Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?

https://amateurphotographer.com/latest/photo-news/going-going-gone-is-this-the-end-of-the-once-mighty-gopro/

by aanet • 8 days ago

233 549 8 days ago

aanet• 8 days ago

While GoPro action cameras are built to withstand shock, the brand itself is looking distinctly shaky right now. Latest reports[1] are that founder Nicholas Woodman is propping the company up by extending it a loan of his own money to the tune of $20 million, at an annual interest rate of 6.5%, while a buyer is desperately sought. It’s believed GoPro may not survive the year without a new owner or fresh injection of cash, with Woodman’s intervention acting as a stopgap rather than bail-out per se.

uxhacker• 4 days ago

Is this because of the cost of memory or because the product is no longer competitive?

wyclif• 4 days ago

This article is not very satisfying to read, because it doesn't explore the reasons why GoPro is on the ropes.

whycome• 4 days ago

Adventure cams lose a market when people can’t afford to go on adventures?

antasvara• 4 days ago

From the financials, it's a little of both?

Memory is the acute issue causing their struggles; their most recent quarter saw a gross margin of 4.5% (that's revenue minus the direct cost of producing the cameras, divided by the revenue). That's a hefty fall from their previous margin of ~31%. This contributed to their operating loss of $57M in the last 3 months.

Thag being said, they haven't had a positive quarterly operating income since the last quarter of 2022, even when the margin was higher than 4.5%. So it's not like they were succeeding before the memory crunch, just losing money slower.

brookst• 4 days ago

$20m is really not much money to operate a company for 6 months. They must be close to break-even at least?

blitzar4• 4 days ago

Tale as old as time ... Make a bunch of money from your company, run it into the ground, be the hero that gets paid to keep it afloat.

The harder path is not being a shit CEO.

donkeyboy• 4 days ago

I had no ifea they were struggling. Tldr; their competitor Insta360 is battling them, and they have YoY revenue drop.

Gopro has this cool reliable aura around them. How could they he struggling? So bizarre

i_am_jl2• 4 days ago

Their hardware is unimpressive and expensive, and their software is horrible.

wolrah• 4 days ago

and their software is horrible

As a long-time GoPro owner who recently added an Insta360 X5 to his collection, I can't really see any meaningful difference in software horribleness. They are both really really bad, with ads everywhere constantly pushing subscriptions to their cloud services.

At least with the normal cameras the software can be entirely ignored, I can take video from my Hero5 straight in to any ordinary NLE and go from there, but the 360 camera requires their software to convert from the native format to anything usable, even if I'm keeping it as 360 footage.

The worst part IMO for both is that they prioritize mobile apps over their PC software so if you want to edit on a computer like a normal reasonable person you lose features compared to idiotically doing things on a phone.

trentor• 4 days ago

They rode the novelty train so hard they missed that everyone is doing it better than them now.

cg5280• 4 days ago

Another area where an American technology brand is losing to the Chinese alternative. Alongside EVs, drones, robot vacuums, solar panels.

brk3• 4 days ago

Not surprising, it's a commoditized sector.

On top of that, when GoPro first launched mobile phones generally did not have cameras capable of producing production-quality images, and especially video. 20 years later, the game is much different.

Remember the Flip video camera that was all the rage for like 2 years and then just disappeared when cellphones could shoot video? GoPro is like a rugged Flip, so it took a little longer for the world to catch up to them, but now there are lots of options, and a "cheap" sports camera that is 1/4 the price of a GoPro is good enough, even if it only lasts 1/2 as long.

crote8• 4 days ago

It's honestly embarrassing that our leaders still haven't realized why this is happening, and still aren't taking any actions to prevent it from getting worse.

Giving billions of free money to shareholders of Intel & friends is going to do absolutely nothing to change the tide. Want domestic manufacturing? Invest in building a JLCPCB alternative: automated to the fullest extent possible in order to save fractions of a cent on ops, then operated on a razor-thin margin but making up for it in volume.

Chinese people aren't the lazy dumb manual workers we have long pretended they are. After we have freely given them all of our engineering knowledge with outsourcing, they are now beating us on the free market. If we don't internalize this, stop with the silly competition-destroying tariffs, and try to compete again, we are doomed to slide into irrelevancy - and we've got only ourselves to blame.

romanovcode2• 4 days ago

How could they he struggling?

They are just not as good. I bought GoPro10 ~5 years ago and it constantly overheats. Very unreliable. It was the first and last time I bought GoPro.

Alien1Being2• 4 days ago

Beaten on quality and price by competitors.

The same thing is happening to BMW, Toyota,Mercedes...

amelius3• 4 days ago

These days you can buy mini cameras for a few bucks on AliExpress, so no wonder.

mamonoleechi• 4 days ago

any recommendation?

brk3• 4 days ago

Are you looking for Good or Great?

If you just need Good, there are dozens of no-brand options on Amazon and Ali that do 4K60fps with output that is more than sufficient for any non-professional use.

I don't have a brand recommendation off hand, because the ones I've bought have been random names, but they've all been more than enough. As a reference, I've used them for capturing footage for training machine vision systems, and some general purpose marketing videos. I'm not a "creator", so I paid no attention to editing features, clip hosting, or any of those things.

Amazon sometimes gets some hate here, but I usually just buy there because the returns process is so simple. In the random case I get a product that turned out to be deceptive advertising, I drop it at Whole Foods and have a credit before I leave the parking lot. And I have the product in hand in 48 hours at most.

ValentineC3• 4 days ago

When I was looking to buy an action camera last year, I was deciding between Insta360 and DJI, with many YouTubers suggesting outright against GoPro since they haven't kept up with image quality.

Action cameras sound like a tough business, since most of them are built to last ages, and they need to keep the vast majority of content creators happy trying to increase image quality in a small form factor.

Anyway, I bought the Insta360 Go Ultra I had my mind on from the start, which I'm still reasonably happy with.

atourgates2• 4 days ago

Having owned a number of GoPros, I made the same switch last year.

