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GoPro HERO4 Revealed! 4K Video at 30FPS and the First Built-In Touch Display

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The rumor mill is abuzz with speculation, but we have the first full scoop on the GoPro HERO4.

As many have reported, the two big features that are appearing are 4K video recording at 30FPS and a built-in touch display.

Unfortunately, these two features won’t be appearing in the same camera. Instead, there will be two models: the HERO4 Black (shown above) and the HERO4 Silver (shown below).

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HERO4 Black

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The HERO4 Black is a powerhouse action camera that doubles the performance of the previous GoPro (yet again). Touted as “the most advanced GoPro ever,” it has improved image quality and a 2x more powerful processor.

The Black will capture 4K video at 30 frames per second, up from the 15fps of previous GoPros, allowing for extremely high-quality footage that’s much more usable for a wide variety of applications.

Here are the available resolutions and frame rates: 4K at 30fps, 2.7K at 50fps, 1440p at 80fps, 1080p at 120fps, 960p at 120fps, and 720p at 120fps. It appears these cameras are no longer capable of 240fps. [Update: These are actually the 'key resolutions'. We've published a complete chart of available resolutions below]

For still images, you’ll be able to capture 12 megapixel photos at 30 frames per second.

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Audio capture is also improved, with the new system capturing 2x the dynamic range.

On the front of the camera is an ultra-wide angle glass lens, and the camera can be set to three different field-of-view settings: Ultra Wide, Medium, and Narrow.

There will be new manual settings for both photography and videography — controls such as color, ISO limit, exposure, and more.

The camera is waterproof down to 131 feet (40m). Other features include built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, exposure settings for nighttime shooting, a “HiLight Tag” feature for marking key moments in footage, a QuikCapture feature for powering up and recording with one button press, and auto low light features.

Regarding the issue of backward compatibility, the Black and Silver will both be compatible with all GoPro mounts and accessories.

HERO4 Silver

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The HERO4 Silver doesn’t offer 4K video recording at 30fps (it still does 15fps), but it’s the first GoPro to offer a convenient built-in touch display.

Users will be able to control the camera, frame shots, and review content simply by tapping and swiping the screen.

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On the video side, the Silver will be able to capture 4K at 15fps, 2.7K at 30fps, 1440p at 48fps, 1080p at 60fps, 960p at 100fps, and 720p at 120fps. [Update: These are actually the 'key resolutions'. We've published a complete chart of available resolutions below]

For still photography, the Silver will match the Black with 12 megapixel photos at 30 frames per second.

The other features (e.g. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HiLight Tag, QuikCapture, waterproofing) are pretty much the same as the HERO4 Black.

Other Accessories

Other accessories to be announced alongside the HERO4 include: a blackout housing that gives your camera a matte black finish for stealthy and low-glare shooting, a removable battery pack that gives your GoPro more juice, a dual battery charger for juicing two packs simultaneously, a wearable waterproof remote, and a grip that keeps your camera afloat.

Pricing and Availability

We haven’t heard anything in terms of pricing and availability, but our source tells us that the official announcement date for the GoPro HERO4 cameras will most likely be October 8th, 2014.


Update: Some of you have asked how reliable this information it. It should be 100% accurate, as we were given access to product photos and full spec sheets.


Update: We have learned that GoPro will also be announcing an entry-level HERO camera. Here’s our major leak on that camera.


Update: Whoops. The resolutions and frame rates we published earlier were only a subset of what will be available to users. Here are the full charts:

GoPro HERO4 Black

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GoPro HERO4 Silver

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  • Kaleb Izaiah Ivanoff

    The battery life was improved from 3 to 3+

  • Kaleb Izaiah Ivanoff

    The battery life was improved about 25% from 3 to 3+, so I would say it improves slightly but with no change in form factor its hard to see how they do it besides quality adjustments in software optimization. I believe they are running a proprietary 1180mah battery which is pretty much the best when looking at 3rd party products. They could probably do an in-house 1200mah with software optimization that would boost the life about another 25%. After that we have to hope some genius is hard at work developing a battery that can somehow film HD for long periods while remaining ergonomic for commercial use. We take for granted how hard those tiny batteries are working to shoot HD footage for extended periods.

