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  • Design & Usability

  • Features

  • Performance

  • Conclusion

  • By the Numbers

  • Sharpness Performance

  • Low Light Motion

  • Motion & Detail

  • Battery Life

  • Design & Usability
  • Features
  • Performance
  • Conclusion
  • By the Numbers
  • Sharpness Performance
  • Low Light Motion
  • Motion & Detail
  • Battery Life

Because the updates are all under the hood, the GoPro accessories you already own will continue to work with the Hero3+ Black Edition. If you're a current GoPro Hero user, this will plug into your existing device ecosystem without missing a beat. Of course, unless the updates GoPro promised make a difference, you might as well stick with a Hero3. Fortunately, we found that the Hero3+ Black was sharper, longer lasting, and delivered overall improved image quality in all of our laboratory tests. The GoPro Hero3+ Black Edition beat out the competition this year in our 2013 Best of Year Camcorder awards because other action cams still can't quite match the full-featured experience that GoPro compresses into every tiny camera.

Design & Usability

Minimalism in action

There really isn't much to say about the Hero 3+ Black. It's a compact rectangular box with a small bulge for the camera's wide angle lens. Up front, there's a power/mode button and two indicator lights (one for WiFi, one a recording tally light). On the top you’ll find another recording light and your record start button. The WiFi activation button is on the left side. There's a small door on the back for the battery and GoPro's Hero port for accessories. The three most critical ports remain on the right side—mini USB for charging (and, with an adapter, an external microphone), HDMI, and the microSD card slot.

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So, you won’t find any big, noteworthy changes with the camera itself. GoPro seems to have spent its engineering brainpower on the included waterproof case. This clear housing has been completely redesigned, losing weight, bulk, and complexity. GoPro says that this new housing shouldn't get snagged on things quite as easy, and it is smaller in every dimension—even though is isn't rated to the same depth as before. If you dive with a GoPro, keep in mind that even though it's improved, it's only rated to 40 meters instead of 60 meters. The now-standard two-pronged accessory mount hasn't changed a bit and it'll work with the GoPro accessories you already own without having to buy new mounts. In fact, this is the same mount system we’ve seen on GoPros going back to the GoPro Hero HD, and the continuity is greatly appreciated.

Features

My goodness, it's full of resolutions and frame rates.

The GoPro Hero3+ Black is the most advanced Hero to date, featuring updated optics, a higher resolution sensor and a plethora of frame rates and resolutions that you can choose. The Hero3+ can even shoot 4K, albeit at the barely-even-video frame rates of 15 and 12.5 fps. Furthermore, you have 2.7K (16:9 at 30 and 25 fps, 17:9 at 24 fps), 1440p (4:3 at 48, 30, 25, and 24 fps.) as well as standard 1080p (30 and 60 fps) and 1080p SuperView.

ProTune records video at a higher bit rate and with a neutral color temperature, so you can match it to footage from a multi-cam setup a bit more easily.

On top of video, you have a long list of still shooting options, too. There are a couple of speedy burst modes and the beloved time-lapse settings. The Hero3+ Black Edition also offers many of these different modes with ProTune, leaving more leeway later on in your production pipeline. Essentially, ProTune records video at a higher bit rate and with a neutral color temperature, so you can match it to footage from a multi-cam setup a bit more easily.

Since this is the flagship GoPro, you get a bunch of goodies included in the box. The marquee feature once again is the waterproof wifi remote, which can be paired with 49 other GoPro cameras as well. It’s a small remote and can easily be clipped to an article of clothing or a wrist strap, and you basically get the same control scheme and LCD as on the video camera itself. WiFi also means you can choose to use your smartphone to control the Hero3+ Black Edition—and it's seen a speedbump in all 3+ generation cameras. The GoPro app works well on iOS and Android, providing live view and a much more comprehensive remote control experience. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, the Windows Phone app doesn’t support the Hero3+ family.

Performance

Improvements that will appeal to pros

Across the board, we saw test results that were improved over the Hero3 Black Edition. Bumps in sharpness, noise, and battery life will all make a difference for those who want the best quality footage from their action cam. Even low-light noise and smoothness of video are pretty impressive for such a tiny camera.

