How Good is the Latest GoPro Hero4 Session when it Measures 1 Square Inch

Shaped like a cube, the GoPro Hero4 Session digital camera is only one inch square and designed to go anywhere - You can attach it to your bike helmet or handlebar or even your dog's collar. A big improvement too over past GoPro cameras is that it's waterproof down to 15 yards and you don't need a housing like you did with its predecessors.

It looks good too. It has a black finish with a tiny LED screen and because of its small size it's not nearly as noticeable as its bigger siblings.

Its not the flagship GoPro, that slot still belongs to the GoPro Hero4 Black but it sits in second place. A lot of tech has been borrowed from the budget device but they've had to make that a lot smaller hence the price has been bumped up.

Its going to appeal to adventurers and family outings where you need a camera that's waterproof, can easily attach to gear like a helmet and so can be used from diving to skiing and you wont even know its there.

Very easy to use. For video operation just press the main button to start and give it a longer press to take a still photo. To change resolution and frame settings you can use the GoPro app. Not difficult to use but it would be best to organise your shots before setting off.

Good news about the GoPro Hero4 Session is the battery now lasts a lot longer. I used it out biking on and off for several hours and still had a good charge in it. Bad news is that this comes at a cost. It's built in so not possible to change it out.

Fans of GoPro talk often about "1080p at 60" to shoot a video but what do they mean?

Well when they talk about 1080 they talking about the quality of the video. All GoPro cameras have standard definition which is 720p and some go as high as 4k which is ultra high definition. But for most uses 1080p is just fine.

And when they talk about 60, they're talking about the frame rate per second (fps) or how many frames per second the GoPro takes. For the new GoPro Hero4 Session the guide is to use 1.4k at 30fps for point of view photos but if you want to slow them down then use 1080p and 60fps.

To take footage of others, adjust the Session to Medium View. But if you pan to a wide view you will get that classic GoPro perspective.

What will make your videos and shots more individual is by simply playing around with the settings.

The Hero4 Session provides very good video quality without any editing. We tried it out in snow which is always a problem with cameras because of the intense light, but the GoPro Session handled it well from dull lighting to bright light and that was just using its standard settings without adjusting it at all.

The resolution is just fine for YouTube or your own Television. Tv's are mostly 1080p anyway. By using Protune you can use its settings to change things like ISO (this is the amount of light that's captured) and sharpness. The next GoPro up, the Hero4 Black does capture more detail but it costs quite a lot more and is much less portable.

GoPro have their own editing software called GoPro Studio which to be honest I'm not a great fan of so I'm hoping with the new GoPro Hero4 Session that they might change it, but it's fine if you want to just get one single clip ready to share. Just import the file, then convert and export the video and you're done.

If you're in the market for a good quality action camera or one just for family adventures then the new GoPro Hero4 Session should be on your watchlist. GoPro has an outstanding reputation and will be wanting to keep it so even though the Session is too new for a lot of public testing, you can guarantee that GoPro will have done a lot of that.

I like mine. I love it's compactness to the degree that it fits easily into my pocket and the fact that I don't have to wrap it in a waterproof case because it's already waterproof. The other plus for me compared to other GoPro's is that it's dead simple to use.