  • Kaleb Izaiah Ivanoff

    Their marketing is weak, GoPro is sold as a whole concept, while the Sony, aka the SAC, is really just the product. People want to pull out their phones and open the app and see what they did, then throw it on the studio and edit it, and do all that without using any 3rd party software.

  • Kaleb Izaiah Ivanoff

    Holy crap, are we related??

  • Kaleb Izaiah Ivanoff

    Garmin has just the camera for you.

  • Angus Sullivan

    i love 240 fps i want it even slower :(

  • Jurij Turnšek

    12mp vs 8mp is due to different crop factors probably. Sony A7s can capture 12mp still in 3:2 aspect ratio and 8mp in 16:9 ratio. So, the 12mp images would have to be cropped to 8mp for video editing.

  • David P.

    2.7K is already enough I think, its perfectly sharp on my Macbook Pro Retina

  • Knut

    Why don’t they also offer the built-in LCD for the black edition? for me this is a big
    disadvantage compared to the silver offering the lcd within same
    dimensions. does the 4k 30fps (black) vs 2,7k 30fps (silver) advantage furthermore really justify a 100 $/€ price gap?

  • Menace

    Is the Hero 4 smaller than the Hero 3 or 3+ ? It seems so if they announce a new battery bacpac and a new blackout housing. And what about the electronic image stabilizer (EIS)?

  • Menace

    So that you can buy the Hero 4+ Black one year later which will include a touchscreen ;-)

  • Paul-Old Skool-Scott

    Photokina was full of Video this year, i know as i worked there myself fro Blackmagic who are all Video Cameras and Colour Grading software, i must say the amount of people i spoke to in 6 days who shoot video and not just wedding photographers was huge…

    Go Pro had a stand and there was a lot of
    GoPro Accessories stands surrounding them,
    in the two halls 3 and 4 of where they where Go Pro
    was set up in hall 9…

    I think the Video presence at Photokina was huge this year,
    RED, Panasonic where pushing 4K in a big way,
    Blackmagic where there for the first time (won’t be the last)
    Polaroid launched a new action camera…

    Its fair to say these are very competitive times
    with the Action Cameras and the whole consumer jump being pushed to 4k ?

  • Duane Mann

    you do realise the wi-fi remote already comes with the 3 & 3+ “out of the box” right?

  • http://www.tommytwowheels.com/ TommyTwoWheels

    Eventually Apple may catch back up to Samsung

  • Maxim

    “Especially at GoPro’s price point” ummm they’re most likely raising the price by $100 compared to the 3+ so they could definetley include a remote. It would just hurt their margins a bit.

  • alex

    still “no fisheye” in camera mode? :( dang it gopro!

  • http://arkitography.com David Kilper

    Must be why Apple is losing ground to companies that sell $50 phones in India and China and why their market share has been steadily dropping for five years. Clearly you’re crazy to think they rule anything. Great phones don’t equal dominance.

  • Bradley Ambrose

    Sounds like it’ll be a great release. Love to get my hands on one. Again…

  • amanieux

    what about a sliding nd filter to efficiently and easily switch between low light and full sunny conditions ? considering the size of the lens it would cost 5 extra bucks, would it be too much to ask ??

  • Digital Tech Reviews

    Will only the Silver Edition have the display on the back?

