating the action 4 by about 20 seconds like barely but technically it beat it before it turned off and not because of overheating but because of battery now now I will dive into overheating later in the video in a separate section because a whole lot of considerations there as well one thing to note is that it does use the same Enduro battery come with the same Enduro battery as the hero 11 black that is also the same battery form factor that's backwards compatible to the hero 9 10 11 and now 12 as well so you can use all those batteries interchangeably as you see fit the one downside with the batteries though is that they discharge really slowly uh it's about like 100 minutes to charge a GoPro Enduro battery versus an action 4 camera battery goes to 80 in 18 minutes which is Bonkers fast and then up to full in 50 minutes I wish GoPro had some faster battery charging aspect there because that really does make a big difference next there's a new GoPro Max lens mod 2.0 now the max lens mod is designed to give you a much wider field of view up to 177 degrees versus the existing 155 degree field of view and with the 2.0 version you now get a much higher resolution so you get 4k up to 60 frames per second versus previously 2.7 K you can see these side by side examples on just how wide it is it really is insane compared to the existing stock lens on the GoPro obviously you do get that fisheye effect in certain scenarios especially if you don't have it exactly on the horizon when you have it on the horizon the fisheye effect isn't too bad but of course as you go above or below that you're going to see more of that fisheye note that if you have the existing Max lens mod 1.0 that is totally compatible with the hero 12 as well next up is the ability to pair Bluetooth headphones to your GoPro for audio and speakers so essentially you can use any Bluetooth audio device pair it up it'll use a microphone from that Bluetooth audio device while inversely also putting all the beeps and chirps and stuff like that into the speakers on that Bluetooth audio device in addition it'll also leverage the Bluetooth mic for voice commands too to tell your GoPro to turn on or off now keep in mind the quality that Bluetooth audio is going to vary quite a bit on two core things number one the actual Bluetooth device you're using whether or not it's good or bad and within that whether or not it's good for the scenario so in this upcoming example here you can see that I've got the camera outside the vehicle so the vehicle windows are closed and all that kind of stuff so you've got glasses structure in the way there okay here we are driving along I've got the camera mounted outside the car on a suction cup mount and I'm inside the car with my uh Beats Studio headphones connected via Bluetooth versus the next test where I simply hold up the camera like this but then use this as a Bluetooth mic uh it's a much higher audio quality level here is an audio synchronization test so you can see whether or not these two things are in sync this is the Beats Studio buds I'm just simply holding about two feet in front of me and here's what that same audio sounds like directly from the camera as opposed to using these Beats Studio buds now what's cool is the camera will actually record both audio tracks into it so record one from outside on one dialog Channel and one from the microphone on another dialog channel so in post-production you can separate those two and either use one or both or whatever the case may be now this next item complements the same thing which is Return of the recording preview screen on your phone so for the last few years when you're using your phone with your GoPro to preview what it was framed up as when you hit the record button it would cut off that video link you won't be able to see that anymore while it was actually recording that limitation is now gone you can see example this right here where I've got my phone inside the vehicle and the camera mounted on the outside down low with the windows closed and all that kind of stuff so there is some blockiness to it but it's good enough for like framing and figuring it out while you're recording now with that Bluetooth audio feature is the increased pairing allowance of Bluetooth devices so if you have the GoPro Volta stick or the GoPro remote or even the GoPro Quick app you can pair all those things concurrently together that way you don't have to like choose which Bluetooth thing that you want to pair on a controller use next on the hardware side on the bottom of the hero 12 they've added a tripod mount to the bottom inside of it so the same dual finger Mount that's been used since the beginning of GoPro is there but you've got a standard tripod mount if you want it in there now in that same vein a lot of people like dji's mounting system where it's kind of a quick magnetic mounting system and it's pretty easy to use I don't prefer it for like really high speed applications but I think it's good for like more day-to-day type stuff but you may not be aware there's actually an accessory you can buy for 10 bucks on Amazon that basically gives you that same amount and in fact it gives you four mounts in one the existing in GoPro 1 the tripod mount the DJI Mount as well as a magnetic Mount that you can throw on any metal surface again not sponsored oh I bought it myself I will link to it down below in case you want to use it but uh that's kind of a cool solution as well next GoPro has added a hyper smooth 6.0 so hyper smooth is basically their stabilization technology and with that they've made some changes around Auto boost Auto boost is their technology that will automatically increase or decrease the field of view to ensure the stabilization remains on point now GoPro tends to be like the Undisputed leader when it comes to the stabilization aspect of it there's other areas where the competitors are better but for the actual stabilization they're very very good there you can see this across a whole host of different scenarios in some cases the differences are basically negligible in other cases they're more obvious in particular GoPro tends to excel in non-direct Sun environments from a stabilization standpoint so in the trees or things like that that's where on the DJI action 4 with Rocksteady plus enabled you see these micro Jitters where the picture kind of like this jostles for a second there something that doesn't exist on the GoPro couldn't really consider this a low light test also note that when it comes comes to field of view in these sort of action scenarios which camera has a wider field of view depends on which settings you're in for example if you look at the linear mode on the GoPro compared to the DJI action 4. you'll find the action 4 has a wider field of view linear mode is