 Just about every month I'm testing a new camera but the months that I get an action camera are by far my favorite. Anything for the verge. Come on, do it again. Alright, we are headed up into Prospect Park because I shot all the test footage on the Hero 9 in nature and tonally my apartment is just not going to cut it. Rolling on camera. Let's do it. The GoPro Hero 9. It is more robust in almost every single way. It's got a bigger battery, a bigger body, it's got bigger battery, photo and video resolutions and for the first time ever it comes in a reusable case that is completely plastic free which honestly, thank God, I love to see that. But first bigger thing, it's actual physical size. It is noticeably larger than last year's Hero 8. A bit thicker, a bit wider, a bit taller and this never got in the way of where I wanted to mount it or how it felt to carry it around and it still has the same size dual mounting prongs for use with all previous action camera mounts you might have. With the larger size comes a larger back touch screen too. It's 2.27 inches diagonally. It has that same USB-C micro SD card slot and battery compartment on one side along with the start stop button up on the top and the power and mode button on the side. Underneath the mode button there's also this like weird latch looking piece that I really thought was removable. It is, it is not. GoPro explained that this is a drain mic. Basically it's the first mic to drain of water when you go from being underwater to above water so you can get that sweet underwater to above water audio switch done quicker. How'd you do? Tech is a tool and I certainly treat it as such and within my two weeks of using the Hero 9 and absolutely not going easy on it, there's no scratches or dings to be found. Overall the fear of breaking this camera is just non-existent. If the lens were to get scratched though GoPro brought back a feature that the 8 didn't have but the 7 did and well I missed it on the 8. A removable lens cover. I think this creates a much better way of mounting ND filters and lens mods which I'll get to in a little bit. But unfortunately if you have ND filters for the Hero 7 they will not fit on the Hero 9. There's no backwards compatibility here. Okay and the next bigger thing which also comes in the hardware department and my favorite new feature to the Hero 9 is this front screen. I would say 80% of the time when I'm using a GoPro I am facing the front of the camera when framing the shot. Which leads to my favorite tradition of shooting with a GoPro and that's what I call the GoPro face. It's like that first frame that you get when you click record and you're like still kind of like hoping that the shot is like framed well. If you shoot on a GoPro you know what I mean. I'm usually putting the camera in a location that I can't get behind to see the frame and I'll be honest with you it takes too much time still for me to pull out my phone to check the frame to make sure it's all good. And I always just kind of risk it but with having a front-facing screen I can actually see my frame while mounting the camera and that is huge. Like dudes I cannot stress this enough that is huge and the Osmo Action had this and I loved it on that camera. And I'm just so happy to see it come to GoPro's line. Within the settings menu you can also change the screen ratio of the front screen, what information it displays or toggle it on and off. There's a bit of a lag on that front screen when you're recording but otherwise the colors are vivid and I was able to see all the information I needed such as battery life and card space very clearly. With more screens though comes more power use so GoPro bumped up the battery from 1220 milliamp hours on the Hero 8 to 1720 milliamp hours on the Hero 9. For heavy use two batteries will still be needed to get through a full day much like on the Hero 8. But during my very chill vacation days when I was only turning it on to use it and then turning it right off and really only watching playback once I was back at the cabin at night I was able to get through one day on one battery which is right on par with the Hero 8. Oh and I also always had both the front and back screens on because why not? Okay the next bigger thing, resolution. This camera's 20 megapixel sensor can record in... All right here we go. 5k 3024, 4k 6030 24, 2.7k 120 6030 24, 1080 to 40 120 6030 24. Wowie. It's almost too many options like I just don't think I could possibly use all of those but I'm sure there is a use case for every single one. Now that 5k that that's new and it is crisp. Personally I dig the GoPro color option that is super punchy in the saturation and keeps a high level of contrast and pair those vibrant colors with the amazing in-camera stabilization and bingo bango you have some really nice looking footage that if you're outputting in 4k you can even punch in and reframe a little bit with. And speaking of stabilization there is even a bigger I guess more robust HyperSmooth 3.0 as opposed to the 2.0 that we had in the 8. And it's still incredible I mean I am constantly impressed with HyperSmooth. And new this year is an in-camera horizontal leveling option when shooting the linear frame which is a bit cropped in from the wide frame. To a point this keeps the horizon level on the screen straight out of the camera. There's also a new duration capture and a schedule capture mode for time lapses and also a hindsight mode which can save the last 15 or 30 seconds of video that happened before you hit the shutter button. Now the one kind of downside to this is that it does run the battery down just a bit more because technically the camera is constantly recording. It's beautiful. The photos from the 20 megapixel sensor are pretty good and I was a bit disappointed with the speed at which the HDR photos need to process. And I was not overly impressed with how the shadows are brought up to a bit of extreme levels in HDR mode in my personal opinion. But with the HDR turned off the photos are punchy they're bright and they're crisp. The next step would truly be adding an astrophotography mode to this thing. Hint hint nudge nudge GoPro. Last but not least GoPro is releasing some mods with the Hero 9 and more specifically the Max Lens mod. Now last spring they released a media mod for the Hero 8 which had a directional mic on it had HDMI port on it. It even had like a cold shoe mount on it which is really cool and they're going to have one of those for the Hero 9 as well. But for the first time ever they're releasing a lens mod and that's this Max Lens mod that I currently can't get the case off of. Hold on. Yeah. OK. There it is. Anyway this creates a little bit wider frame on your Hero 9 and it also allows for complete horizontal leveling no matter the orientation of the camera. Because it creates a spherical image onto the sensor. Now with that you can only record up to 2.7K which is a bit of a downfall. But if I'm being honest my favorite use case of this mod was putting it on the Hero 9 and not telling the Hero 9 that I put it on. And then it created this like awesome circle image that looked like a you know OG fish eye look. Oh. Ba ba ba ba ba. I feel like I'm in a music video. Good morning buds. This video goes live in 24 hours and I just got the final firmware for the GoPro Hero 9. What you've been seeing from the Hero 9 is pre-production firmware. So what's gotten shoot? Woo. So right on. Yeah. GoPro claims that this latest version of firmware has some crisper image quality. It has improved exposure and then it also improved touch sensitivity. I found those all to be true. Footage looks great. Camera is super touch responsive. And the image is of course hella crisp. So yeah. Firmware looks good. GoPro. So the Hero 9. Wowie. I mean they brought back the removable lenses and they're rolling out mods. It's got a bigger battery larger sensor. It does 5K video. And most importantly they finally made the front screen useful. But for all these big improvements there is a bigger price tag. It's available today starting at $449 or $349 on GoPro's website when you also purchase a one year subscription to GoPro Plus. Now in my mind $449 is still a reasonable price for bigger everything. Sure you can grab the Hero 8 Black for $350 or DJI's Osmo Action for $250 but neither of those cameras can shoot at 5K. And then there's Insta360's One R with that one inch sensor mod for $500. But that's $50 more expensive and I prefer the color that the GoPro puts out. Add that all up and well the biggest baddest action camera in the game right now. I think it's the GoPro Hero 9. Is the GoPro back on top in terms of action cameras? Is it the king again? Let me know down below. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. It's officially September. We are going to have so much coming your way so be sure to be sure. So be sure to tune in and check it all out and okay bye buds. Okay bye buds.