  • Giorgio Lo Cicero

    A 4K cam that can make 30 fps 12 Mpx photos, doesn’t make any sense with those kind of lenses…I mean it’s like a Ferrari with a small car wheels……Now with 80 US$ you can get a good 4K action camera….if you want a super camera you need the right lenses…I can’t imagine to make a movie with a Gopro…I can use it to film just a few actions…but if I want a great photography…I need something else … a 37mm lens is too small to guarantee a good movie…..so…I guess it’s useless to continue to improve the megapixell if you can’t improve the lens… Gopro should work for a much better image stabilizer which is not that great t this time. Just my thoughts, of course.

  • Mitchell Breitfuss

    Yes they are, just because they don’t use a brute force 2.4Ghz quad core processor does not mean that they are inferior. Speed is not everything, the architecture, (which the A series chips destroy Qualcomm chips and Exynos) is more important. An example of this is the comparable, if not better performance of the iPhone compared to android flagships, despite of its lower speed processor.

    Now I personally prefere android but it doesn’t stop me from acknowledging the iPhone’s performance.

  • sportbikechic

    Need advice plz? About to buy the black3 or would you wait for hero4?

  • Jason Pope

    One thing on my wish list as an Aerial Photographer that still didint make the list. Downlink to Smartphone or Tablet on the 5.8ghz range instead of 2.4 that can interfere with the aircraft. Should be something easy to implement as even the cheap Chinese cameras like the C-GO1 and the Walkera Camera both downlink at 5.8ghz. And one more thing why are the flagship resolutions only available in that GOD AWFUL Wide Angle Fisheye crap? Who likes that? It makes Aerial Photography horrible looking and distorted.

  • Raden Wahyudi

    and the battery will last for how many hours?

  • David Gurney

    Pretty useless without knowing the bitrate. Garbage blown up to 3840×2160 is still garbage. And is there still no endless-recording mode? Come on, how do you continue to omit this obvious feature year after year?

  • David Gurney

    Their market share of what? They don’t operate in the market of cheap-ass phones.

  • Tom

    David, endless recording has existed for awhile. My Hero3 Black has that feature anyway.

  • Greg Walden

    The question is how is the battery life? Will it suffer like the original Hero 3 with bad battery life? Will they have to do a 4+ like they did with the 3+ to address some of those issues?

    To be honest, most people are not going to do 4K – 1) Most of us don’t have 4K TV’s and most computers that we use do not support 4K and 2) To edit 4K video, you have to have a real beefy computer to edit them in. Even with a Core i5 with 4GB memory, I can just barely edit 1080p. I usually edit in 720p since it edits well and still looks good.

  • Gaston Berrio

    Will GoPro release a HypEye for the 4?

  • Rudi

    And D4s should have been the first D3 :(

  • JonathonWatkins

    OK, so there is no RAWDNG, but there is this:

    Protune™, now for photo + video.
    Protune unlocks the camera’s full potential, delivering minimally compressed, cinema-caliber video optimized for professional productions, and advanced manual controls for photos and video. Flex your creativity with customizable settings for Color, ISO Limit, White Balance, Sharpness and Exposure—and enjoy the greatest degree of manual control available in a GoPro camera.

    http://shop.gopro.com/EMEA/hero4

    Wonder how much control that will give us.

  • Nicholas Polydor

    “GoRAW: Get closer to the action.”

    Joking aside, why on earth are they splitting the 2160p30 / 1080p120 and touch-screen functions across two models, rather than increasing the price by $25 and combining them?!

  • http://ingomettes.nl ingo

    Sorry I’m dropping in… I’m going on a diving trip in oktober and thought the new GoPro was an ideal camera for up to 40 metres…. But will I have to buy a GoPro housing extra…? Is there a link you (the experts on this) could post on the housing required? And which one do I need? The black, silver or surf? I want to use the GoPro under water (till -40m) and above to take pictures (underwater as well) use in dark conditions etc…. And do you reccomend any other extra’s? I’ll take my MacBokPro with me so footage can be saved every day. Extra battery, extra memory, smart diving-stuff?
    Thanks everyone!! ;-)

  • felix

    There’s no 17:9 anymore?