GoPro Announces the Hero5 and Karma Drone

The new GoPro Hero5 Black and Hero5 Session cameras

GoPro has announced their latest addition to their camera lineup: the GoPro Hero5 Black and GoPro Hero5 Session. The Hero5 Black will cost $399 and the smaller Session camera will be $299 and both will become available on October 2. A very interesting new feature on the Hero5 Black is that it is waterproof to 10 meters (33 feet) without needing a housing. It also has three on-board microphones for better sound with less wind noise and for newly added voice control. You can start and stop recordings, take pictures and tag highlights in your clips with your voice. GoPro didn't stop there and improved usability by adding a 2-inch touchscreen for easy setup instead of the sometimes painful to use three-button control setup. Further more, the new Hero5 Black can capture 12-megapixel photos in RAW format, records video in 4K-resolution and has a wide dynamic range mode. There's also a new linear-view setting that automatically corrects wide-angle distortions. The new GoPro Session also has this option, but can only capture pictures in 10-megapixels and lacks RAW capture and wide dynamic range mode. The price gap between the Black and the Session is only $100 dollars, but it's a big leap in terms of included features which will make the Hero5 greatly favorable unless you're on a really strict budget.

A 2-inch touchscreen for easy control

For just $5-per-month you can get a GoPro Plus subscription that enables you to use a cloud service that enables uploading, editing and sharing your clips with any phone or computer. While charging the Hero5, the camera will upload your recordings to the service. But to be able to do so, all recordings (no matter the original recording format) will be transcoded into 1080p footage for easy sharing your recordings. You will also have access to licensed library music and you receive 20% off on mounts and accessories from GoPro's site. When you don't feel like searching through all the newly captured footage and spend a lot of time on editing, you can use GoPro's new mobile editing apps that will analyze your captured pictures and video clips to find the most exiting stuff to include and cuts out the boring bits and add transitions and effects and sync it up to the music of your choice. Of course you can still make changes if needed, but it will speed up the editing process a whole lot.

Next to all of this exiting news, GoPro alo announced their own new drone: the GoPro Karma. Specifically and understandably so designed to use with their own cameras with simplified controls for novice drone pilots. You can fly it using something that looks similar to a game controller with a neat flip-up touchscreen. So no need to use your own smartphone or tablet. The Karma is very compact and will fit in many regular sized backpacks, although it also comes with its own custom case. It will work with the new Hero5 cameras, but there's also one compatible with the Hero4 cameras. But the real fun thing is the three-axis camera stabilizer attached to the drone. Not only does it produce super smooth aerial footage, but it is also removable from the drone, so that you can attach it to the included Karma Grip for handheld use. GoPro's Karma will be available from October 23 for $799 without a camera, or $999 with the Hero5 Session and $1,099 with the Hero5 Black. So buying the Karma together with the Hero5 camera will get you a drone complete with controller and and built-in LCD screen, handheld 3-axis stabilizer and a Hero5 camera for $100 less then its original list price. A pretty sweet deal if you ask me!