What new treats might the rumored GoPro Hero 10 Black bring? We’ve rounded up all the latest rumors and combined them with our analysis of what to expect from the flagship action cam.
We’re quickly approaching the time of year when GoPro traditionally launches a new flagship action camera. And while GoPro Hero 10 Black rumors are thin on the ground right now, it’s surely preparing something special for the tenth edition of its Hero range. At least, that’s what we’re hoping. After all, despite some strong competition from rivals like the DJI Osmo Action and Insta360 One R, the main line GoPros still tend to deliver a best-in-class combination of usability, image quality and stabilization. The big improvements in last year’s GoPro Hero 9 Black included a higher resolution sensor, a longer battery life and a front screen for on-the-fly framing. It’s the most vlogging-friendly camera GoPro has made so far. But GoPro can do better in 2021. In this article we’ll look at what we think GoPro will bring to the Hero 10 Black, plus some features that are suggested commonly online that we don’t think will happen, and why. GoPro has announced a new Black-series flagship action cam in late September or early October every year since the Hero 5 Black landed in 2016. Given this was not pushed back in 2020, despite the pandemic, we’re expecting GoPro to keep the same launch window in 2021. There are currently no Hero 10 Black pricing leaks, but we don’t expect to see a big change from the Hero 9 Black’s original $449.99/£429.99/AU$699.95 pricing. However, if the new camera launches at the same price this may feel like a hike, as GoPro dropped the price of the Hero 9 Black slightly in January 2021. Here are some of the changes we may see to justify the upgrade. This is the number one change the GoPro Hero 10 needs to make: a fresh processor. The GoPro Hero 9 Black is the premier action camera in town, but it often does not feel as pristine as that title might imply. Despite a recent firmware upgrade, it remains a little slow in operation, often failing to respond to touchscreen presses, while scrolling can feel laggy. This is often blamed on the touchscreen itself, but the GoPro Hero 9 Black has a capacitive touchscreen. These can be faulty, but don’t suffer from the sort of genuine screen tap failures you might see in a resistive screen (which are now barely used in consumer tech). The problem is down to the software, and the processor that keeps that software ticking over. GoPro has used the GP1 processor in its cameras since 2017’s Hero 7 Black. It’s time for a change, and the situation is only made worse by the continuing development of the software. More features and complexity, run by more-or-less the same engine. The DJI Osmo Action’s menu system feels more responsive than the GoPro Hero 9 Black’s and, much to our surprise, so did plenty of the budget models we used in our best cheap action cameras tests. They have much thinner interfaces, but that’s no real excuse when we, as the people using GoPros, have to put up with quite obvious lag and jankiness. GoPros are great at lots of things, but like most action cameras their image quality tends to fall apart in low light. This is largely because they have small sensors, which have relatively low native light sensitivity thanks to their tiny pixels.