The Insta360 has super annoying/intrusive software that always feels like it's trying to sell me something, but it's pretty excellent in terms of actual video quality.

ValentineC3• 4 days ago

I don't really use the software, not even for updates.

I copy out the footage directly using a USB-C cable (wish it had USB 3.0), and do firmware updates by just dropping the update file into the microSD card.

It's friggin' fabulous that everything is doable without having to use an app. (Also the app takes up somewhere between 1-2GB of storage on my phone, and I don't have that kind of space.)

matsemann7• 4 days ago

many YouTubers suggesting outright against GoPro since they haven't kept up with image quality.

Fyi: This is a lie, the youtubers are paid to tell you this.

Mawr3• 4 days ago

Your statement is so broad that it cannot be true.

ValentineC3• 4 days ago

Yeah, but I also looked at many different videos to evaluate quality myself, and GoPro wasn't great.

mint5• 4 days ago

So you don’t realize most you tube influencers using dji or insta360 are being paid to use them? That’s the main reason I’ve seen YouTubers switch. The Chinese brands absolutely flood content creators with free gear and support.

IshKebab• 4 days ago

This has been on the cards for about a decade. I guess Insta360's YouTube advertising barrage worked.

i67vw3• 4 days ago

Saw some sponsored videos on YouTube where they out GoPro compeititor (Insta360 with it's logo) on a Korean/Chinese baby, and the baby enjoying his day.

Very good marketing I would say.

Attached Example (you will find many such videos on Social Media)

https://youtube.com/shorts/2KNOx5oMXWk?feature=shared

sen• 4 days ago

I’ve owned a lot of Gopro cameras, having done video capture for a variety of motorsports, and they just got too expensive for what you get.

You can be more expensive if you’re better, or you can be worse if you’re cheaper, but they’re both the downsides while living purely off brand recognition.

They also blew up in a time where there wasn’t any real competition. Sony had action cameras but they were bulkier and expensive, and didn’t have the features of GoPro.

These days other brands give better quality video in better quality hardware and more functionality, for cheaper.

Forgeties79• 4 days ago

It also doesn’t help that you could probably get by with a hero 4 black even today lol

Man I still can’t believe how bad the rollout of the karma was. I remember at the time everyone in my professional circles was buzzing about it. Then they started literally falling out of the sky. Feel like they never recovered

antisthenes• 4 days ago

Apparently (checked with AI), Hero 4 Black was the first camera with 30 fps 4k video and was released 12 years ago already (how time flies)

Frankly, after 4k/30 and 1080p/60, there are strong diminishing returns, because most people these days watch videos on their phones in suboptimal conditions (or older desktops that may still be on 1080p), so what are they going to do with your 5k/6k video?

Sure, you can keep doing minor improvements to sensors and optics, but for a consumer it will not justify getting a new model for $500.

Also, competing with smartphone cameras which have gotten better over the years. I bet 99% of people would not be able to tell a gopro video from a phone video.

palata• 4 days ago

Then they started literally falling out of the sky.

Yep, something must have gone horribly wrong with QA.

matsemann7• 4 days ago

Eh, I have a Hero 4 black. And if you as the other commenter only think about resolution it can look like that, but the difference is enormous.

4k on a gopro 13 is far far far clearer. And the stabilization is night and day. Half my hero4 videos are mostly blurry shakes and quite jarring to watch, with a bad fov. The stabilization on modern gopros is magical. The bitrate and quality is orders of magnitude better. You can now pull good quality stills from the video if you want. Hero4 can't handle anything but perfect blue sky in the middle of the day. Etc etc

fiatpandas• 4 days ago

other brands give better quality video in better quality hardware and more functionality, for cheaper

Would you mind providing a recommendation you have first hand experience with?

matsemann7• 4 days ago

It's mostly FUD and/or paid reviewers. Both DJI and Insta have good products, but also very good at sponsoring in a way where things get reviewed very in their favor, making people have an impression that doesn't quite match reality. So the meme one constantly read online about how gopros are so much worse is false. They have their issues, but mostly trade offs.

QuantumNomad_• 4 days ago

These days other brands give better quality video in better quality hardware and more functionality, for cheaper.

I had a GoPro many years ago. Eventually sold it because I needed the money for other things.

Been thinking about buying a new action camera eventually.

Got any recommendations?

The one that interests me the most of the ones I’ve seen is the Insta360 X4 Air plus an underwater case for it.

I want to be able to bring my camera swimming, bicycling, hiking, etc. And I think 360 degree cameras are pretty cool. Hopefully it’s not just a gimmick that loses its appeal after a few hours.

LeifCarrotson• 4 days ago

If you're willing to put a little time into video editing, a 360 cam is great. The insta360 tools can make that a little easier if you want something simple.

If you just want to store a snapshot of the moment as it was captured, a regular camera that you pointed in the right direction is better.

bartread• 4 days ago

As someone who watches a reasonable amount of PoV outdoor activity footage shot on helmet cams and the like (base jumping, mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding, etc)… I don’t love watching 360 videos uploaded in the raw because of the perspective distortion.

I’m assuming it must be possible, if the resolution is good enough, to post process a portion of each overall frame into an undistorted 1080p (or better) view of the key view of the action, but a lot of people don’t do this (perhaps it’s much more difficult or time-consuming that I’m imagining, or perhaps many viewers enjoy the distorted 360 view more than I do).

Just my two cents, YMMV, etc.

gib444• 4 days ago

These days other brands give better quality video in better quality hardware and more functionality, for cheaper.

Such as?

Saris2• 4 days ago

DJI Osmo cameras are good, I still have my original Osmo action and while the quality is a bit behind now, the battery life and general stability and menus are better than GoPro IMO.

I've found DJI cameras also don't discharge their batteries when sitting, my gopro 11 black is somehow always dead when I grab it even after a few weeks, but my osmo action is still at ~70% after a year.

