Top pick
This camera’s impressive image quality and super-steady stabilization are unmatched, and it’s especially easy to use.
The GoPro Hero13 Black is the ultimate action camera, offering the highest-quality video we’ve seen in the category. Its tall image sensor lets you easily create vertical videos for Instagram Stories and TikTok, but with its high resolution, it can still capture horizontal videos for YouTube.
The standard 0.25-inch mount lets you attach the Hero13 Black to any traditional camera mount or tripod, and it’s compatible with new easy-release magnetic mounts. The Hero13 Black has longer run times than its predecessor thanks to its larger battery, yet it also includes GPS, which previous cameras lacked. Optional lenses, including an ultra wide-angle, a macro, multiple neutral density filters, and (soon) an anamorphic lens, greatly increase the types of videos you can capture.
It offers the best image quality we’ve seen from an action camera. The Hero13 Black can record 5.3K video at a smooth 60 frames per second. Footage looks razor-sharp and vibrant, with smooth transitions between colors and no banding. Thanks to its extremely high bit rate of 120 Mbps, it minimizes video noise and keeps the detail high during fast motion.
If you don’t need that level of detail, the Hero13 Black also offers 4K recording at 120 fps, and for ultra-smooth slow motion, 2.7K-resolution video at up to 240 fps is possible. A burst slo-mo mode even allows you to capture several minutes of 720p video at 400 fps or 20 seconds of 5.3K video at 120 fps.
In addition, the Hero13 Black accommodates HDR video shooting up to 5.3K at 30 fps for high dynamic range situations, such as at sunset or in canyons. It even has HLG (hybrid log–gamma) support for professionals.
It’s rugged. The Hero13 Black is waterproof to a depth of 10 meters (33 feet). The lens cover is 2-millimeter-thick Gorilla Glass (the same material used for many phone screens) with a hydrophobic coating to reduce the chance of water beading on it when the camera is splashed. And if you manage to scratch this lens, it’s replaceable.
It has the longest run time we’ve seen from a GoPro camera. Thanks to a new, larger battery, GoPro claims, the Hero13 Black is good for up to 79 minutes of continuous recording at 5.3K 60 fps—13% longer than what the company claimed for the Hero12 Black.
That roughly aligned with our testing results, though many variables will affect real-world run times. You might get more, or less, depending on factors such as ambient temperature and ventilation. Lower resolutions and frame rates can greatly increase run times, while direct sun can reduce them. And if you’re recording at max settings, your Hero13 Black is likely to overheat long before its battery runs out.
Bear in mind that this new battery is physically larger than the Hero12 Black’s battery, so if you have an older camera and you’re upgrading, your existing batteries won’t fit.
Creating videos for social media is a snap. The Hero13 Black’s image sensor has a nearly square 8:7 aspect ratio instead of the typical rectangular 16:9. This makes creating a mix of vertical (for TikTok or Instagram Stories) and horizontal (for YouTube) content easier, since you can record using the full sensor area and then crop the footage in the GoPro Quik app to vertical or horizontal as you desire without reducing the resolution and quality.
Other cameras sacrifice the quality of one orientation for the other or require you to physically rotate the camera to maintain quality, which is not always possible depending on your mount or situation.
Beginners will find it easy to use. This camera’s optional simplified menus help novices figure out the various modes better than those of other cameras we’ve tried. Experienced users can switch to menus that are more in-depth but still easy to navigate. Like most new action cameras, the Hero13 Black also offers optional voice control, in this case supporting 11 languages and six accents.
Its stabilization is impressively effective. GoPro’s latest stabilization processing, which it calls HyperSmooth 6.0, is capable of locking the horizon to level even if you rotate the camera 360 degrees. Videos remain smooth even during strong vibrations.
Most action cameras, regardless of brand, have solid stabilization these days, but in our testing the Hero13 Black seemed a little better than competitors and previous GoPro models in this regard.