basically a mode that doesn't have that fisheye look to it on the GoPro DJI calls it dewarp in that case DJI wins in that particular scenario on the DJI action 4 Once you enable Rocksteady plus to get more of that stabilization then you lose more of that field of view but once you go to some of the wider views like the ultra view on the DJI or super view on the GoPro in that case if you have the full stabilization turned on then GoPro is actually wider you can see this right here where the GoPro on superview with Hyper smooth enabled is wider than the DJI with Rocksteady plus enabled if you're shooting things where you want that linear or basically non-fish-eye look for everything then the DJI action camera has a wider field of view for that versus for the action side if you just want like a really wide field of view then GoPro tends to be wider now let's talk about low light footage by and large there's no meaningful difference is between the hero 12 and the hero 11 when it comes to low light footage the one change where you can eat out a tiny bit more is if you shoot with log I'll talk about that in just a second instead let me show you a few examples from my massive and sprawling low-light footage video that I've got coming up for tomorrow where I basically compare the action 4 and the GoPro Hero 12 black side by side from Just Before Sunset through Sunset all the way to like pitch black across a host of different scenarios I did the same video about a month ago for the action 4 versus the hero 11. and the general takeaway is that both of these cameras suck when it comes to low light video to a certain degree the main thing though is that dji's image tends to be brighter but in order to get there you have to reduce a lot of settings you have to turn off Rocksteady plus to go to Rocksteady which is fine likewise you have to be in 30 frames per second or less and you have to ensure the low light setting is turned off in that mode you can see unquestionably the action 4 is brighter than the GoPro when it comes to how the actual image quality looks it's really hard to tell on a small phone uh you really want a computer for this to be able to see the nuanced differences is there if you're using these clips on Instagram or something on a small screen you can probably get away with the crappy look from both of them and no one will notice but once you put these on a bigger screen a computer monitor or a TV then neither camera is good next they've added eight by seven to more modes 8x7 is simply a reference to the aspect ratio so you may be familiar with 16x9 for example 8x7 is almost like a square which gives you way more flexibility in post-production you can go ahead and take that 8x7 frame and make it either a vertical image or you can make it a horizontal image depending what you want or just keep it a big old square if you want to in the case of the hero 12 black they've expanded that into the time warp modes as well as the different light modes at night and things like that you can see some of those examples right there now the next item Falls in line with the previous one which is around all those night modes that you just saw there up until now we've got those videos that you just saw like you're seeing right now with the star Trails or the vehicle effects or things like that but now at the end of it you'll also get a still photo of that same entire thing just all like compressed into one uh something that just is really handy if you just want the photo of that night Star as opposed to having to like find the exact moment in the video and take a screenshot of it next they've added a new HDR mode for video so they previously had HDR essentially super photo on the photo side now they have it on the video side this brings out more dynamic range in the image having the Shadows be better exposed and the highlights uh also being better exposed and hopefully not Overexposed next a biggie they've removed GPS there is no longer GPS in the GoPro Hero 12 black camera they're still all the accelerometer data in there so if you're doing fpv flyings with a drone or something like that you can do that and get all the accelerometer data there so that real steady or gopro's quick app now in fact I can go ahead and stabilize based on that but the GPS recording is gone GoPro says the reason they did that is that very few people actually use the GPS data in the GoPro Quick app to do the sticker overlays and then two they could increase the battery life pretty substantially and that is true as we saw earlier on the battery life has increased a bunch the real probably third reason though is that it also significantly reduces overheating concern turns by taking that GPS chipset out they can do that still just a month ago DJI added GPS to an accessory it's not in the camera but it is an accessory or remote control accessory and so GoPro now has no GPS option which seems a bit quirky to me I think that's that's a bit of a Miss there I would prefer the GPS just be in it but optionally enabled when I actually needed to use it which is something they did for tripod modes about two years ago when they realized that was contributing to overheating as well so let's talk about that overheating then you may remember about two years ago I did a overheating test basically 40 different scenarios to figure out where it overheats and where it doesn't overheat and the long and the short of that test is that if you were moving through air if you had some airflow over these cameras in any way shape or form even water flow then they almost never would overheat like just a simple reality of the hero 10 11 12. it was very very difficult also they never overheat in time lapse time warper photo modes but if they were static like sitting on this table right here inside of a car filming uh on a winless day outside then they would overheat depending on the frame rate also when people talk about GoPro overheating they're only talking about scenarios where we're recording effectively 20 minute longer Clips uh in one shot if you're recording like five minutes here and five minutes there or whatever it's not gonna overheat uh these are just single continuous very very long uh footage chunks now I'm working on that same video for the hero 12 black uh and I've got test after test running basically over there but a couple initial kind of results from that number one is that they're claim that it now lasts longer is true from an overheating standpoint in 4k 60 without any wind so static on a table right here then the hero 11 died in 32 minutes and the hero 12 made at 54 minutes the action 4 though went 81 minutes in that same scenario but once I applied wind to that scenario not much win by the way just five kilometers an hour three miles per hour very very small amount