By packing in a larger capacity battery, GoPro extended the life of the Hero3+ Black Edition by quite a bit. In the original Hero3, we measured about an hour and a half of continuous shooting. With the Hero3+’s 1180 mAh lithium ion rechargeable battery, we eked out two full hours of shooting. Remember that we don’t turn WiFi on when we test battery life, so your mileage may vary.

For more about how the GoPro Hero 3+ did in our lab tests, check out our Science Page

Conclusion

A solid upgrade

If you’re still holding onto a Hero2-generation device, the Hero3+ is a substantial step up. It has the smaller, lighter chassis of the Hero3 Black Edition with enough of a boost in performance to make it definitely worth the wait. If you already own a Hero3-generation camera, you won’t see a day-and-night difference in footage shot with the 3+. Even though we saw higher quality video, this revision isn’t a complete overhaul. In essence, it’s still the same Hero3 that we checked out earlier in the year. That said, the longer run time and slightly boosted sharpness do sweeten the pot quite a bit if you need the absolute best from your action cam.

With rival action cam maker Contour on the rocks, GoPro continues to be the leading force in this segment. The Hero3+ continues to put options from the likes of Sony to shame, offering a complete system of accessories and an impressive feature set. That’s exactly what will keep buyers coming back generation after generation. If its devices continue to be as solid as this little camera, it'll be a while before GoPro's dominance is truly challenged.

By the Numbers

Action cams aren’t known for making high quality images. For these compact form factor devices, it’s all about ruggedness and the ability to capture what was previously impossible to shoot. From the ski slopes to the deep blue sea, GoPros have seen and done it all. Since the Hero3 form factor was basically as compact as it could be, GoPro kept the form factor and refined the internals with the GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition.

Sharpness Performance

The way that GoPro is able to offer so many different shooting options is by downsampling a 12-megapixel sensor to whatever resolution is selected. Sometimes, downsampling can deteriorate visible sharpness and detail. We were impressed that the Hero3+ Black Edition managed to beat its predecessor with higher sharpness numbers in our standard HD tests.

We measured 700 lp/ph horizontal and 800 lp/ph when shooting 30p video. We didn’t see a difference in sharpness at the camera’s max resolution of 4K, or at the slightly scaled down 2.7K resolution. The camera’s extra-wide angle SuperView mode caused a loss of resolution, so if you want the sharpest output possible you’ll want to keep that option turned off.

Low Light Motion

Usually, small-sensor cameras like the Hero3+ Black Edition have issues in low light. Well, GoPro proved us wrong last year and we’re here again to say that the Hero maintains its excellent low light performance. Our Hero3+ Black Edition only required 3 lux to record a usable image, and 1.5 lux with ProTune turned on. Compare that to last year’s model that needed 6 lux and 2 lux with ProTune. Not too shabby.

You should keep in mind that ProTune does add noticeable noise to the image, which you are supposed to get rid of in post production.

Motion & Detail

Thanks to the Hero3+ Black’s long, long list of resolutions and frame rates, you can easily capture your footage the way you envision it. Whether it’s a super slo-mo 240 fps, cinematic 1080/24p or silky-smooth 1080/60p, GoPro’s covered all the bases.

So, it comes as little surprise that the test footage we shot with the Hero3+ Black Edition looked pretty great. We noticed a little bit of trailing and just a hint of visible artifacts. We were pleased to note that the frequency interference issues that we saw with the first-generation Hero3 Black Edition were absent in footage we captured with the Hero3+ version.

Battery Life

Even though the Hero3+ Black shares the same, tight chassis with its predecessor, we were shocked at how much extra runtime somehow fit into its tiny shell. We observed an extra half-hour of shooting time with the 3+ Black, totaling 2 hours. Part of the battery life is probably due to the higher-capacity, 1180 mAh rechargeable battery. As always, our battery life test was run with WiFi turned off, so you’ll most definitely see a significant drop in overall runtime. If your use case requires wireless remote control either via smartphone or the included remote, you should invest in the Battery BacPac accessory or a second stock battery to keep close at hand.

Meet the tester

Brendan Nystedt

Brendan Nystedt

Contributor

@bnystedt

Brendan is originally from California. Prior to writing for Reviewed.com, he graduated from UC Santa Cruz and did IT support and wrote for a technology blog in the mythical Silicon Valley. Brendan enjoys history, Marx Brothers films, Vietnamese food, cars, and laughing loudly.

See all of Brendan Nystedt's reviews

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