This. I first heard of GoPro back in 2010. Scroll forward a few months and I'm on sabbatical doing a couple of months snowboarding and a few guys I meet along the way have them. Needless to say I am entirely unimpressed:
- The rectangular box shape of them is bulky and awkward, particularly when you add the protective case on top, and seems particularly ridiculous compared with other sleeker helmet cam designs,
- The mountings seem prone to work loose. One guy spent most of the time with his helmet mounted GoPro filming the ground in front of him and he had to keep fettling the thing to get it back into place.
- Turns out GoPros had the time had terrible dynamic range so everything that was covered in snow looked the same uniform white, particularly on brighter days. Picture quality sucked. This has improved somewhat in subsequent updates but I would have been fuming if I'd dropped the £300 (plus the cost of accessories on one).
- When I did look at buying one knowing exactly which accessories I'd need was confusing.
- Just way too fiddly to use when wearing any kind of gloves, which is hopeless for what's supposed to be an action cam,
- In general seemed to lead to an awful lot of faffing around by owners; to me it just looked like one more piece of gear to worry about that was mostly going to serve as an annoying time-vampire.
Apart from the picture quality issues, none of the above has changed as far as I know, only now there are so many extant models it's even more confusing trying to figure out which to buy.
Part of me dies inside every time somebody gets out a GoPro (or one of its many clones) on a ski/snowboard trip because you just know it's going to lead to an inordinate amount of buggering around.
I fully admit, #firstworldproblems, but as far as I'm concerned GoPro suck: they're an expensive waste of time and money.
In the end, for various reasons (mostly because I wanted a camera for my motorcycle), I caved and bought a Garmin VIRB. This has the following advantages:
- Doesn't need (quite) so much supporting paraphernalia, primarily because unless you plan on going diving it's waterproof enough without requiring an additional case,
- Overall it's very robust,
- Easy to switch on and off with gloves on (there's a big slider switch on the side of the camera),
- Picture quality and dynamic range are good, even in very bright conditions,
- Generally sleeker design.
I've used it for motorcycling, skiing, and as a dashcam.
All of that said it some bad points:
- Still a certain amount of confusion over which you actually need for your chosen activity,
- Mounting brackets are somewhat fiddly and can work loose,
- Battery life isn't great,
- Batteries take hours to charge,
- Apart from record on/off, the interface is kind of clunky,
And there's one ugly point:
- The software it runs is really unstable, and regularly crashes; this can be extremely annoying when it misses the crucial piece of action because of it.
So, overall, I still wouldn't buy again.