GoPro Hero 10 Black review: It's the inside that counts

The GoPro Hero 10 Black is the latest and greatest offering from the trademark synonymous with whoopee cameras.

And while the Hero 9 brought with it a dramatic redesign, the Hero 10 Black is - at least on the surface - increasingly of an iterative update.

Despite the familiar looks, though, GoPro indicates that plenty has been put into the new Hero, billing it as the most powerful option it's overly made.

We've been testing out the camera to see how much these tweaks modernize on what was once the best whoopee camera on the market.

Is this still the one to beat, or are competitors whence to tropical the gap?

Design

• Weight: 153g
• Waterproof up to 10m / 33ft
• Replaceable hydrophobic lens cover

The GoPro Hero 10 Black is scrutinizingly identical to the Hero 9 Black, as we mentioned up top. The only visual changes are the undecorous logos on the front and side of the camera, which were grey on its predecessor.

It's lost a marginal value of weight, too, coming in a few grams lighter than the Hero 9. In practice, you're unlikely to notice much of a difference, though we're happy to see that the weight is coming down, as GoPro cameras have had a tendency to get heavier with each generational release.

The lighter weight hasn't made the camera finger any less durable, either. It feels dumbo and solid in the hand, and we can imagine it standing up to some serious vituperate - though, admittedly, we haven't thrown ours off of a cliff just yet.

There's now a hydrophobic coating on the lens protector, as well, which is designed to repel water droplets when filming in wet and wild conditions. We initially thought this was a bit of marketing nonsense, but it unquestionably makes quite a big difference. Given how often GoPro cameras are often used for filming surfing, skiing and the like, this could come in very handy. The lens imbricate is the word-for-word same size as the Hero 9's, so if you were drastic for that hydrophobic coating, you could unchangingly pick up a replacement lens and stick it on your 9.

Elsewhere, everything remains the same. You have a large side door that latches securely and covers the battery, USB-C port and micro SD vellum slot. Two metal mounting tabs fold out from the base, and you have a large touchscreen on the rear, as well as a smaller screen on the front of the camera.

Video and photo capture

• Video resolution: 5.3K/60fps, 4K/120fps, 2.7K/240fps
• Photo resolution: 23MP
• HyperSmooth 4.0 and up to 45-degree horizon levelling

The largest upgrades to this camera come in the form of frame rates. Wideness all resolutions, the maximum frame rate has substantially doubled. This ways you can mucosa 120fps slow motion at 4K or a staggering 240fps at 2.7K. You can moreover now mucosa at 24 fps wideness all resolutions, a full-length that was unavailable at launch and has since been widow in firmware updates - very handy for those mixing footage with traditional cameras.

The image produced is a familiar one, with the signature sharpness and saturated colours we have come to expect from GoPro's colour profiles. There are increasingly options than overly surpassing when it comes to tweaking this image, though.

Previous Hero cameras unliable us to select between GoPro Colour and Flat profiles, but the Hero 10 changes things up a bit, instead offering the nomination of Vibrant, Natural and Flat. The Natural profile was the most pleasing image to our eyes, as, like the name suggests, it looks quite natural. Vibrant is unreceptive to the old GoPro Colour option and Flat is designed to capture the maximum dynamic range for editing in post. All in all, the video footage looks very similar to the Hero 9, just with increasingly options for variegated resolutions and frame rates, and that works just fine for us.

One zone that has noticeably improved is image stabilisation. HyperSmooth 4.0 does a truly superb job of stabilising video footage, plane in the toughest conditions. It does so smoothly, too, gradually ramping up the corrections in order to stave robotic-looking movements. It's wondrous to think that a few years ago, producing footage like this would involve delivering virtually a cumbersome gimbal, which still rarely performed as well HyperSmooth does today. Horizon levelling has improved quite drastically, as well, now worldly-wise to maintain a lock at steeper inclines than overly before.

In the photo department, we get a 3-megapixel uplift over the last generation, and both HDR and RAW shooting options remain present. Images come out looking sharp and detailed, provided you have sufficient lighting. That said, low light is still a weak point on the Hero 10. You can moreover pull 19.6MP stills from your 5.3K 4:3 video footage, which allows you to select the perfect moment from a once-in-a-lifetime stunt.

Last but not least, there is an zillions of time-lapse and hyper-lapse options with stabilisation and horizon levelling support. These don't towards to have reverted dramatically since the last generation, with the exception stuff that TimeWarp can now take wholesomeness of the Hero 10's superior HyperSmooth stabilisation.

Features and battery

• Swappable 1720mAh lithium-ion battery
• Live streaming functionality
• GP2 processor

Thanks to the new GP2 processor, the responsiveness of the touchscreen on the Hero 10 Black is leaps and premises superiority of its predecessor. Navigation is so much increasingly fluid, and the initial startup time is a bit quicker, too. It's not quite at smartphone level, but it's a much-needed resurgence on the restrictedly clunky-feeling menus on the Hero 9. We moreover noticed that the front screen is much less prone to frame-drops while recording, which, while it's not the most important thing, does add a layer of refinement to the device.

The Hero 10 uses the same batteries as the last generation, which is both a positive and a negative. On one hand, those upgrading can protract to use their existing batteries to alimony the Hero 10 powered up.

But, on the other hand, there's definitely no shower life improvement. In fact, it might be a little bit lower due to the increasingly power-hungry tweedle inside. It would seem that GoPro is enlightened of this, and, in the time since its release, has begun to offer an extended Enduro shower pack as an optional add-on. It would have been nice for that to have been included in the box, but, hey, perhaps it will with the Hero 11.

Speaking of things included in the box, there's now a USB-C to USB-C subscription and a USB-C to Lightning subscription in there. This is to indulge for the wired transfer of clips to your smartphone, which is much faster than the wireless option and a godsend for anyone who's overly had to fiddle virtually with the Quik app in the middle of nowhere.

You can moreover live stream to Twitch, YouTube and Facebook using the GoPro Quik app, which could be a user-friendly option for content creators on the go. However, in our experience, the wireless connection between Android phones and the Hero 10 (or any GoPro camera) is rarely painless, and relying on that for a live stream seems less than ideal.