TECH – GoPro 3+

‘Smaller, Lighter, Mightier still’.

For those who are unfamiliar with a GoPro, put simply, it’s a camera you take with you and record yourself doing….well, stuff. Now, a reasonable person may ask how it is different to you average camera. The answer is that this is a very special device: the durability for example. If you type in ‘GoPro durability test’ into YouTube you will realise two things. The first is that people are very careless with their stuff. The second is just how much damage this thing can take as you see it go around and around a washing machine, dropped from 100ft and even run over by a motorbike. But, amusing as this is, what made it different was that the picture quality was still phenomenal. It created videos that had the picture quality (if not the skill) of one of The Attenborough’s documentaries. You could attach it to a helmet or a pole for skiing, it was waterproof so you could take it underwater and it could even go sky diving with you.

TGJ will admit; there was a lot of immature tittering about the use of a ‘smaller’ version. Stuff like what ‘pole’ it would be mounted on and whether Paris Hilton has one? Somehow those two questions seemed very connected. The Hero GoPro 3+ comes in three flavours; black, silver and white. The black is the most expensive with 12 megapixels, continuous photo (always in photo), professional grade low light performance and simultaneous HD video and photo. The Silver has 10 mp, ‘Prosumer’ (yeah we didn’t get it either) grade low lighting performance and separate HD video and photo. The white edition has a 5 mp camera, consumer grade low light performance and HD video and photo. There are a lot of other numbers which differentiate the two but we fell asleep looking at them.

The price ranges from the black at £360, the silver at £280 and the white at £200. If you just want to have fun then we would recommend the silver or white. But if you are planning on doing anything really special then it would have to be the black. But to be honest you really can’t go wrong! All we can say is ‘Go Pro!’

Prices from £200, available at gopro.com

By Edward Hambro Rabben