Not GoPro alone: ​​the main competitors of the Hero series | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Source: onfoto.ru

GoPro is not just a mar­ket leader in action cam­eras, the very name of the com­pa­ny has become a house­hold name and almost syn­ony­mous with cam­eras of this type. The com­pa­ny’s devices are installed on the hel­mets of skiers, cyclists and sky­divers, as well as on self­ie sticks of ordi­nary users around the world. The new GoPro HERO9 Black promis­es to fur­ther expand our under­stand­ing of what action cam­eras can do, but GoPro has some seri­ous com­pe­ti­tion. Some of them offer a num­ber of fea­tures that are not found in the mod­els of the Amer­i­can com­pa­ny, while oth­ers offer sim­i­lar (and some­times almost iden­ti­cal) func­tion­al­i­ty at a sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er price. Below we’ll take a look at some of the most inter­est­ing, in our opin­ion, GoPro com­peti­tors.

DJI Osmo Action

Action cam­era DJI Osmo Action.

DJI’s Osmo Action is rec­og­niz­able by its 1.4‑inch front-fac­ing col­or dis­play (GoPro only added a col­or front screen to the new ninth mod­el) with a res­o­lu­tion of 320 x 320 pix­els, which makes it much eas­i­er to take self­ies and vlogs.

The front and rear dis­plays are touch-con­trolled, while the cam­era allows you to use the touch­screen lock func­tion to avoid acci­den­tal press­ing and chang­ing set­tings. The cam­era can also be con­trolled using five voice com­mands reserved for basic func­tions.

DJI has lever­aged its expe­ri­ence as a world leader in drone videog­ra­phy by equip­ping its action cam­era with Rock­Steady elec­tron­ic image sta­bi­liza­tion, which is avail­able in most video modes. The cam­era uses a 1/2.3‑inch CMOS sen­sor and a wide-angle (145-degree field of view) f/2.8 lens to cap­ture video up to 4K/60p (includ­ing high dynam­ic range HDR mate­r­i­al) and 12-megapix­el pho­tos.

There are two built-in micro­phones and an input for an exter­nal micro­phone. In addi­tion, DJI Osmo Action can with­stand immer­sion up to 11 meters for 30 sec­onds with­out addi­tion­al pro­tec­tion.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX0 II

Action cam­era Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX0 II with 1‑inch sen­sor

The size and rugged body of this Sony cam­era is in line with most oth­er mod­els in its class, but the Cyber-shot name alone sug­gests that this is more than just a stan­dard action cam­era. With a 1‑inch Exmor RS mul­ti-lay­er CMOS sen­sor capa­ble of cap­tur­ing 15.3‑megapixel still images and inter­nal UHD 4K/30p video record­ing, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX0 II remains the leader in pic­ture qual­i­ty among all action cam­eras. In addi­tion to the large sen­sor, the cam­era received a 24mm equiv­a­lent ZEISS Tes­sar T* lens with f/4 and a min­i­mum focus­ing dis­tance of 18cm, elec­tron­ic image sta­bi­liza­tion and a sep­a­rate DRAM chip that speeds up infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing and increas­es over­all per­for­mance. And the BIONZ X proces­sor enables low-light shoot­ing up to ISO 12800 and burst pho­tog­ra­phy up to 16 fps.

For high qual­i­ty video, the RX0 II allows you to out­put uncom­pressed 4:2:2 4K video stream via HDMI, and for more pro­fes­sion­al audio record­ing, there is a 3.5mm input for an exter­nal micro­phone. High frame rate mode pro­vides slow motion at up to 1000 frames per sec­ond. The mod­el is equipped with a 1.5‑inch dis­play with a res­o­lu­tion of 230K dots, which can be tilt­ed 180° for tak­ing self­ies and vlog­ging, Wi-Fi and Blue­tooth are also sup­port­ed.

SJCAM SJ8 Pro

Action cam­era SJCAM SJ8 Pro with aquabox includ­ed

The SJCAM SJ8 Pro is a very light­weight action cam­era with a 2.33-inch IPS Reti­na LED touch­screen dis­play. The cam­era comes with a range of option­al acces­sories, includ­ing a water­proof case and a han­dle­bar mount.

The SJ8 Pro lets you shoot 4K video at up to 60 frames per sec­ond, as well as 12-megapix­el pho­tos in JPEG and RAW for­mat. Despite the bud­get seg­ment, the cam­era is equipped with a very good 1/2.3‑inch SONY IMX377 CMOS sen­sor and the Ambarel­la H22 S85 chipset, which is respon­si­ble for advanced data pro­cess­ing and a sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tem based on a six-axis gyro­scope.

