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Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?

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Re: Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?

#241

Post by matsemann »

fiatpandas wrote: post #51
sen wrote: post #13

I’ve owned a lot of Gopro cameras, having done video capture for a variety of motorsports, and they just got too expensive for what you get. You can be more expensive if you’re better, or you can be worse if you’re cheaper, but they’re both the downsides while living purely off brand recognition. They also blew up in a time where there wasn’t any real competition. Sony had action cameras but they were bulkier and exp…

>other brands give better quality video in better quality hardware and more functionality, for cheaper Would you mind providing a recommendation you have first hand experience with?

It's mostly FUD and/or paid reviewers. Both DJI and Insta have good products, but also very good at sponsoring in a way where things get reviewed very in their favor, making people have an impression that doesn't quite match reality. So the meme one constantly read online about how gopros are so much worse is false. They have their issues, but mostly trade offs.

Re: Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?

#242

Post by matsemann »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #15
sen wrote: post #13

I’ve owned a lot of Gopro cameras, having done video capture for a variety of motorsports, and they just got too expensive for what you get. You can be more expensive if you’re better, or you can be worse if you’re cheaper, but they’re both the downsides while living purely off brand recognition. They also blew up in a time where there wasn’t any real competition. Sony had action cameras but they were bulkier and exp…

It also doesn’t help that you could probably get by with a hero 4 black even today lol Man I still can’t believe how bad the rollout of the karma was. I remember at the time everyone in my professional circles was buzzing about it. Then they started literally falling out of the sky . Feel like they never recovered

Eh, I have a Hero 4 black. And if you as the other commenter only think about resolution it can look like that, but the difference is enormous.

4k on a gopro 13 is far far far clearer. And the stabilization is night and day. Half my hero4 videos are mostly blurry shakes and quite jarring to watch, with a bad fov. The stabilization on modern gopros is magical. The bitrate and quality is orders of magnitude better. You can now pull good quality stills from the video if you want. Hero4 can't handle anything but perfect blue sky in the middle of the day. Etc etc

Re: Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?

#243

Post by thih9 »

Robotbeat wrote: post #89
sen wrote: post #13

I’ve owned a lot of Gopro cameras, having done video capture for a variety of motorsports, and they just got too expensive for what you get. You can be more expensive if you’re better, or you can be worse if you’re cheaper, but they’re both the downsides while living purely off brand recognition. They also blew up in a time where there wasn’t any real competition. Sony had action cameras but they were bulkier and exp…

GoPro is a US company designed in U.S. with manufacturing in Thailand, China, and Mexico. Insta360 is a Chinese company designed in Shenzhen and built there, too. People think this doesn’t matter, but GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place. A similar pattern happened with drones with DJI, intentionally killing all non-Chinese dro…

> GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place.

What would the attack vector be? I’m not saying there isn’t any, I don’t know much about aerospace and this sounds interesting.

Re: Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?

#244

Post by rasz »

slim wrote: post #191
Robotbeat wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GoPro is a US company designed in U.S. with manufacturing in Thailand, China, and Mexico. Insta360 is a Chinese company designed in Shenzhen and built there, too. People think this doesn’t matter, but GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place. A similar pattern happened with drones with DJI, intentionally killing all non-Chinese dro…

China does not want to deindustrialize any country. Why do you think of everything in terms of war and domination ? China has built a industry capable of taking any product and make it better and cheaper. There is no psycho strategy behind it. They will do it till every chinese will live a comfortable life equal to an american. At that point america will be able to compete again.

government first intervened in British Steel last year to prevent its then-owner, the Chinese company Jingye Group, from shutting it down https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/16/business/britain-national...

Re: Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?

#245

Post by samiv »

Robotbeat wrote: post #89
sen wrote: post #13

I’ve owned a lot of Gopro cameras, having done video capture for a variety of motorsports, and they just got too expensive for what you get. You can be more expensive if you’re better, or you can be worse if you’re cheaper, but they’re both the downsides while living purely off brand recognition. They also blew up in a time where there wasn’t any real competition. Sony had action cameras but they were bulkier and exp…

GoPro is a US company designed in U.S. with manufacturing in Thailand, China, and Mexico. Insta360 is a Chinese company designed in Shenzhen and built there, too. People think this doesn’t matter, but GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place. A similar pattern happened with drones with DJI, intentionally killing all non-Chinese dro…

The western countries deindustrialized themselves though. That's just capitalism chasing ever increasing profits and moving production to where it's cheaper, i.e.from west to China. In fact this was cherished because it increased share holder profits.

Re: Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?