Insta360 also has some neat offerings, but their software/app is absolutely abysmal, it's crammed full of ads and takes up several GB of space. It also requires an account login.

Robotbeat7• 4 days ago

GoPro is a US company designed in U.S. with manufacturing in Thailand, China, and Mexico.

Insta360 is a Chinese company designed in Shenzhen and built there, too.

People think this doesn’t matter, but GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place.

A similar pattern happened with drones with DJI, intentionally killing all non-Chinese drone brands. And with BambuLabs (founded by ex-DJI) with 3D printers (the only good non-Chinese printer that doesn’t cost 10-100x as much is Prusa, and they’re facing extremely strong headwinds).

Legitimately better Chinese products (incredible engineering) that have massive industrial policy support, probably industrial espionage support (as in the case of DJI for certain), massive influencer marketing campaigns, and near zero cost of capital. When China wants to deindustrialize non-Chinese industries for strategic and/or natsec reasons, they are incredibly good at it. (And note it’s not US-only, China targets basically ANY brand that isn’t Chinese. China absolutely does this to Europe as well… and you can see them doing it in real-time with automotive.)

The only surprising thing to me is how people just act like it’s not happening. I guess for people who don’t have any experience working on federal government adjacent aerospace stuff, the idea of natsec considerations for IT hardware seems entirely abstract, but it’s incredibly real if you do.

adrianN• 4 days ago

If your country’s industrial and defense policy relies on individual consumers making choices that are worse for them on almost all metrics, it’s time to think about on worse payroll your politicians are.

tomaskafka5• 4 days ago

Simon Wardley has been shouting this from the rooftops, including detailed per industry timelines when China will take over, in 2015.

gchamonlive2• 4 days ago

Reads to me like it's free market doing its job, if you think of countries as companies. US just needs to step up its game.

computerex• 4 days ago

People know it’s happening. What do you expect an average consumer to do about it? Pay more out of pocket due to the potential national security risks?

xorcist• 4 days ago

the only good non-Chinese printer that doesn’t cost 10-100x as much is Prusa

They hardly have time to compete, busy as they are with foot-shooting practice.

dismalaf8• 4 days ago

As someone with both an Insta360 camera and a Bambu printer, I feel it, would love to buy GoPro and Prusa, but the value just isn't there.

For one, I had a GoPro whose sensor broke after about 20 minutes of recorded. I ended up getting 3 different replacements, all of which also broke. In the end I just forgot about it when my home burnt down in a wildfire. I got an Insta360 with better picture quality that's also been more reliable for a similar cost.

And I would have loved to buy a Prusa printer but I got a Bambu P1S combo for $600, an equivalent Prusa plus the $300 shipping to Canada would have been ~$2500 CAD. For making trinkets for my 3 year old son plus the few random other things I'd make it's not worth it to pay 4x the money.

Maybe it'll forever be this way due to the differences in cost of living but I do feel as though there's a million barriers to entry to building a business in North America, at least a business that's not fully online.

TheArcane2• 4 days ago

boo hoo china bad, buy my more expensive and shitty american product

a34729t• 4 days ago

100%. It would strongly behoove the US to encourage domestic 3d printer manufacture (or friendly countries like Japan), to the point of bannning Bambu and Chinese companies. Obviously we are doing fine for industrial 3d printers, but the small scale consumer stuff is very important too.

If and when AI commiditizes professional services, it would be good to have modern industry to fall back on. With 3d printing the gap isnt insurmountable yet.

However, our country is run by lawyers, not engineers, so I dont have too much hope. At least a lot of our billionaires started out as engineers...

slim• 4 days ago

China does not want to deindustrialize any country. Why do you think of everything in terms of war and domination ? China has built a industry capable of taking any product and make it better and cheaper. There is no psycho strategy behind it. They will do it till every chinese will live a comfortable life equal to an american. At that point america will be able to compete again.

hdgvhicv3• 4 days ago

If you’ve spent a life and the market being supreme then it’s a shock. China’s economic system is wiping the floor with the west.

The U.K. has just nationalised a steel plant which had been bought by China to stop it from being destroyed, and of course the economic right wing hate this as steel is far cheaper to import.

vitaflo• 4 days ago

Also on Avinox motors on e-mtn bikes. Originally made by DJI, then spun off into their own company, and they are starting to eat the competition on all e-mtn bikes at this point. Bosch, TQ, Shimano, et al just can't compete, especially because Avinox is iterating at startup pace and all the rest are iterating at bike pace (slowly).

darksim905• 4 days ago

I'm not sure what stops some of these industries from essentially being more nationalist like China, but more centrist as a company like Palantir. If these risks are as big as you claim, a centralized authority should reverse engineer the things that work done in China or where-ever and use open source/build a better software stack that supplants what's out on the market currently.

ckemere• 4 days ago

Perhaps a huge tell about national strategy is the fact that the owner has $10s of millions to loan to the company? US economic structure in post WWII era has increasingly focused on return on capital (and value extraction). How can that compete in long term with an economy which prioritizes reinvestment *in industry*?

thih9• 4 days ago

GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place.

What would the attack vector be? I’m not saying there isn’t any, I don’t know much about aerospace and this sounds interesting.

samiv• 4 days ago

The western countries deindustrialized themselves though. That's just capitalism chasing ever increasing profits and moving production to where it's cheaper, i.e.from west to China. In fact this was cherished because it increased share holder profits.

coldtea7• 4 days ago

People think this doesn’t matter, but GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place.

In what way exactly? The camera will magically communicate to the mothership?

msie• 4 days ago

If GoPro is manufactured in China then it’s no more secure than Insta360.

RiggedEconomy• 4 days ago

The biggest attack vector against the world is is Israel and Zionism, not China. Stop bashing China. Its getting silly and infantile.

throwaway20377• 4 days ago

    > GoPros are used all over in aerospace

What percent of GoPro sales are used by aerospace? My guess: It is tiny. Not enough to keep GoPro alive.

foxes• 4 days ago

Lol your country and your capitalism helped build China.

