The effect is that the roughly 90 minutes recording time of a GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition becomes 120 minutes on a GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition. GoPro did 2 steps in order to increase its battery life: improved battery capacity in same dimensions by 12% (from 1050mAh on the GoPro Hero 3 to 1180mAh), and making the internals of the camera more energy efficient. Mitch Bergsma did a test which you can see below: the improvements are noticeable as the low light images look sharper and giving better colors.īattery life is an important feature, and here GoPro was not best in class. For this a feature called “Auto Low Light” is now available. Software, in combination with improvements to the hardware, enabled to make the low light recording better. This is certainly a great improvement reducing post-processing of videos. The improvement in image distortion is due to the introduction of SuperView mode when recording in 1080p or 720p, and really makes the image look more realistic (see the video below). Aside of better glass, GoPro has also made improvements to the cameras imaging processing software giving better color balance, better images in backlight conditions and less distortion or ghosting. The new f/2.8 lens offers a major improvement resulting in sharper images.

Under the hood much has changed to improve image quality and usability. For the rest all looks the same and has the same dimensions and locations, so when you have already invested in cases and other accessories you can still use them. When having eagle eyes also the different lay-out of the mic-system will be see-able, as the sound system of the Hero3+ got updated + improved and is now having one mic on top and one mic at the side (this was mics on both sides with the “old” version).

Updates to the GoPro Hero3 Black Edition: From the outside the changes are extremely minimal, and the only thing which makes it obvious that you deal with the Hero 3+ is the name printed on the front of the camera. Most popular are the GoPro Hero 3 Silver and Black Editions, and both these 2 versions got updated to the GoPro Hero3+ Silver Edition and GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition. GoPro has immense popularity within the professional, semi-professional and amateur action video recording enthusiasts with their GoPro Hero 3 product line.

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