#246

Post by microtonal »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #118
microtonal wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve owned a lot of Gopro cameras, having done video capture for a variety of motorsports, and they just got too expensive for what you get. Sounds very similar to another US company - Garmin. They are still popular, but have been raising prices a lot every generation, because for a long time there was no real competition [1]. At this point, Garmin watches that have mapping support have an introduction price of >600…

> Garmin watches that have mapping support have an introduction price of >600 Euro. Even at that price point, zooming or panning maps is excruciatingly slow I just got a Garmin Instinct 3 Solar. It does mapping, and cost me about $300 US. You're right that it's slow due to a wimpy processor. But the processor isn't because they're too lazy to innovate, but because they have something sipping tiny amounts of power so…

I just got a Garmin Instinct 3 Solar. It does mapping, and cost me about $300 US.

As a sibling commenter said, the Instinct 3 Solar only does breadcrumb navigation, it doesn't do topographic maps on the watch (there are some Connect IQ apps that can add mapping, but you don't get good integration with workouts).

I use them all the time when cycling. I often plan a route, but when some different direction looks more interesting, I can spot check whether it leads to bike paths that will eventually merge back into my grand plan, erm, route. Or sometimes even for following the route, you want to look ahead by quickly zooming out or get a lot of detail at some complex intersection, where having a full map gives you much better orientation.

Well, except on a Garmin, my Fenix 8 is often so slow that I had to pause cycling to zoom in/out (even more complicated by not being able to do gradual zooming because it does not have a crown).

Yes, I know I can also use a bike GPS or a more generic GPSr with a large screen. I have used their gpsmap line since 2010 or so and even have the gpsmap H1. But having to always carry it around when you have a break somewhere is a drag and I always have a watch on me anyway. So I primarily use the gpsmap for geocaching and switched to using a watch for other activities.

but because they have something sipping tiny amounts of power so that I can get a battery life of several weeks

Coros watches have several weeks of battery life and fast maps. It is laziness (or margin maximization), because they could reach the same power budget by moving to a processor that is on a smaller node.

Re: Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?

#247

Post by matsemann »

abalashov wrote: post #156
rjrjrjrj wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insta360 does this out of the box.

Does it?

No, it doesn't. Gopro actually hss gps and sensors built in, most dji cameras don't (does any?). You need extra hardware, or provide the data yourself. While in gopro you just enable it on the clip.

Of courses, for more advanced stuff you might want to provide the telemetry yourself (like the gopro doesn't know your wattage). But it does have much more than dji out of the box.

Re: Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?

#248

Post by skippyfish »

crote wrote: post #166
skippyfish wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's precisely my point. It's only an action camera, and you assert that the market is massive, but I don't see it. Just how many millions of units can you sell to YouTuber spelunkers, YouTuber mountain bikers, YouTuber paragliders, YouTuber divers, and so on? The reality is that even in "action" situations - the situations where normal people want to capture memories of hiking, biking, boating, etc - normal ca…

> Just how many millions of units can you sell Just how many millions of people do those outdoors activities? You can't survive selling solely to YouTubers, that's definitely true, but you don't need to. Just like tennis companies don't need to survive solely on selling to Grand Slam competitors. Plenty of people are willing to spend a few hundred bucks on their hobbies if it gives them nice pictures and videos for I…

> Just how many millions of people do those outdoors activities?

Many, but that's irrelevant. There are hundreds of thousand of bicycles in my city, and very, very of them have cameras. That's kinda the point: what you're selling is the dream of being a YouTube influencer, pretty much. Otherwise, there's little value to having a big library of videos from every ride you've taken, especially since let's face it, most people ride the same routes / trails most of the time.

Now, the dream of being an influencer may be a strong selling point, but you can only do it once. People are not gonna keep upgrading.

Re: Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?

#249

Post by matsemann »

ValentineC wrote: post #7

When I was looking to buy an action camera last year, I was deciding between Insta360 and DJI, with many YouTubers suggesting outright against GoPro since they haven't kept up with image quality. Action cameras sound like a tough business, since most of them are built to last ages, and they need to keep the vast majority of content creators happy trying to increase image quality in a small form factor. Anyway, I boug…

> many YouTubers suggesting outright against GoPro since they haven't kept up with image quality.

Fyi: This is a lie, the youtubers are paid to tell you this.

Re: Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?

#250

Post by microtonal »

overfeed wrote: post #188
wartijn_ wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they meant watches that can show actual maps, not just a line or arrow with your route. That feature has always been reserved for the more expensive watches.

The more expensive watches (Fenix) also have long battery lives: lasting up to a month on a battery that can fit in a watch. The processors still have to sip power.

The Coros watches are less than half the price, have 22 days of battery life in smartwatch mode (in the Nomad) and render maps extremely fast. If they added solar, they could probably also last a month (the Coros Apex 4 does 24 days, also without solar).

The funniest thing is that earlier versions of the Coros even used the Garmin map format (though as many small files and not a single/small number of .img). Though they have switched to the open PMTiles format in later versions.

BTW, I had a Fenix 7x solar (before a Fenix 8 AMOLED) and it would usually 'only' last about two weeks. I think you can only reach Garmin's stated time if you disable a lot of functionality.

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