GoPro hero 13 Black review: Lucky number 13
Summary
After years of incremental upgrades, GoPro brings a segment-first modular lens system to its action cameraCome September, and for the past several years, two things are certain—there are new iPhones in town, and GoPro has a new action camera out to tempt adventurers and vacationers alike. With the competition from DJI and Insta360 nipping at GoPro’s heels, is the GoPro Hero 13 Black ( ₹44,990) the shake-up the brand needs after years of iterative upgrades?
Well, yes and no. Action camera fans trying to manifest a GoPro with 8K video support or a bigger sensor are going to be left wanting—the 8:7 aspect ratio sensor still pushes out hyper-stabilized 5.3K resolution video and 27-megapixel photos, the same as the previous generation Hero 12 Black. GoPro hasn’t strayed far design wise either, with the external dimensions remaining the same, although there is a 10% larger capacity battery inside. The bigger 1,900mAh battery and a big heatsink below the lens on the front allows the GoPro Hero 13 Black to run longer and cooler as well, up to 1.5 hours at full 5.3K resolution.
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Ruggedness remains top-notch, with waterproofing up to 33ft/10m and GoPro’s now legendary capability to take a licking and keep on ticking. You get the legacy ‘fingers’ mount and the 1/4-20-inch mount for those transitioning from earlier GoPros. By far the biggest addition to the GoPro camera system in a while is the Hero 13 Black’s compatibility with the new “HB-Series" lenses. This is very different from the Max Lens Mod approach of the past—the new lens rotates into place over the built-in lens and can now electronically communicate with the camera, allowing the Hero 13 Black to automatically adjust settings based on the lens you attached.
On offer are a total of three lenses—an ultrawide, a macro and a set of ND (neutral density) filters—and an anamorphic lens mod announced that will launch in 2025.
Born to be Wild
In use, GoPro Hero 13 Black is quintessentially a flagship GoPro, and all of the features that have made the brand name synonymous with the action camera market are still there and work just as well as they did on the previous generation Hero 12 Black. Image stabilization is smooth, videos shot in good outdoor settings are detailed enough for creative pros to take back to the editing table, and there’s a new slow-motion mode that lets capture 400 frames per second at 720p resolution for those times when you really want to slow the action down. GPS logging is back, after a year’s absence on the Hero 12 Black, and there’s a new audio tuning feature that emphasizes voices over other ambient sounds.
It’s when you slap on the HB-series lens that you’ll start seeing reasons to upgrade from previous models. The new ultrawide lens, for instance, lets you capture full-frame, 1:1 aspect ratio footage, essentially allowing you to shoot both horizontal and vertical video at the same time which you can export into footage for both YouTube and Instagram in one go without the need for reframing. The additional field of view is great for POV (point of view) shots with pretty much everything in front of the camera captured when shooting with this lens. The ND filters are a great for experimenting with different lighting conditions, but they come with a limitation that isn’t the case with ND filters on traditional cameras – you can’t use the ND filter in addition to another HB-series lens, which limited the number of times I used the filters on a day-to-day basis.
The macro lens mod is the most interesting of the lot, as it fundamentally alters what you have been able to do so far with a GoPro courtesy the manual focus ring that can be set for objects as close as 4.33-inches away.
To put that in perspective, that’s 4x closer than the standard Hero 13 lens, which opens up a range of options like top-down unboxing content, shooting creepy crawlies at ground level or even food videos. The ability to get in closer will be particularly handy for vloggers, allowing one to handhold the GoPro much closer while talking to the camera.
The good bit is that having the option to attach an interchangeable lens on top of a GoPro opens up the camera to a wider audience, both for serious videographers and folks who were previously underserved by the camera’s ‘action and adventure’ roots. There’s something for everybody, and GoPro no longer constrains you to one type of content capture, and I really enjoyed shooting with the modular lenses since, for the first time in as long as I have been using action cameras, they changed how I can use the camera.
This versatility doesn’t come cheap, so while the GoPro Hero 13 Black is way more capable than its predecessors, it also means that its headliner upgrade isn’t in the retail box at purchase.
What’s Missing
With all the reasons to upgrade, not upgrading the sensor on the camera was a missed opportunity. The sensor was already showing its age last year, and it’s certainly weighing the Hero 13 down this year, at least when filming in less-than-ideal light conditions. With the Hero 13 Black, GoPro has just about managed to pack in enough to justify the upgrade this year, but it really needs to step it up with a serious sensor upgrade in the Hero 14.