of wind very very light there then there was no overheating at all in that case the hero 11 was 67 minutes before the battery died the hero 1281 minutes and also the action for 81 minutes though the GoPro Hero 12 black edged out the action floor by like 20 seconds before it died but that's close enough I think we just call that even likewise outside I stuck the hero 12 black on my wife's bike while she pedaled out in this hot day 80 to 86 degrees uh and it never died from overheating it died at 61 minutes uh which is a little bit below the 70 minute spec but their spec is at a lower temperature so that makes sense note that when the GoPro dies it tells you why it dies in the back after it turns on the next time it'll say overheating on it or it'll say battery or it'll say something else if there's something else wrong meanwhile on a static wind day I put the cameras out in the garden it was like 85 to 88 degrees in that case the GoPros died a lot sooner than the action 4. however I had a flaw in my test that I realized later on in that whichever camera was on the right would overheat first I had two identical hero 12 set up in that camera and one was drastically different than the other one and that's because from a design standpoint the hottest point is on the upper left-hand corner of the camera it was basically being super heated by the camera to the left of it like fascinating stuff once you have thermal cameras involved you can see what's going on in real time but again hit subscribe so you don't miss out on that crazy video once it drops in a couple days here next we got two really quick like Pro geek sort of things then we'll get back into some non-pro geek sort of things number one is that GoPro has added a new GP log format uh so this is now going to record a log version instead it's something you can enable the settings and that's in combination with 10-bit recording and you can also add High bit rate on top of that if you like from there this will allow you to do better color grading of that footage using the lut.go pro is supplied I'll include a couple of these files in a Dropbox share somewhere here in the next few hours so you can check those out for yourself also on the geekery kind of pro train if you're working with a Time code device or want to do time code sync across cameras you can now do that in two different ways number one is that you can do that with the GoPro Quick app to add that time code in there or two you can do it with a dedicated time code device this is something we saw in the GoPro Hero 11 black GoPro Labs builds for last little while and now it's built into the hero 12 natively next what about camera stability in other words does it crash for things like that and I haven't had any issues with the hero 12 crashing at this point but I also rarely have issues with the hero 11 crashing and I think that's probably due to two things one the brand of SD cards or whatever this is definitely not sponsored either this is just Why buy I'll link it down below in the bottom there but also more notably to ensure you buy from like a really well known big establishment uh fake SD cards are a huge problem uh in the industry and so you could have a bad SD card two though is I don't let like 500 or a thousand files load up on the cards uh because that just introduces the potential for corruption and so between those two things I don't tend to have much of a problem but I haven't had any problems yet on the hero 12 in terms of freeze ups or things like that next switching topics entirely uh there is a new camera interval mode uh so you may be saying isn't there already a camera interval mode and the answer is yes there's a time-lapse camera interval mode and in that mode they basically go ahead and stabilize uh the light and color conditions across the entire time lapse so that essentially it looks correct versus the interval photo mode will take photos on a set interval but will dynamically change all of the color lighting Etc settings for that particular photo at any point in time depending on what's going on around you different use cases for different things but now that option is there and then another small item is they've changed kind of the layout for some of the vertical video modes they've had vertical video for quite a number of years now but they've made it more clear as to how those vertical video modes are enabled and keeping them there and stuff like that they've also changed with that a bunch of the user interface bits especially around some of the easy control modes they've split out for example the resolution and how that looks into kind of more simple to use terms and they've also split out some of the other settings in Easy Mode Pro mode is still there again easy mode is not new to the hero 12 has been there for a few years so that gets us to kind of like the final thing is is this camera worth it and I think a number of the changes they've made here are super valuable for example the Bluetooth audio is awesome for those that want that the increased battery life times is awesome the new Max lens mod is awesome as well especially being up to 4K still there are areas where GoPro is falling behind the first being overheating and I think that's something that generally speaking like YouTube culture just overthinks because we recorded things in really long segments most people that's probably not an issue but nonetheless you can still overheat a GoPro Hero 12 whereas overheating a DJI action 4 is really tough not impossible I did it this past summer so anyone who says you can't overheat it that's incorrect additionally in that same ballpark the battery charging times are just far slower than their competitors still as an overall package there are so many features in the GoPro that are super useful things like those light Trail modes and all the specialty modes the larger resolution having 5.3 K versus 4K and their competitors those are all advantages and ultimately you have to decide which features are most advantageous to you with that if you found this video interesting useful go ahead and Mark that like button at the bottom there or hit subscribe for plenty more Sports technology goodness and of course don't forget my full hero 12 beginner's guide coming up the next few days my low light video as well as my overheating and also a dedicated Max lens mod video as well with that have a good one

Channel: DC Rainmaker

Views: 214,395

Keywords: GoPro Hero 12 Black, GoPro Hero 12, GoPro vs DJI, GoPro Hero 12 Black vs DJI Action 4, DC Rainmaker, Rainmaker, GoPro Hero 12 Review, Hero 12 Black Review, Hero 12 REview, GoPro Hero 12 Footage, GoPro Hero 12 Overheating, GoPro Hero 12 Test

Id: sgT-ZNTaRCA

Length: 17min 49sec (1069 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 09 2023