GoPro Announces the Hero3+, a ‘Smaller, Lighter and Mightier’ Action Cam

With all of these upcoming digital camera announcements rumored for October, nobody was paying particular attention to GoPro until today, when the company unveiled the followup to its popular Hero3, the Hero3+ — a smaller, lighter and more capable new offering for adventure junkies everywhere.

The tagline for the new shooter is “Smaller, Lighter, Mightier still.” and we can’t accuse GoPro of lying there … it seems to be true on all three counts.

As with its predecessor, the Hero3+ will be available in a flagship Black edition and a less-capable (though certainly still plenty capable) Silver edition for those who need a cheaper alternative. And although the Black edition got the lion’s share of the upgrades, both cameras have seen noticeable improvements.

For the flagship model, GoPro has managed to shrink its already small camera down by 20% and increase WiFi speed four times over while also increasing image sharpness by 33% and reducing image artifacts (thanks to a new lens). All of this while improving battery life by 30%.

The Silver edition also gets some performance boosts, with the same 4x faster WiFi, a 15% decrease in size, the ability to shoot 1080p at 60fps and 720p at 120fps, and 2x faster image processing than its silver edition predecessor.

In addition to all this, the Black edition also comes with a few firmware-based improvements as well. A new Auto Low Light mode will automatically adjust your video’s frame rate when the ambient light changes so you never miss a shot, and the SuperView mode presents 4:3 aspect ratio footage at an immersive, wider-angle 16:9 ratio.

Here’s some sample footage the company has released to show off what the new Hero3+ Black edition can do:

“The HERO3+ illustrates GoPro’s commitment to innovation,” says GoPro Founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman. “We took the world’s best-selling ultra compact camera and made it better because we’re relentless in our pursuit of delivering the best possible user experience to our customers.”

If you’d like learn more or get your hands on one of these puppies yourself, head over to GoPro’s website for more details. Both the Black and Silver editions will be available starting this week, with the flagship model costing $400 and the Silver $300.