Wasn't that the thing like ~30 years ago? All the western companies pushing manufacturing into China for increased profit?

Capitalism and the west gave all that power away :), you deindustrialised yourselves.

worik• 4 days ago

China wants to deindustrialize non-Chinese industries for strategic and/or natsec reasons,

No. Not even close

China wants its place at the table.

With Erope and USA

People seem to think a developed China is a threat. But they are not staying in rural poverty for ever for our sake. That is not a threat.

They are not trying to "deindustrialise" anybody, just finding a place amongst equals

ajsnigrutin• 4 days ago

For us living in "the rest of the world", we only have a choice of being spied on by chinese or american companies, and american ones can do a lot more damage to us than chinese.

So if we're getting spied on anyway, why not buy a better product?

mvdtnz• 4 days ago

Sounds like a problem for America. And totally irrelevant to the state of GoPro the company. It sounds like you're advocating for corporate welfare on the basis that a failing company is "based in" USA, even though their most impactful operations are overseas.

browningstreet• 4 days ago

GoPro has been “in trouble” for years and years. All of that may be true but they just haven’t justified their survival. They may well be better off selling to Garmin or another domestic air defense vendor and be done in the consumer market.

FWIW current administration wants to play this same game, but they def won’t do it as well.

starky• 4 days ago

People think this doesn’t matter, but GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place.

I'm actually surprised to hear that GoPro is used in aerospace applications. I assumed that they would use cameras from companies like Teledyne that have a more industrial/military customer base. That is to say, there are almost certainly options for domestic camera manufacturers if required.

You are right about China. The West (especially Apple) taught China how to manufacture while losing the ability ourselves and for some reason didn't consider that they would figure out how to design products themselves and bring the entire product chain within the country.

Individuals at the end of the day mostly care about buying the cheapest thing that does the job. They don't consider where it comes from. Even those that do care have limits in how they will compromise (there is a reason why I bought Bambu Labs 3D printer even though I would have preferred a Prusa).

traceroute66• 4 days ago

If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place

Oh right, because the US has never done that ? Its public knowledge the US does supply-chain interdiction, see the infamous NSA “upgrade” factories as just one example.

The US is also just as capable of writing buggy code full of security holes as everyone else. Even more so today with the advent of "vibe code it and ship it".

It is only an attack vector if you allow it to be so, defence in depth and all that ...

I guess for people who don’t have any experience working on federal government adjacent aerospace stuff, the idea of natsec considerations for IT hardware seems entirely abstract

But its all magically ok if its got a "designed in the USA" and/or "made in the USA" badge on it ?

The problem I see here is a desire to use COTS stuff out-of-the-box in natsec environments led by a desire to save money and/or save time. Seems to me like one of those "pick two" moments where the "security" option was thrown in the trash.

thephyber4• 4 days ago

This is written like an American who is both ignorant of cybersecurity, American politics, and of the advantages that the US has benefitted from since at least WW2.

The core points are:

  - we can't trust a connected GoPro device any more than a connected DJI device

  - Just because a device is developed in China doesn't make it a vulnerability.

  - Just because a device is made in the US doesn't make it resistant to vulnerabilities.

  - US politicians don't have any incentive to tell us the truth. Because of the nature of national security, they could completely lie about any accusations of Chinese involvement and we would never know, especially now that the US president fired anyone who resists his demands for fealty.

  - GoPro was first to market but stopped adding value once they IPOed. US public companies depending on IP protections / rent seeking rather than cutthroat competition is the core reason DJI is beating GoPro, not Chinese government subsidies to the sector.

  - China's middle and upper classes are far larger than the US's. Similarly, they are training more college grads. China also has more companies being created and more creative destruction than the US. It doesn't matter if we build a better v1.0 product because their innovation engine is moving at least as fast as ours.

  - the US has had a 70 year head start on "a near zero cost of capital". Being the west's financier after WW2 and later the world's reserve currency.

I don't pity a US company because it chose not to compete with a Chinese company despite starting from an advantage.

TooSmugToFail• 3 days ago

GoPro was outcompeted on the market. Simple as that.

They were made irrelevant by Insta360 and DJI, both with legitimately better products.

In my view, the only entity to blame for that is GoPro. And I believe that the shortfall was not only in matters of technology. My limited interactions with them painted a picture of an organisation with some super clever people, but paralysed by slow bureaucracy and high risk aversion.

By contrast, Insta360 was much more aggressive and enterprising, while DJI just did what DJI does: build amazing products.

Trying to blame this on some arcane Chinese plot to destroy the West is just a weak attempt to cope with reality: in China today there is simply much higher number of hard working, highly intelligent, highly educated people that are hungry for success then there are in the West.

One thing we forget is that the two great Chinese companies in this space (Insta and DJI) had first to compete against hundreds (thousands?) of other Chinese camera companies before they could come out on the top and compete globally.

They are not a product of a CCP plot. They are a result of a ruthlessly competitive and capable local ecosystem, itself a result of decades of consistent industrial and innovation policy.

Nothing is stopping us in the EU and US to do the same.

PunchyHamster3• 3 days ago

I'm not sure what attack vectors are there if you don't connect your camera to company wifi, I guess it could technically put a payload on SD card but... eh ?

When China wants to deindustrialize non-Chinese industries for strategic and/or natsec reasons, they are incredibly good at it. (And note it’s not US-only, China targets basically ANY brand that isn’t Chinese. China absolutely does this to Europe as well… and you can see them doing it in real-time with automotive.)

First, Gopros are made and assembled in China (with I think some in Mexico now to avoid tariffs). And absolutely nothing stops them from just sending potentially malicious firmware to the non-china made ones too

Second China didn't make Gopros fucking overheat, shoddy engineering did. They rested on their laurels while competition worked hard on making better product. If it was just production costs the top end GoPros would be the best in the niche, just more expensive, but no they are both more expensive and worse product.

