GoPro HERO8 Black

The GoPro HERO8 Black has new features that will greatly enhance your video content. The camera comes with several video modes including TimeWarp 2.0, which gives you the ability to take stable time-lapse videos. When you are in the middle of the action, you can control the camera using voice commands in 10 languages.

Let’s start with the body. Since the Hero 5, GoPro cameras have been waterproof up to 33 feet without the need of an additional housing, but in order to attach it to anything, you needed to put the camera in a plastic frame. The frame provided the two little loops at the bottom, which you’d put a screw through and attach it to any number of bracket-type things. No more! The Hero 8 is designed to be frameless. It has its own built-in loops at the bottom of the camera that fold in and out. This is very convenient, as I have several times found myself digging through everything I own to find a frame. The caveat is that you do need to tighten the screw down a bit harder than normal or you may get some wiggle with the camera.

The redesign makes the Hero 8 slightly thinner than the naked Hero 7 front to back (28.4mm vs. 33mm), but it’s also slightly wider and taller (66.3mm by 48.6mm vs. 62.3mm by 44.9mm, respectively). It’s smaller than the Hero 7 when it’s in a frame, though, and considering you need the frame to do pretty much anything, the net result is that the Hero 8 is a lot more pocketable. One of the ways it achieved this was by making the lens slightly lower-profile, but the trade-off is that the front lens element is no longer removable. Since the Hero 5, you’ve been able to remove that and buy a cheap replacement if it ever gets scratched or cracked. The new front lens element is thicker and made with Gorilla Glass, and GoPro claims that it is twice as impact-resistant. But on my first review unit I managed to get a little nick on the lens, and I’m honestly not even sure how. It wasn’t enough to mess up the image, but still. The camera being 4.6mm more svelte doesn’t feel worth the risk.

The other major physical difference is that there is now just one big door on the side of the camera that covers your battery, microSD card, and USB-C port. GoPro will soon be releasing a handful of Mods that will snap in where the door goes. A Media Mod adds a higher-quality shotgun-style microphone, a 3.5mm mic port, and two cold shoes. In those cold shoes, you can slot a front-facing external monitor (“Display Mod”) or a 200 lumen LED “Light Mod.” You’ll lose waterproof capabilities when the Media Mod is on (though the light itself is waterproof and can be used separately from the camera), but this is a play to attract more vlogger types, and I think it will appeal to a lot of them. I wasn’t able to test these accessories, though, so the jury is still out.