The mod­el offers a whole range of spe­cial modes, includ­ing time-lapse, con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing, slow motion, video + pho­to and shoot­ing in the first per­son (FPV mode). Wi-Fi is sup­port­ed at 2.4 and 5 GHz, an option­al remote con­trol is avail­able, and the cam­era can also be con­trolled from a smart­phone via the SJCAM Zone app for iOS and Android. In addi­tion, the appli­ca­tion has basic func­tion­al­i­ty for edit­ing pho­tos and videos.

Insta360 ONE R 4K

Insta360 ONE R 4K Mod­u­lar Action Cam­era

The main fea­ture of Insta360 One R is its unique mod­u­lar design. We have pre­vi­ous­ly reviewed this mod­el in detail. The Insta360 ONE R 4K ver­sion con­sists of three mod­ules — a 4K wide-angle mod­ule, a main brain mod­ule, and a bat­tery. On top of it all sits a plas­tic guard with a GoPro-com­pat­i­ble mount at the base. The beau­ty of the sys­tem is that you can replace the 4K cam­era with oth­er mod­ules, includ­ing Leica’s 1‑inch wide-angle cam­era (Ins­ta 360 One R 1 Inch ver­sion) that shoots 5.3K video, and a 360-degree cam­era mod­ule. video (Ins­ta 360 One R 360 ver­sion). You can also buy the Ins­ta 360 One R Twin Edi­tion com­bo with 360-degree and 4K cam­eras includ­ed.

The main mod­ule is equipped with a touch screen, which can be set to the self­ie posi­tion when used with the 4K mod­ule. The 4K ver­sion uses a wide-angle lens (16.4mm equiv.) with a max­i­mum aper­ture of f/2.8. The main unit records video at dif­fer­ent res­o­lu­tions depend­ing on which cam­era it is attached to.

Despite the mod­u­lar design, the cam­era is water­proof up to 5 meters with­out an addi­tion­al case and can oper­ate at tem­per­a­tures from ‑20 to 40°C. We also rec­om­mend that you pay atten­tion to anoth­er mod­el of the man­u­fac­tur­er — Insta360 GO, which is a tiny wear­able cam­era with a num­ber of inter­est­ing fea­tures for every­day use.

OMI OmiCam

Wear­able spher­i­cal action cam­era OMI Omi­Cam

Like the Insta360 GO, the OMI Omi­Cam wear­able spher­i­cal action cam­era is designed more for every­day shoot­ing. It pro­vides up to 15 hours of Lifel­og inter­val record­ing and 70 min­utes of con­tin­u­ous 4K record­ing.

Omi­Cam fea­tures a unique 360-degree clip that eas­i­ly attach­es to a jack­et or back­pack strap, and the lens tilts for­ward at a 45° angle, per­fect for POV shoot­ing. The cam­era uses a 12-megapix­el sen­sor and a 240° fish­eye sen­sor to cap­ture Ultra HD 4K, 2.5K, and Full HD 1080p video at 30fps, as well as still images at 4320 x 2160 res­o­lu­tion. The device applies two sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tems at once to the footage of smooth­ness and addi­tion­al hor­i­zon­tal align­ment: Hor­i­zon­tal Move­ment Sta­bi­liza­tion and E‑Gimbal Sta­bi­liza­tion.

Omi­Cam is quite light and is also equipped with pro­tec­tion against rain and dust. The cam­era is avail­able with an option­al water­proof case for under­wa­ter shoot­ing, as well as a set of acces­sories for mount­ing on bicy­cles, snow­boards, etc.

Worth paying attention

Olym­pus Sty­lus Tough TG Track­er Rugged Cam­era

In addi­tion to the mod­els men­tioned above, there are a num­ber of devices that do not always for­mal­ly fit into the def­i­n­i­tion of “action cam­eras”.

For exam­ple, the Olym­pus Sty­lus Tough TG Track­er is noth­ing like a stan­dard action cam­era. It is a close rel­a­tive of the top-notch rugged Olym­pus Tough series cam­eras with a very robust body and LOG mode for log­ging data from the built-in GPS, com­pass, accelerom­e­ter, ther­mome­ter and barom­e­ter.

Spe­cial­ly cer­ti­fied for weapon use, the SiOnyx Auro­ra PRO Night Vision Cam­era is IP67 rat­ed and fea­tures a 1‑inch large pix­el CMOS sen­sor for shoot­ing in extreme low light con­di­tions.

Final­ly, there is a ded­i­cat­ed cam­era for motor­cy­clists, the Sena Prism Blue­tooth Action Cam­era Motor­cy­cle Pack. This 1080p action cam­era is equipped with a num­ber of spe­cial Blue­tooth fea­tures, includ­ing hel­met-mount­ed record­ing and voice feed­back. The device comes with a set of quick-release mounts for motor­cy­clists to cap­ture hands-free video while rid­ing.

Have you used any of these cam­eras? We’d love to hear about your expe­ri­ence in the com­ments.

* when prepar­ing the arti­cle, mate­ri­als from the resources bhphotovideo.com and onfoto.ru were used