Third, it is not "Chinese govt. doing it" (tho they are certainly helping), it is west constantly sending their tech advantage away just to get some cheap production there. Whether directly like Apple or Tesla, or indirectly, by allowing chinese capital to buy western car companies and instantly get all the tech then just apply their more integrated production to make same stuff cheaper.

West gave China their advantage willingly, for a short term profits, and continue to do so, then try to mask it as some kind of malicious push (not saying it isn't happening, just saying the western companies are complicit in it) rather than corporate greed ruining everything yet again.

microtonal8• 4 days ago

I’ve owned a lot of Gopro cameras, having done video capture for a variety of motorsports, and they just got too expensive for what you get.

Sounds very similar to another US company - Garmin. They are still popular, but have been raising prices a lot every generation, because for a long time there was no real competition [1]. At this point, Garmin watches that have mapping support have an introduction price of >600 Euro. Even at that price point, zooming or panning maps is excruciatingly slow (sometimes taking up to 10 seconds to re-render) because they have used the same CPU/MCU for multiple generations while increasing screen resolution. They also haven't really innovated a lot as of recently and are moving some new functionality behind a subscription.

This has opened a large gap for Chinese competition. Now you can get a Coros Nomad that goes head-to-head with models like the Garmin Enduro for 350 Euro. They don't have full feature parity yet, but they are so rapidly adding features that they will at some point. Also, in contrast to Garmin, they seem to be using modern microcontrollers, so panning or zooming a map is insanely fast in comparison, while still having ~20 days of battery for daily use.

[1] Of the traditional competitors, Apple Watch Ultra and Galaxy Watch Ultra have gotten closer, but are nowhere near the battery life, robustness, mapping support, mapping + workout support, etc.

loloquwowndueo2• 4 days ago

It’s interesting that you mention Garmin - they’re a good example of pivoting from your original market (standalone gps units for cars) once you see a nimble competitor eating away at it (gps-enabled smartphones). Garmin would be dead if they had held fast on the standalone GPS market.

CWuestefeld2• 4 days ago

Garmin watches that have mapping support have an introduction price of >600 Euro. Even at that price point, zooming or panning maps is excruciatingly slow

I just got a Garmin Instinct 3 Solar. It does mapping, and cost me about $300 US.

You're right that it's slow due to a wimpy processor. But the processor isn't because they're too lazy to innovate, but because they have something sipping tiny amounts of power so that I can get a battery life of several weeks.

radiorental3• 4 days ago

I have a love/hate relationship with Garmin.

As a motorcyclist and sailor, their hardware is second to none in terms of build quality and robustness. The ability to look down at my Zumo GPS on my motorcycle in a rain storm on a dirt road and have it respond to my wet dirty glove is a close to magic as you will get.

Then there's the watches, the Instinct range is ok but I have a button that doesn't pop back out, my wife's vivoactive suffered the well known touch failure.

However, as a UXer I will say that across all products the software interaction model sucks balls. "China" can and will produce hardware to meet a price point, its not that they can't build good products.

As soon as "China" figures out how to do good UX, the last moat western companies have will fall.

SoftTalker4• 4 days ago

About 10 years ago I was looking for a rugged small camera. Found some by Garmin that were on a closeout sale. Excellent quality, never owned a GoPro so can't compare but I used them in similar applications and they never had an issue.

krick• 4 days ago

Really considering Coros since Garmin introduced a subscription. It doesn't currently prevent me from using anything I want to use, it's just moving in the wrong direction, but I was annoyed by Garmin for a long time, and this is the last drop.

However, my understanding is that Coros just doesn't have an SDK. At all. So it's not really "lagging on features", it's a totally closed platform, that doesn't any have 3rd party apps at all, and will not have them, because it's impossible to write them. I don't know if it's enough of a reason to completely write them off as a competitor, but that does give me a pause. I mean, if I don't have a feature on Garmin, I can theoretically implement it myself, or even hope that somebody else did. If I don't have it on Coros, I will just have to make do.

misiek082• 4 days ago

Garmin will survive a year or more easily, because in Europe there is a big group of people who belive in Garmin even more than people belived in Apple (this group is still huge and strong, but the company itself does everything it can to change it).

The real competition is Apple Watch and for sport-intensive application Garmin wins because of battery and simplicity of usage in harder conditions.

icar• 3 days ago

They seem to be a top brand in sailing for now, still. But they did move to a subscription for their Navionics charts.

kramer2718• 4 days ago

According to a quick search, GoPro has an Enterprise Valuation of $160M. That would be chump change for a large tech company. The brand has name recognition value in excess of that figure. I suspect some big company will happily buy it but not sure who. It has to be a company that wants to get into the camera market. I don't think the brand name is as valuable to an existing camera company-though I could be wrong.

Apple, Google, and Amazon could all make sense. Google would see the business as an opportunity to strengthen its existing IoT portfolio. Apple an opportunity to add to its integrated consumer electronics offering. Amazon would be more a play to improve GoPro's margins. They could easily push it with prime deals, etc.

I could also see Samsung getting in.

Regardless, expect to see more integration, AI features, etc, after acquisition.

dh2022• 4 days ago

If google would buy GoPro it would close it a couple of years later

teraflop2• 4 days ago

One cool feature I've read about is that (at least some) GoPro cameras can save high-resolution IMU measurements to the recorded video files, timestamped and interleaved with video frames. This can be useful for mapping applications, e.g. https://joshi-bharat.github.io/projects/gopro/

Are there any competitors on the market that also have this feature? I've looked around a few times in the past and haven't found any. Many cameras say that they have an IMU, presumably for image stabilization, but they don't seem to record or expose that data.

konraditurbe• 4 days ago

Both Insta360 and DJI cameras save IMU / magnetometer data to their video files.

matsemann7• 4 days ago

A gopro isn't worse than the competition, nor at a premium.

