First of all its costly but a very good camera without screen ! Yes it does not have screen but its sibling( SILVER) have. Bought it last week for my adventure tour and I would say its the best video camera I have ever used. Recorded my whole adventure using it and the result were amazing. The only downside I see is the battery life, as my expectations were higher. Its an all rounder action cam and if you want 4k video then this beast is perfect as an action cam, with decent recording time.
There’s just no other action cameras on the market today doing 4k at full frame rates. There are lots of mounting options available from third party manufacturers also. Suits every environment and have plenty of shooting options.
Before going into pros and cons which many of have already did I will list it differently, below are the things which should be bought separately to support and will be needed.
What additional things needed:
SD card- and those are not cheap. Go to gopro.com and see the memory card list and buy only those other class 10 dosen’t support the camera and ultimately loosing footage’s. LEXAR 633x UHS-I is recommended and comes at Rs-2k.
Gorilla tripod- this is must have tripod for gopros very handy and does most of the jobs -Rs-500.
Tripod to Gopro adapter mount Rs-300 This will allow GoPro to be used on normal existing tripods or mounts with screw.
Additional batteries - Hero 4 battery sucks huge time. They wont last for more than a hour so invest in WASABI ONLY. And additional two battery charger.
GoPro pole/ selfie sticks - again this is needed to take decent videos and shots. Rs-800 decent ones.
Case - yes a must buy to keep everything in one place and compact.
Mounts- this is an endless investment the more you invest the more freedom you get on hooking your camera and more different angles and places you can take on.
What to buy:
One thing one have to take into account of 4k is your existing systems should support the 4k viewing. Laptops and TV in india are turning into 4k but at a very very slow pace and those are damm expensive . Even if you shoot 4k your system should be robust in handling those footages, I have come to know about it the hard way. Get accustomed to no screen and blind shoots. Yes black version doesnt have a screen so every time you shoot either connect it to mobile app and view or download on laptop ( which is not viable solution)
I have black version, but I never shoot on 4k since I don’t have 4k monitors nor my laptop is high end which can handle it. I feel the pinch of NO SCREEN everytime and I hate it the most .
If you are not a avid fan go with Silver version you will save plenty of buck, 4k at 15fps is usable, you get screen on back and a good battery life than black. Even the sensors are pretty good on silver which works great on low light and reduces distortion.
If you can’t afford the black edition then this one also is good choice. Other option is sony Fdr-x1000v.