It’s easy to just throw in your bag and have it around, just in case. Unless you have the sun as your light source, you'll be battling a lot of noise in your shot. The low light capabilities of the HERO5 Session aren’t great. However, it didn’t do great in all of our tests. The ruggedness of this camera is fantastic. The image stabilization worked alright however, it’s digital image stabilization, so it can add some jello to the corners of your shot and it doesn’t work in 4K. We even mounted it on an RC 4×4 truck to test the image stabilization. We mounted it upside down - it self-corrects when not upright - on the seat of a electric mountain bike. GoPro was nice enough to include us in the launch event, so we got our hands on the Session first outside of beta testers. We got to play with both of the new HERO5s the day of the launch. Until now, the Session was the only GoPro to not need an underwater housing, but both the HERO5 Black and Session can be submerged without a housing down to 30 feet. The field of view options are the same, but not all are offered at the same resolutions. Voice control, image stabilization and wind reduction are all shared between the HERO5 Black and Session. Because the battery life is only 40-43 minutes when shooting 4K 30p, an extra battery is a must, but that isn’t an option. A huge missing feature from the Session is the ability to remove the battery. As well, the Session does not offer the higher frame rates like 240 fps that the Black does. The Session only has 30p as an option when shooting 4K as opposed to 24p and 30p with the Black. The HERO5 Session lacks a few of the frame rate options that the Black offers, notably 24p when shooting UHD 4K. Let’s start off with the specs that are different. While many options and features are shared with the HERO5 Black, the Session isn’t just a smaller version of the Black there are also some features held back.

What can the HERO5 Black do that the Session can't? It appears that GoPro learned from that launch and gave us what we wanted when HERO4 Session was released in the HERO5 Session. After our review, we concluded that because it didn’t have 4K, the picture quality wasn’t on par with the other camera they offered at the same price point, the HERO4 Silver, and accessing and changing any menu items required their app. The HERO4 Session was announced on July 6, 2015. GoPro’s last camera was the HERO4 Session and from our experience, it was initially a bit of a dud. The launch came with a few surprises, the first being the announcement of the new HERO5 Session. From Squaw Valley Tahoe, they announced the HERO5 Black, Session and their first drone, Karma.

Gopro hero 5 session vs session