What makes gopro the standard in proper productions (and science etc) is that they're so hackable with the gopro labs software. With that, all the other cameras are toys in comparison for professional usage.

Gigachad5• 4 days ago

The bulk of the market is toys for aspiring content creators. Professional usage is pocket change subsidised by tiktokers.

giancarlostoro• 4 days ago

I bought one back in 2018, curious what brand would you recommend today? I wouldnt mind upgrading to something more modern but I dont care about GoPro for brands sake. Would love something I could take in the water like the GoPro.

gregdaniels421• 3 days ago

It really didn't help that the HERO 13 changed a bunch of stuff for the worse, like incompatible api and other issues.

rr808• 4 days ago

I'm just surprised that an American brand making electronics lasted this long. Even Japanese companies are giving up. No one can compete with China.

Apple somehow reigns supreme still. Anyone else?

romanovcode2• 4 days ago

Is apple making electronics? I thought they are made in India and China.

haunter3• 4 days ago

Mac Mini will be made in Houston (they already make their own servers there) https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/02/apple-accelerates-us-...

crazylogger• 4 days ago

Manufacturing is primarily in China - that's true for Go Pro & everyone else and almost needless to say. The point is China usually eats the design layer too, making Apple a little unique in that they survived Chinese competition completely unscathed.

steelframe• 4 days ago

Apple isn't exactly competing with China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_in_China

leoc• 4 days ago

At the manufacturing level it largely isn't, no, though as others have pointed out Apple at least still has the ability to explore options outside China. But Apple represents a lack of vertical integration for its big Chinese suppliers like Foxconn, an American middleman taking a big slice of the revenues and profits which come from the customer. One thing to note is that Android isn't all that different, as phone makers still have to tithe to Google.

One factor (mentioned at https://bsky.app/profile/rajakorman.bsky.social/post/3mqubnh... for instance) is Western distrust of the Chinese government and the regulatory barriers erected from both sides. TikTok's probably a good case study. There was a conspicuous lack of Chinese software companies having success in the Western consumer market before TikTok. Building TikTok involved creating a new product aimed at RoW which was separate from its original Chinese model, Douyin. And then after TikTok Western success was still elusive, to some extent, as the US government snatched away Bytedance's toy.

Though even beyond tech and other politically sensitive areas China's generally been pretty slow at generating RoW-consumer-facing products and brands. There's also the slightly remarkable fact that historically (and even to some extent still today) GUIs have been extremely, mysteriously hard for large companies worldwide to do well. The main exception have tended to either be called "Apple" or have dedicated themselves to copying Apple's homework: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22288221 .

(I am not an expert on anyhthing.)

Alien1Being2• 4 days ago

Apple manufacturing is entirely Indian and Chinese.

While GoPro is made in Thailand.

America is just where their marketing teams hang out...

haunter3• 4 days ago

Mac Mini will be made in Houston (they already make their own servers there) https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/02/apple-accelerates-us-...

Keyframe• 4 days ago

Apple is China.. hence "Designed by Apple in California"

layer8• 4 days ago

The GoPros aren’t manufactured in the US either.

smokel• 4 days ago

I'm looking at GoPro packaging here that says "Made in Thailand".

Grombobulous5• 4 days ago

A whole bunch of American and Western multinational companies design hardware in Western countries and manufacture them in China.

The manufacturing isn’t usually the most valuable part of the value chain. E.g., Apple makes the most money when you sell you an iPhone, not their Chinese and Indian factory suppliers and assemblers.

GoPro isn’t failing because they’re an American brand. They’re failing because they’re mismanaged and they made a bunch of product mistakes.

If you want more examples I can give them to you: Google hardware/phones, HP, Dell, Sonos, Bose, Ubiquiti, Cisco, Nvidia, Qualcomm.

Most Japanese corporations still do a lot of their design work in Japan. Sony even does manufacturing of Raspberry Pi devices in Wales.

And of course, speaking of Sony, the money maker for that console is in software, and most of Sony’s studios are in Western countries like the US and Japan. The manufacture of the console is the lowest value part of the business.

Companies that have significant manufacturing and fabrication outside of China/Taiwan: Intel, IBM, GlobalFoundries, ON Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, Whisker (Litter Robot), and a very large percentage of the automotive industry.

Large appliances brands have a heavy presence in the US, Canada, and Mexico, including LG, Samsung, Whirlpool, GE appliances, Speed Queen, SubZero/Wolf/Cove, BSH Home Appliances (Bosch/Thermador), Electrolux.

KitchenAid mixers, Vitamix, Viking Range, BlueStar.

Igloo coolers, All-Clad, Lodge, Post-It notes, Darn Tough Socks…

SoftTalker4• 4 days ago

Most of those appliance brands have become expensive enshittified garbage, or are legendary brands that have been bought up (e.g. KitchenAid used to be a Hobart brand, it's now owned by Whirlpool. Their stand mixers used to last generations; the new ones have a lot of plastic parts inside them). I have one of the original Cuisinart food processors that my mom bought in the 1970s. The base/motor unit is heavy and it still works today. The brand today is now just a label on Conair kitchen gadgets.

Some have held out. Speed Queen are still made in Wisconsin. I will be looking at them when I need to replace my laundry machines, which I expect in the next couple of years.

tomaskafka5• 4 days ago

That’s a great list of targets to kill. Things like Vitamix should get undercut by 300 % with same or better quality.

csomar• 4 days ago

Apple still stand because of Software which China sucks at. Good thing the US is not about to destroy its software industry by investing all of its money on AI.

TheArcane2• 4 days ago

Apple somehow reigns supreme still.

