Hero 10 Black Bones is the real anti-Karma. Instead of jumping out of its comfort zone and building a drone with an unfortunate tendency to lose power during the flight, GoPro has instead stripped down to its action flagship and built what looks like the perfect little camera. for FPV fans. You can see why in our practical review GoPro Hero 10 Black Bones. When it comes to product launches, this is almost as close as you can get to a guaranteed home run. Yes, FPV drones are still quite specialized, but a significant number of pilots have flipped the Hero action cameras to make them suitable for small drones for years. The growing community has also often asked GoPro to make a newer version of the previous tiny action camera, the Hero Session (which arrived in 2015).
(Image: Future) Well, the Hero 10 Black Bones is this camera. And that means we can expect to see a lot more videos like Tesla’s tour of Gigafactory. The only real downside is that Bones is currently only in the US, with GoPro telling us “we do not have an international availability date yet”. And the fact that it is surprisingly more expensive than the Hero 10 Black, despite the fact that the “Bones” lacks a screen, battery, speaker, GPS or waterproof quality construction of its luxury brother. When we asked GoPro about this, it told us that its new action camera costs “significantly less than the industry price for a ‘naked’ GoPro and Bones helps you save time, money and risk by providing a quality product with a GoPro guarantee” . Maybe, but there is no doubt that GoPro benefits from the unique combination of Bones and ReelSteady stabilization software acquired in 2020, which only works with GoPro gyroscope data. And that’s a sign of things to come.
Skeleton crew
Of course, we would have preferred the GoPro Hero 10 Black Bones to cost more like the Hero 4 Session, which quickly fell to $ 199 from its original price of $ 399. But this strategy, which seems more likely to succeed than the all-in-one DJI FPV, reflects a new, smarter GoPro that sees niche, niche cameras as the solution to increasing demand for the Do-it series. -all Hero. So where else could GoPro take the “Bones” approach? A powerful contender, based on some patents we recently discovered, is the adversary of the DJI Pocket 2 vlogging camera. This sets it apart from the latest GoPro Volta grip accessory. Interestingly, the camera is also described as modular and compatible with drones. Could Hero 10 Black Bones have already given us a taste of GoPro’s vlogging camera? If so, the move will once again resonate with his Karma drone, whose camera could be removed and used with the now-defunct Karma grip stabilizer.
(Image Credit: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office) The possibilities for specialized GoPro cameras do not stop there either: a dashboard camera, streaming camera, bike camera and, more specifically, the top professional GoPro are also definitely on the cards. One of our few problems with the Hero 10 Black Bones is that it still allows you to shoot only at 8 bit color depth – which means there could well be room for a higher quality hero, offering features like 10 bit color depth , in the near future. As we move into the realm of speculation here, it has a solid foundation – a recent earnings call has confirmed that this kind of specialization will be GoPro’s direction for the next two years. During the call in February, GoPro CEO Nick Woodman said: “At the end of 2022, we plan to increase our hardware offering from the two product types we have today, Hero and Max, to four different camera products. ». Is Hero 10 Black Bones one of these four products? As part of the Hero series, maybe not – and that obviously won’t be the end of the GoPro expansion. According to Woodman, GoPro “expects to expand further by the end of 2023”. In other words, ‘Bones’ is just an appetizer for what is to come from the action camera maker.
Karma chameleon
This is a change of tactics is long overdue. It took GoPro a long time to recover from the voluptuous mid-2010s, when it expanded too much with launches like the Karma drone. This led the company to a more focused path leading to the Hero 9 Black, the Hero 10 Black and, most importantly, a new software-focused model that brought some popular wins. These include the GoPro Quik app, the new GoPro Player + ReelSteady PC app, and the GoPro subscription, which we consider a good investment (especially if you plan to buy one of its cameras).
(Image: Future) The result of all this is that GoPro is ready to make some interesting new cameras again, if not like the ones of the past. The Hero 10 Black Bones is an interesting start, but it’s just a hint of how GoPro plans to cut its all-in-one action camera into smaller and perhaps more useful pieces. Smartphones may mean that GoPros will never reach the heights of their former mainstream again, but in its 20th year it looks like the king of action camera is getting ready to show off his new tricks – and we look forward to seeing what they are later. year.