GoPro is everywhere. One of the main reasons we like GoPro cameras is their near-ubiquity. Just about every dive shop, surf shop, and electronics store is likely to have GoPro accessories. If you lose, forget, or suddenly find a need for a new kind of mount or an additional battery for an unexpected adventure, they’re easier to find than add-ons for action cameras from other companies.
GoPro’s app is really good. The GoPro Quik app (iOS and Mac, Android) lets you control the camera, organize your recorded content, and edit photos and videos. That last function is especially powerful, as it allows you to crop, zoom, combine clips, and even add music. You need a fairly new phone with lots of storage space to get the most out of it, though.
The camera offers clever shooting modes. In addition to the standard Time Lapse (for when the camera is stationary) and TimeWarp (for when the camera is moving) modes that you can find on most action cameras, the Hero13 Black has a variety of other modes that help you easily capture unique-looking videos.
For instance, action cameras typically aren’t great in low light, but GoPro’s Star Trails (you can see an example in this video, recorded with the Hero12 Black) and Vehicle Light Trails modes both create stylized videos with cool lines of light that look great on social media.
It takes decent pictures, too. GoPro cameras are primarily intended for video, but they can take still photos, as well. The Hero13 Black can capture 27-megapixel (5568-by-4872-pixel) images in several modes.
Though the image quality can’t match the results of a high-end phone’s camera or a traditional camera, it’s very good for an action camera, and it works well for posting on social media. GoPro’s SuperPhoto mode, which stacks several exposures to create an image with better dynamic range, is an especially big plus.
Optional lenses offer new video possibilities. GoPro has long offered an ultra-wide lens option, but the Hero13 Black is compatible with a broader range of new optional lenses. They include a macro lens for better close-up videos and multiple ND (neutral density) filters, which are useful when you’re shooting in bright light. For me, the most interesting is an anamorphic lens that creates cinematic, 2.35:1 ultra-widescreen videos. However, that one won’t arrive until 2025.
GoPro’s subscription is a solid deal. For $25 for the first year and $50 after that, the GoPro Premium subscription offers unlimited cloud storage for GoPro content, 25 GB for footage from other cameras, camera replacement, discounts on GoPro’s website (including on cameras), and—most interesting—automatically edited videos.
The simplicity of that last feature is unique to GoPro. Just plug your camera into power and connect it to Wi-Fi, and it automatically backs up its footage to the cloud. A short time later, you get a highlight video that’s either okay to post as is or suitable as a convenient base for making your own video.
Two additional tiers are available as well, though they are less useful for most people. The budget Quik Subscription costs $10 a year and provides full access to the Quik app’s features while dropping cloud storage, cloud editing, and camera replacement. (We like some free app options better.)
The $100-per-year GoPro Premium+ subscription is for “advanced creators,” adding 500 GB of storage for non-GoPro cameras and HyperSmooth Pro video stabilization on top of everything you get with the regular Premium sub. For most people, we think the HyperSmooth 6.0 stabilization that comes with the Hero13 Black is plenty.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
- The Hero13 Black is a relatively small upgrade over the Hero12 Black. There isn’t a huge difference between this year’s and last year’s models. They share the vast majority of important features and image-quality specs. For most people, if your budget is tight, the Hero12 Black with a GoPro Premium subscription is likely to offer more than the Hero13 Black without the subscription.
- It gets really hot when recording at max quality. How long the camera can record and whether it will shut off to protect itself depends on the ambient temperature and other factors, but reducing the resolution and frame rate greatly increases the run time. After the camera cools, you can continue recording. We were able to shoot for roughly 45 minutes at 5.3K 60, slightly longer than what GoPro claims for an unventilated environment (in our case, with the camera sitting on a desk). That’s far longer than we’ve been able to go with previous GoPro models.
- The low-light performance is pretty bad. This has always been the case with action cameras, but several new competitors, including the DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro and the Insta360 Ace Pro 2, have made big strides in creating useful low-light footage. If you regularly record at night, one of those models might be a better option.
- I hope you don’t have triskaidekaphobia.