That's because America ban anything that starts to compete, like Huawei or Chinese car companies

SoftTalker4• 4 days ago

Huawei had spyware and backdoors in their gear, and they use forced labor in their factories. I think they earned a ban.

phendrenad2• 4 days ago

Apple has an excellent mobile OS, which is enough of a loyal userbase that they can make a hardware mistake once in a while and still retain customers. They're less hardware-dependent than most device manufacturers. This also enables them to lag behind the state of the art if it means more reliable/consistent performance. Which is why you don't see a folding Apple phone yet, and why Samsung was able to score points against Apple by having longer battery life and a better camera. This also allows them to demand high quality from their factories.

dismalaf8• 4 days ago

Apple somehow reigns supreme still.

Largely because they've been producing in China for quite awhile. Now India too.

nunez• 4 days ago

Consumer electronics, yes. For defense, though, American companies very much still make electronics.

baby9• 4 days ago

Apple reigns because you can't buy Chinese brands in the US

anonu• 4 days ago

Apple somehow reigns supreme still.

Apple reigns supreme because of China - and the two are inextricably linked. China would not have its high-tech manufacturing prowess if it were not for Apple. The book Apple In China [1] highlights how millions of cheap laborers and the country's engineers took the lessons of working with Apple to solidify its edge in this space in a way nobody can catch up to today.

China took the long-term greedy approach to invest in the relationship. We see the US today taking equity stakes in Intel and trying to play catchup by using elements of the same playbook. The US's advantage remains in the more "intangible" side of the process: creativity, design, new tech. In a global economy with free trade, this is all fine. But China never "westernized" itself as was expected from the increase in global trade. Now the US is back pedaling, trying to jump start its manufacturing. It will take a long time...

The book is a good page-turning read. I recommend it.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/1668053373

throwaway20377• 4 days ago

I will pick an odd example. I was shocked to learn that SpaceX manufactures its ground satellite dishes (that customers need to buy) in Texas. They make more than five million units per year, and are looking to double that number. I am surprised that they did not outsource it to China. Maybe they are concerned about intellectual property theft. Still, that must be a hefty "tax" to pay to manuf in US instead of China.

chasd00• 4 days ago

A common theme between Tesla and SpaceX is obsessive vertical integration. SpaceX is building liquid oxygen (not sure about methane) production facilities at Boca Chica. That way they can make their own and not have to pay for the margin. As for Starlink, they must have found a way to do it better or cheaper or both. On a tangent, the manufacturing expertise in both companies is as impressive as their end products.

keiferski2• 4 days ago

Red Bull really ran the marketing playbook that GoPro should have done: become known for athletes doing extreme things. Instead they stayed too technical and product-based and didn't build a brand beyond "we make action cameras."

r3trohack3r• 4 days ago

There is an old saying that Red Bull is a marketing company that happens to sell energy drinks

keiferski2• 4 days ago

yep, and there's no reason why a company with that brand couldn't be selling action cameras, or shoes (Nike), or anything adjacent to extreme sports

fy20• 4 days ago

Well that is pretty much true. It's founder was a marketing director for a consumer goods brand.

harrall• 4 days ago

Red Bull doesn’t just market, they bankroll and support.

Most companies just sponsor a team or something, but Red Bull has paid for the baseline infrastructure of many sports.

atourgates2• 4 days ago

They really have tried.

They don't have the type of insane cashflow that RedBull does to sponsor tons of athletes and weird events, but their video contests are kind of a big deal in the action sports community.

AKA, their Line of the Winter[1] competition for skiing, or their Best Line conest for MTB[2] that they used to run. And they're the title sponsor for the GoPro Mountain Games[3].

They're still THE action sports cameara carried in a lot of outdoor equipment stores, but the Insta360 has really dominated social media recently, and their products are currently a better value for cost/performance.

[1] https://gopro.com/en/us/awards/line-of-the-winter [2] https://www.pinkbike.com/news/enter-the-gopro-of-the-world-b... [3] https://mountaingames.com/

TravisJamison• 4 days ago

It’s not just the cash flow, it’s the margins.

Redbulls gross margins are probably 90%. It’s basically just water, sugar, and caffeine sold for $3.

You can do a lot of great promotions if the cost of your product is a rounding error.

usrusr2• 4 days ago

So how many minutes of that playbook do you suppose the annual budget of Gopro would be able to pay for?

5701652400• 4 days ago

didn't they moved actual hardware production elsewhere outside of US?

typical story. first move out production, loose core competency, let competitors copy it with own brands in own jurisdictions, and shut down business.

crote8• 4 days ago

American manufacturing is a rounding error, especially when it comes to consumer electronics.

Western manufacturing can't compete with a Shenzhen. Our supply lines suck, our labour is too expensive for any kind of manual work, and we didn't bother to invest in automation as decades of outsourcing made our manufacturers focus on low-volume high-margin products.

No need to steal when our own companies willingly export core competency for a few cents of shareholder value!

junto• 4 days ago

This sounds like a choose your path story…

You are a country. You have to decide on your country’s economic model before starting the game. Choose:

- a free market economy. Companies are unhindered by the state to make their own decisions to maximize shareholder value. Decisions therefore lean towards short term profit margins rather than long term success. Influence of the state via elected politicians on a short term is expensive but effective to ensure you are unhindered by regulation. Success here is not aligned with the long term success of the state.

- a quasi free market where there is partial state ownership and control, but also supports free market principles to encourage private investment. The state will heavily subsidize your economy and decisions can be made to prioritize long term global success rather than short term shareholder value.

- a state controlled and state owned economy. All decisions are made by committee. There are no shareholders apart from the state. Success benefits all within the state. Failure also tied directly to the state. Long term goals are preference over short term goals.

Choose carefully. Once your have made your decision the costs to change it are extremely high and will result in societal and economic collapse.

lardosaurusrex2• 4 days ago

Gopro has been garbage for years now.

Heck in youtube videos you'll occasionally hear "for some reason my gopro is really hot and smells like burning plastic".

