173
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #199,084 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★☆☆☆☆
"Good quality videos"... if you manage to get them off this piece of junk
I bought this camera about a month ago hoping to record my skydives... Don't have a single recording yet!
The very first jump I was recording ended up in cutaway. After I safely landed on my reserve parachute, the first thought was "yay, I'm alive", and the second was "how awesome, I got it on video". Well... I was soon to learn the latter was not the case. The GoPro camera stopped recording shortly before I exited the plane. Looked it up on Google. "The recording may stop if there are some corrupted files on the SD card, make sure you format it before using". Ok. Although I have never seen a camera that would fail recording upon encountering an erased file, I'll take it for now.
So I then recorded a few more videos of my skydives. When the weekend was over, I came to my computer to download the videos, but upon turning the camera on, saw a big "0" on the screen. The card was empty! Whaaaat?!! Google again. "GoPro cameras do not work well with ExFAT file system, so it's not recommended to use a 64 GB card, or it can get corrupted". I tried file recovery software, which recovered the videos, however, none of them would play.
I talked to a few people using these cameras, and EVERYBODY agreed GoPro is very unreliable, as the files frequently get corrupted. One skydiver told me she sent her camera into repair a few times, bought the most expensive SD card, and yet this keeps happening. She recommended me to get the videos off the camera right after the recording is over, if I don't want to loose them, and then format the card before each usage. Wow, cool. If I decide to record my surfing as well, I guess I have to bring my laptop to the beach.
Nonetheless, I decided to give this lousy piece of hardware a third try. I purchased a 32 GB card (yes, grade 10), and went on the plane again. After landing, I turned if off (it would say it had 1 video), walked to the packing area, took out my tablet to get the video off and then... Yep, the GoPro would say there were "0 videos". I think you would understand why I hardly stopped myself from smashing it against the wall.
I addition to that, about 3 times I experienced the problem where you turn off the camera, but it would just warm up a lot. It gets really hot, and you need to take out the battery in order to stop it from warming up.
To sum this up. GoPro is junk. Seriously, I cannot even talk about the quality of recordings since I haven't seen a single recording yet. What did I wasted my money for? Look up the forums, it's not just my camera, lots of people have the same issues. This company have been on the market for a few years, yet they cannot make a product that would actually work. I guess that's what happens when you put all of your money into marketing.
The bottom line: buy something else.
June 2014 · Electronics