GoPro Hero 9 Black review: All action hero

Upon its initial launch, the Hero 9 Black was GoPro's most powerful camera ever, and its most significant diamond transpiration since the Hero 5 all the way when in 2016.

Now, it has been succeeded by the Hero 10 Black, an scrutinizingly identical camera visually, but one that has seen numerous improvements on the inside.

The Hero 9 Black is still stuff manufactured by GoPro and acts as the 'entry-level' model in its lineup, with a significantly lower price than the Hero 10 Black.

But, just considering it's cheaper, doesn't midpoint it can't perform at the top level. So, let's take a squint at what this diddy camera can do.

Familiar, yet new

• Dimensions: 71 x 55 x 33.6mm
• Microphone (with water drain)
• Waterproof to 10m (33ft)
• Built-in mounting

Anyone plane remotely familiar with how GoPro products tend to squint will immediately recognise the Hero 9 Black. It has all the hallmark features of a GoPro - plane if this is the biggest Hero diamond transpiration since the Hero 5. It's not quite as big a jump as Hero 4 to Hero 5 was, but it's still big. In terms of size that is: it's the largest standard single-camera Hero GoPro has released to date.

In a way, it was the Hero 8 that paved the way for this size increase, by doing yonder with the need for any cases for mounting. Instead, the mounting stovepipe are built into the underside of the Hero 9 camera - and that ways you don't need to worry well-nigh whether or not the camera will fit in any specific cases or on particular mounts or handles. You just screw it directly onto any of them using the standard screw pin.

The reason that's such a big deal is that it's made it possible to modernize so much of the hardware, both in terms of practicality and in internal power. Namely, there's a worthier shower - but increasingly on that later.

As well as that larger size, the other big new Hero 9 full-length is the colour screen on the front. Rather than just be a vital monochrome screen with information on your current shooting settings, it unquestionably shows a preview of what you're shooting so - if you want - you can shoot vlogs facing the camera lens and frame them without any guesswork.

Sure, it's not as easy to frame as when using the worthier widescreen ratio exhibit on the back, but it's certainly increasingly useful than the previous data-only tideway of its predecessors.

Apart from that, it's very much the same as other previous Hero cameras: there's the red sawed-off on the top for starting a recording or shooting a photo; then the power/mode sawed-off on the left (the one you press-and-hold to switch it on, then tap to trundling through the shooting modes).

What's interesting is that GoPro has made the water-resistance increasingly efficient in the latest model too. Underneath the mode sawed-off is a 'drain microphone', which his designed to help phlebotomize any glut water out of the camera. It's not that it's not well sealed once - the camera is waterproof to 10 metres - it just helps miscarry water that seeps in and sits virtually in the camera soul if it's got in through the mic or speaker grille.

One nice new touch we enjoy is the red LED light on the front - just whilom the screen. It flashes brightly, and is sat right in the middle, so you can hands tell when you're recording.

The Hero 9 feels substantially increasingly durable compared to previous models too. There's heft to it, but the door on the side feels sturdier, with a stronger squeeze and hinge, while the buttons moreover finger increasingly clicky and easier to use. On the whole it's just that bit increasingly solid.

Like the Hero 8, the 9 is moreover designed to be unsteadfast and increasingly suitable for those who might consider themselves increasingly than just a unstudied whoopee camera user. For these pros there are spare mods you can add on, and they include lights, flip over monitors, a shotgun mic and an ultra-wide lens with wide horizon levelling.

What's it like to use?

• Touchscreen interface
• HyperSmooth
• Voice tenancy

The weightier kind of technology is the kind that does all the heavy lifting for you. And with the Hero 9 that's been a major focus point for the company. That's led to features like the wide HyperSmooth full-length - which combines both electronic and software-based stabilisation to create super smooth footage - just works. Once switched on, its effect is unquestionably quite incredible.

We used our GoPro to mucosa the in-car segments of our Pocket-lint 2020 Awards video, and used it to mucosa some on-robot footage for a robot vacuum promo. What it does in those instances is brilliant.

There's little to no camera shake at all, but increasingly impressively is the fact that the footage automatically pans smoothly when you turn quickly, or - in the specimen of the car - stop at a junction, surpassing turning a corner or joining a roundabout. It doesn't shake or shudder but crops a little into the footage to then requite itself space to move smoothly.

The touchscreen on the when is relatively simple to use once you get the hang of it. There are on-screen icons for enabling features like the HyperSmooth boost, or enabling higher frame rate for slow-motion, or waffly the 'digital lens' (or crop/focal length).

At the marrow of the display, you'll find the long pill-shaped tab for opening up the shooting resolution/frame-rate setting. You can segregate from presets, or create your own. And to get to your photo and video gallery, all you need to do is swipe up from the marrow of the display.

Swiping lanugo from the top of the screen gets you wangle to settings like enabling voice activation, onscreen grids, or just getting to connection and device settings (for instance if you want to transpiration the bleep volume or connect to your phone).

Perhaps the most important resurgence with the Hero 9 is the shower life. At no time during testing did we finger panicked or limited by it, and that's not something that's been historically true for any GoPro. That larger size and larger topics are a big bonus point here. Of course, if you're going to spend a long day out shooting, it's still worthwhile getting a spare, just to be sure.

Video and photo

• 1080p up to 240fps
• 4K up to 60fps
• 5K at 30fps
• 20MP stills

It's in the photo and video quality where you'll notice the biggest difference between a GoPro and a smartphone camera. A big part of this is that the GoPro has a stock-still focus, so struggles to focus on anything tropical to the lens - so it's no good for macro shots. Its low-light performance leaves a lot to be desired too.

Indoors with dim light and plane outside at night shooting with the enhanced night mode you won't get photos or video that squint as sharp, stable and unexceptionable as those from the modern smartphone's night mode. Things get a bit noisy and blurry when shooting photos in these conditions.

In fact, when it comes to photography the Hero 9 is not all that hot. In good daylight, shooting wide shots outdoors, you can get nice pictures with vibrant colour and sharp detail. But all of that goes yonder once you're in lower light situations or trying to shoot something close-up. It just falls untied creating lots of image noise and losing detail.

This is an whoopee camera and therefore it's weightier when stuff used to capture motion where you need stability and where you need to capture as much of a scene as possible. And it's weightier in good plane daylight outdoors.

There's really no shortage of resolution and frame-rate options. You can go all the way up to 4K at 60fps or 5K at 30fps if you want, with digital lenses that can switch you between narrow and wide views.

For slow-motion shooting you can switch to 1080p and have it record up to 240fps, shooting at either 16:9 or 4:3 speciality ratio. The variety of options is virtually endless. So whatever kind of whoopee footage you want to shoot, you can.

Our only criticism of the resulting footage is at times there's a sense that the colours are a bit over-saturated and unrelatedness is too high, while unexceptionable spots and highlights often squint too unexceptionable and overexposed. We don't expect GoPro cameras to be perfect in that regard though, but quality doesn't quite match that of decent smartphones, so the real goody of having it is its durable build and making use of the epic HyperSmooth capabilities.