AS THE FIRST GoPro with a built-in touchscreen, the HERO4 Silver was hotly anticipated. Does it live up to the hype?
Like GoPro’s other cameras, the HERO4 Silver comes with curved and flat sticky mounts. It also sports their trademark clear plastic housing, but with a new‘back door’ that lets you use the touchscreen without removing the camera from its protective case.
When you power the HERO4 Silver on you still get the same, recognisable GoPro beeps and, as before, you can view the camera setting, mode and the number of clips shot on the small LCD on the front. This has been improved hugely, and is now much easier to understand.
The rear screen is where the fun really starts though.The image quality is great – clear and bright. Swipe down and hold your finger on the screen to unlock it and you have full access to all the settings menus, which are really intuitive to use even if you have little action cam experience. Once you’re set, there’s a small button to turn the screen off to save battery life.
We did most of our filming in 720-pixel HD resolution at 60 frames per second, which worked a treat, with the footage playing back nice and smoothly on our not-so-powerful laptop (other modes include 720p at 120fps, 1,080p Full HD at 60fps and super-high 4k resolution at 15fps, but these all create larger files, which can lead to choppy playback).
Video quality doesn’t look hugely different to the HERO3 at first glance, but spend a bit more time with the new camera and it becomes clear that it’s noticeably better at dealing with rapid changes of light. It’s also much easier to experiment with the different settings, thanks to the easier-to-navigate menus, which helps you get the best possible results.
It’s easy to export videos and photos to your phone with the GoPro app, and battery life doesn’t seem to be affected unduly by the addition of the screen – ours easily lasted a full day while filming back-to-back downhill runs.
The GoPro we’ve been waiting for – it’s easy to use and produces great quality footage even in tricky light
Price 495$
