GoPro Camera -CHDCB-706 HERO7 Silver + Protective Housing

1.0 out of 5 stars

By Lee Rutter - Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2018

Worst GoPro and bad representation of their product

The GoPro 6 Silver has two modes - 4k and NOT 4k which is actually 1440. The battery is internal, however, you can add whatever micro SD card you want to throw in there. The image sensor is that which one uses in cheap android cell phones... where it has the rolling shutter for the 1440 mode. This is a $99 camera stuck in a $300 body. Shameful. The GoPro website states that every GoPro purchased through them receives a 32gb card. I did the trade in and no where did it say I wouldn't get the card! Dishonest! Trying to find the battery duration information on their website was impossible. I had to call and ask them that. The 4k quality SUCKS - the quality doesn't have that GoPro special brilliant look. There is a lot of noise in the picture. 7 is supposed to be better than 6 and previous. I have the version 6 and it's pretty amazing! The 7 silver - Do not buy. It's not worth it. Get the Hero 6 or the 7 Black because this is embarrasingly a horrible product. Whomever was in charge of this product should be FIRED. GoPro hides a lot of the details about their GoPro cameras but boy do they boost all the awesome videos and stuff and make you think that all versions have either that quality or nearly that quality! My GoPro 6 - I would say "Yeah that's a GoPro" but this version - "eh, it's a camera and it shoots video". Why would they dumb down one of the best cameras on the market? I don't think the ones in charge actually use a GoPro. The GoPro White which records up to 1080 for $200 and the quality of the 1080 is a lower quality than the GoPro 6? I don't get it. Why is GoPro charging premium prices over crap image sensors! To top it off... NO H.265 on the Silver!!! Are you kidding me? For those that don't know, H.265 (HEVC) is the new video compression format that iPhone and others have adopted as native in which a 4gb video can be recorded same quality for 2gb or less. Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV, YouTube stores all movies and videos as H.265 in order to save bandwidth and storage space on their end. Why GoPro didn't offer the same on this boggles my mind. This is where I feel GoPro and I are gonna part ways. I will be doing further tests and post my updates when I can. I can probably still use it. Shame it can't be better.

1.0 out of 5 stars

By Deckard - Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2018

Does NOT shoot in 1080p

Why on Earth GoPro decided to make this camera only support 4K or 1440p? Stupidest idea EVER? This applies to the Silver and White models, not the Black model, which does support 1080p. It says it "supports 1080p by cropping the video to make it shorter". WHY?? Nobody cares or uses 1440p on this entire planet. Who wants to crop a video after it is taken and found out that the cropped frame doesn't work well with your video, because it either cuts off someones head or leaves too much space on top/bottom?

4.0 out of 5 stars

By mirasreviews - Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2018

Incredibly Small, Feature-Packed, and A Lot of Fun.

