I went ahead and ordered the GoPro HERO4 Session. This is the first GoPro I’ve ever owned, believe it or not. I picked it up to mostly test and review for you guys but I was on the fence about buying the original GoPro HERO4 specifically for Vlogging on my personal channel but I knew the new GoPro will be announced any day so lo and behold, I was right. The GoPro HERO4 Session is now a thing. Whether or not I’ll keep it for Vlogging, that’s to be determined over the course of the next couple of weeks when I have time to review it.
But in the meantime, this is the Session. It’s $400 and it consists of this very small, waterproof cube. It can record videos at 60fps at a 1080p resolution or a 1440p at 30fps or even 720p at 100fps. It can also capture 8MP photos and time lapse at 10fps. So let’s just go ahead and get inside this box and try to get the camera out of the box. I’m a total noob at unboxing GoPro devices so bear with me here. I decided to open up the bottom first because it just made more sense to me. But I also didn’t notice the tape holding the plastic prism together until later.
The first items that comes from the box are the accessories. We have the stand, which includes several items here. There’s a screw, a plastic frame to hold the Session and stand, and then some more base pieces for the stand. Included is also a micro USB charging cable and some adhesive pads to stick the stand to a helmet or a car or another object.
Now when I attempt to rescue the HERO4 Session from its plastic cage, which you can do by peeling off the tape, it’s a lot simpler than I originally thought for sure. It comes attached to a stand but you can really get a good idea as to how small this camera is when it’s all by itself and away from its little stand. I’m not going to lie, it’s kind of an awkward design but it sure is portable like none other. And we will take a closer look at this guy here in a moment.
We do have a few pieces of paper here—we have some GoPro stickers. GoPro did actually also include some stickers in the shipping box. There’s an Important Product and Safety Packet and then we have a Quick Start Guide, which you will most definitely need and want to look at before using the Session. But with that all said and done, now we can go ahead and take a closer look at the GoPro HERO4 Session.
Up top, we have the shutter select button and there’s a small little display that allows you to cycle through a few different settings. On the side, we have a flap that gives you access to a micro USB port to charge the device and transfer data and there’s also a microSD card slot here which requires at least a class 10 or UHS-1 microSD card up to 64GB and you will need to buy one separately. On the back, we have a button to toggle through the various modes and to connect to the GoPro app. And there are some symbols to remind you about the video recording and picture taking functionality—one short press to record and a 3-second long press to start shooting time lapse photos. And then of course, in the front, we have one big wide-angle lens.
In order to change the modes to customize the settings, you will need to download the GoPro app, which is available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Just follow the onscreen prompts and you’ll have it connected in no time. And then you’ll see this little preview here. So from here, you can now only see what your GoPro sees but you can also use your phone as a remote control basically and view the photos and videos that are on your GoPro. What I want to take a look at specifically is the settings because from here, you can change the resolution, you can change the fps, the field of view, exposure, megapixels—basically you can change the video, photo and multi-view settings, the setup, camera and full camera status—all that good stuff. For example, you can even view the battery level and the SD card capacity. It’s pretty safe to say that the GoPro app is probably going to be your best friend if you do decide to buy any GoPro, especially the GoPro HERO4 Session.
Now let’s go ahead and take a look at some sample footage from the GoPro HERO4 Session. The audio quality is decent, let me know how it sounds through your headphones or speakers by leaving me a comment below. The video quality is also very decent. I’m so adjusted to 4K. All my videos are recorded in 4K and most of the content I watch on YouTube is 4K or you know, 4K that is scaled down to 1080p.
The video you are viewing was intended at 1080p at 60fps but it’s not going to look like it because this entire video that you are watching was exported at 4K at 24fps. So I’m definitely going to try and upload some sample footage in the next few days so definitely stay tuned. With that said, I really like the quick frame rate at 60fps, which is pretty nice. Now I’m not too impressed with the camera quality but from what I can gather already, if you’re more interested in quality, then you’ll probably want to take a look at the standard GoPro HERO4 as it can record in 4K at 30fps.
This camera is all about being portable. It’s easy to fit in your pocket. You can just grab it and go and it’s waterproof without requiring any sort of extra case. It’s always in standby so you just press the shutter button and it’ll start recording video. It’s super simple.
This little camera is definitely not going to be forever one and I’m going to have to factor its portability and its quality together to my full review. But in the meantime, definitely drop me a comment letting me know your thoughts of the GoPro HERO4 Session. For $399 (about $400), it’s certainly not a cheap camera.
Let me know what your thoughts are of this guy.