Delivering an updated product once a year every year guarantees a spike of hype and sales, but brings with it some challenges — challenges that continue to get bigger as a product matures and competitors arrive. The GoPro HERO11 Black launched last month, but what do the latest upgrades mean for a company whose value has fallen by 90% from its peak just a few years ago?

GoPro announced the Hero 11 Black and Black Mini in September and sent out a bunch of units to journalists to review, myself included. Finding innovative new features to cram into such a tiny form factor every single year must deprive tech teams of huge amounts of sleep as numerous factors collide to increase the pressure to deliver something that grabs the camera-buying public’s attention.
Firstly, there’s inevitably a limit as to how far a product can be reinvented, especially within the space of a 12-month product cycle. Frame rates and bit rates steadily climb in line with expectations. However, what customers are looking for is something that sparks the imagination and opens up new possibilities — something that you could argue hasn’t happened for several years.

What’s New in the GoPro HERO11 Black:

The standout upgrade is to the 1/1.9” sensor that now offers an 8:7 aspect ratio. Measuring 6.4 x 5.6 mm, it’s larger than the 6.17 x 4.55 mm sensor used in the HERO10, and while you’d be forgiven for assuming that action cameras tend to try to be as wide as possible, this new, near-square format creates some interesting options. The influence of 360 action cameras is being felt; you can crop more readily to a variety of formats (think TikTok) and it also facilitates the upgrade to the Horizon Lock feature which keeps your footage rooted in gravity, even if you rotate the camera a full 360 degrees (up from 45 degrees). That 16:9 letterbox rotates around the 8:7 sensor with barely a crop, and it won’t be long before other manufacturers follow suit.

The sensor has also allowed GoPro to create HyperView — an upgrade on SuperView (but presumably a precursor to the forthcoming MegaView, SickView, and HolyCrapView), which squeezes the 8:7 frame into 16:9 while maintaining the 5.3K resolution and offers 4K/120p. Some will love it, some will prefer to stick with its predecessor. The hype in GoPro’s press release claims that it will make your first-person footage “look faster and more heroic than you ever imagined possible,” and they might be right.
The already impressive HyperSmooth stabilization is now version 5.0, which is so good that apparently, it has won an Emmy Award. And there are three new time-lapse features suitable for star trails, light painting, and vehicle tail lights. Other software tweaks include an “Autoboost” mode whereby stabilization settings are decided by the HERO11 itself, and there’s an easy user interface mode for those who don’t want to get lost in menus.
Filmmakers will have already spotted one or two of the stats above: 5.3K/60p, 4K/120p, and 2.7K/240p. You can pull 24.7-megapixel photos from video, which I suspect will always feel like a better option than using the HERO11 to shoot 27-megapixel stills. The final statistic of note is 10-bit color, which should deliver a lot more flexibility when grading.
Finally, both consumers and pros will appreciate the Enduro battery, which has already proven to deliver far better performance.