I have never owned a GoPro before this HERO7 Silver, so I cannot comment on how it compares to previous models. I am reviewing this camera as a GoPro novice: how the setup went, what the camera can do, how the Silver differs from Black and White models. The first thing that struck me about the GoPro is its size: 2 3/8 x 1 3/4 x 1 inch. I read the specifications, but it's startling to see a multi-featured video camera that fits easily in the palm of my hand. GoPro offers a downloadable product manual, but I found the best source of guidance to be YouTube videos about getting started with your GoPro. The first things you need to do are: charge the camera and install a micro SD card from GoPro's list of recommended cards. You do both of these things via the panel on the left side of the camera. Using a 32GB micro SD card, you get 2 hours 8 minutes of video at regular resolution, 1 hour 5 min at 4K resolution. Thirty minutes of video at standard resolution used 25% of the battery charge. Setup did not go smoothly for me. The GoPro will not operate without having its firmware updated, so you can't get past the screen where it prompts you to install and pair to the app. You can update the firmware through the mobile app, the Qwik desktop app, or you can download the update to a computer manually. I chose to use the Qwik app for Mac. I plugged my camera into my computer via USB. It took about 30 minutes to download and install the firmware update. Then it said the camera could not be updated. I tried again without success. I wondered if the problem might be the camera battery, so I charged it. Apparently the update had been installed before. When I went though the setup on the camera again, it stopped on the page to install the app, but I was able to hit the back button and go to a page that allowed me to skip that step. So I was in. Be sure that the camera is fully charged before you attempt to install an update. The GoPro is fairly simple to operate. Swipe down from the top to access Preferences. Swipe up from the bottom to access the videos and photos that you have recorded. Swipe side to side to switch between video, still photo, and time lapse photo (one frame every 0.5 seconds) modes. Or you can hit the power button on the right side of the camera to do this, which usually happens accidentally when I am trying to turn the camera off (hold the button down to turn off). The GoPro Silver offers two resolutions and aspect ratios for video: 4K video, which has a 16:9 aspect ratio (3840 x 2160 pixels) at 30 frames per second (fps) and 1440p video, which has a 4:3 aspect ratio (1920x 1440 pixels) at 60 fps. The default is 1440p; you can change to 4K with one tap on the screen. In the specifications, this camera also lists 1080p video as an option, but the camera actually records in 1440p 4:3 video that can then be cropped in the app to 1080p 16:9 video. I don't do action sports. I am using this camera to videotape architecture, specifically the relationships between buildings, which don't show up well with a still camera. I need to move around and between the buildings. Some tips that will be obvious to an experienced user but not to a novice: If you take the camera out of its frame and hold it with your hand, do so with your right hand. When holding the camera with my left hand, my finger was often in the picture. To avoid this problem, you could leave the camera in its frame and hold it by its mounting buckle. That is a little uncomfortable. GoPro wants to you buy something to hold the camera: a Shorty, which is a telescoping poll and mini-tripod, or, if you will be using the camera around water, the Handler, which floats. Another tip: The default setting causes the screen to go dark in one minute to conserve power. This isn't helpful if you are handholding and trying to videotape what you see. This can be changed in Preferences. The Silver model offers GoPro's standard image stabilization software. I wasn't bouncing around very much, but I was walking, going up and down stairs, and occasionally running. I found the stabilization to be pretty good. The video I shot is much smoother than that taken with the video mode on my Nikon DSLR, which is mighty shaky. One day I shot outdoors on a sunny, very contrasty, day with blown out highlights and deep shadows. That was inadvisable. The camera isn't horrible in those conditions, but it's not great either. It was grainy in low light when I zoomed in, but that is to be expected. There are two zooms available in 1440p mode (you cannot zoom in 4K). These are digital zooms, not optical zooms, so they are just crops. You are getting the equivalent, in 35mm film camera terms, of 15mm (no zoom), 23mm (mid-zoom), and 35mm (full zoom). I was a bit disappointed that I could not get a "normal" (50mm) zoom, and a digital zoom is less than ideal. After I shot my videos, I wanted to view them. I used the Qwik desktop app. The GoPro splits all video in to 4GB "chapters" due to limitations of the memory card's file system. Inconvenient, as I was shooting long videos, but, at standard resolution (1440p), 4GB was 17:40 minutes. The videos went into a "GoPro" folder that was created in my Pictures folder, but you can manually change the destination folder in Qwik's settings. You can view the videos in Qwik, or, you can double-click them in their folder to play in the video software of your choice. Qwik also allows you to make clips, rotate, grab a photo from video, or Adjust Gauges, which requires that you had the GPS data enabled on your video. You can choose to add Speed Tracker (a line graph), GPS Path, Speedometer, and G-Force to display over your video image. Tip: If you rename your video files, Qwik will not recognize them. You will need to go to Settings and, under Media Folders, click "scan" in order to locate the files again. I do not favor using the mobile app, as I don't have a lot of space on my phone. I installed it on my iPad, however. I had no luck getting it to pair with my camera using Bluetooth. I was able to pair it with wifi without any hitches, but be sure your mobile device and your camera are on the same band. The default on the camera is 5GHz. You can watch stored videos from your camera or from the Cloud on the app, but the neat feature is that you can watch what the camera is seeing in real time if you are in range. The GoPro Silver also takes 10MP still photographs, and it automatically employs its wide dynamic range (WDR) feature that pulls more detail out of shadows. Still images are 3648 x 2736 pixels with an aspect ratio of 4:3. If you like, you can take photos continuously at rate of 4 per second by holding shutter button or 15 frames per second by choosing burst mode. There is also a self-timer, and you can activate voice control to tell the camera to take a picture without needing to have your finger on the shutter button. Voice control works reliably and can be activated with the touch of a button when you swipe down from the top of the screen. See the user manual for a list of commands. If you are wondering why buy the Black model or why not buy the White, these are the major differences: The HERO7 Black offers optional RAW format for still photos. It has a removable battery. It uses Hypersmooth image stabilization, which is supposed to be better than standard. Watching YouTube videos comparing the two, I think Hypersmooth is better for certain types of movement and not others. SloMo slows movement down by 8x in Black rather than 2x in the Silver. Black is compatible with dive housing that allows it to be waterproof to 60 meters (197 feet) rather than the 10 meters (33 feet) on its own. Black offers far more choices in frame rate, field of view, and resolution. HERO7 White does not offer 4K video or WDR for still photos, and does not have GPS capabilities, so no GPS stickers, etc.

1.0 out of 5 stars

By edward devries - Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2018

Waste of time, dont buy.

Second hero 7 silver, brand new galaxy camera, wint work. Same problem the first one I returned had. There is an obvious mgt issue with these. Sat on the phone trying to resolve both times for an hour each time and it couldn't be resolved. Simply a bad product......don't buy.

5.0 out of 5 stars

By Cindy - Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2018

Great little camera

This is my first GoPro, after reading all the negative reviews of the Hero 7 Black I went with the silver. Mainly to save the extra $100. So far so good, I have it mounted on my center console on my boat. Video is super smooth and clear on the 1080p setting. I have not tried 4k as of now - I do not have a 4k compatible TV or computer. Pictures are OK. They will not be DSLR quality but then again this is made for action videos. I will update review after a few weeks of playing with it. The only downfall right now is that GoPro nor any 3rd party companies make a waterproof housing for the silver/white just yet. I know its waterproof and it works well. Sometimes you just want some added protection. Not a deal breaker.