Happens to every big brand, really.

transitorykris• 4 days ago

I loved the product early on, but they became the Adobe Creative Cloud of cameras. Play dumb subscription games win dumb prizes.

doctorpangloss2• 4 days ago

They could spur a lot of innovation by open sourcing their firmware or introducing plugins. They don't really have a channel to take asks like "ring buffer style recording" but I would do it myself.

bogwog• 4 days ago

They already have Open GoPro: https://gopro.com/en/us/info/open-gopro

Idk if the firmware is open source, but there's a whole SDK you can use to implement stuff like that

doctorpangloss2• 4 days ago

I would want to put stuff on the camera, which this SDK doesn't do. But it's good it is part of their DNA.

SignalM• 4 days ago

They missed the chance to make PC camera just before Covid or during it or now as another revenue stream. They have a hacky way to get it to work but they should have made one specifically for the PC and meeting settings.. Cisco and others make a killing in that space

kawsper2• 4 days ago

All GoPros since HERO 8 (released 2019) works as a webcam without any hacks, just plug it in.

randoments• 4 days ago

not on the macos. Hero9 (or 10 i dont remember) owner here.

intellix• 4 days ago

we barely ever use our GoPro 8 BLACK. I decided to take it with me skiing and turned it on for a crazy ride down. When I got back I wanted to show my GF the footage and it just had frozen video, only playing sound.

I thought they were meant to be really robust and hardy but it decided not to work when I needed it and now I don't really trust them tbh. It's sort of opposite of what the brand was leading me to believe.

Grombobulous5• 4 days ago

There’s a really good video out there about how GoPro fumbled their position:

https://youtu.be/frrhSJF__Mc

Insta360 is the company that has essentially taken over this space.

knes• 4 days ago

no one is mentioning DJI? they are also crushing go pro with DJI Osmo lineup, action or nano.

varispeed3• 4 days ago

I don't see a use case for these cameras. Phone takes amazing pictures and videos and is always on hand and if I need something more polished, I just get DSLR. Sure DSLR is more expensive, but if I want to do something well, I'd rather go all in.

seabrookmx• 4 days ago

The use case is niche but there. I ride mountain bikes and off-road motorcycles and have a GoPro on my helmet. A phone is the wrong form factor and a DSLR is too heavy.

Same with surfers, or people who race cars etc. Having a physically small camera, with robust mounting and stabilization is not something a phone in a gimbal or a "real camera" can provide.

rjrjrjrj4• 4 days ago

Who is mounting a DSLR on bike, helmet, chest? Taking it in the ocean, etc.

maratc2• 4 days ago

When you want to film your kid jumping into a pool (from inside the pool), do you do it with your phone or with your DSLR?

varispeed3• 4 days ago

Phone

Gravityloss• 4 days ago

Many years ago had my first Gopro camera that seriously overheated, sent it for repairs, they said there was nothing wrong with it. It literally turned too hot to handle after taking a few clips and wouldn't work. I think there was some serious hardware issue that caused it to then drain the whole battery.

Gave the brand a second chance some years ago. Couldn't export my videos from the app, it always hanged. So I couldn't share footage. Apparently a common long standing problem on forums.

Woved to never buy anything from them again.

phyzome• 4 days ago

Yeah, I've had multiple GoPros die in multiple ways, and way too quickly. They're just really poor quality and aren't suited for vibration, heat, cold, etc. -- exactly the things an "action camera" should be able to tolerate.

jodiug2• 4 days ago

I missed a lot of footage last year too, after buying a newer model GoPro. Turns out, they now ship a battery that cannot handle even mildly freezing temperatures. Impossible to film while skiing. Of course, you have to buy a special winter battery, and none of their product marketing mentions this.

thephyber4• 4 days ago

It's still an issue with the newest generation cameras. If you record at the highest resolution and FPS, the camera can't shed the heat fast enough.

andmarios• 4 days ago

Contrary to the popular opinion in the rest of the comments, I do like my GoPro (Hero 11). Good and robust hardware, a lot of thought into usability for professionals, many accessories, and hackable with official firmware from the company.

The "problem" is that I don't use it that often. Most people do not need action footage regularly. It was more like a impulse/hobby buy rather than a need.

kawsper2• 4 days ago

and hackable with official firmware from the company.

GoPro Labs works really well, https://gopro.com/en/us/info/gopro-labs

But it's a bit sad how long their expirements lives there before making it into the default firmware.

Lammy• 4 days ago

I do like my GoPro (Hero 11). Good and robust hardware

I have the same model and hate it. Damn thing overheats constantly. It has never been able to do 4K60 for more than ~twenty minutes even with a full-blast AC vent pointed directly at it. It still overheats periodically when doing 1080P60 too, but a lot less often and usually only in situations where I am also uncomfortbly warm.

More than zero overheating is unacceptable though considering I have to notice it happened, turn it back on, dismiss the warning, and restart recording. Pic from literally just today, July 18th: https://ibb.co/chPq0N8g

ltbarcly3• 4 days ago

It's a testament to how broken modern business practices are that GoPro can sell 1.2 Million cameras per year and still go out of business.

It's possible they are just poorly run, and they spend more in R&D than they recoup in revenue, but I strongly suspect they were set up to only be profitable if they sold millions of cameras per year as an attempt to maximize profits at that volume, without consideration of other scenarios.

aeonik• 4 days ago

I stopped buying go pros when I drove from the top of Mt Blue Sky to the base. Had the camera mounted on my dashboard, planned to make a cool time lapse down the mountain road.

Turns out it overheated 15 minutes into the drive, and corrupted all the footage from my whole ski trip.

I'm also still salty that they cancelled my favorite fast video editing software (can't remember the name).

This was 8 years ago.

skippyfish3• 4 days ago

I slept on GoPro for a long time because, but then wanted to document some outdoor activities. I went with two Hero 5 units and as a photographer, I was shocked by how overhyped these devices seemed to be.

The first surprise was just shoddy electrical engineering: unlike any camera from a big-name manufacturer, they drain the batteries in storage, to the point where they're dead after 2-3 weeks. But that aside, image quality is just poor for the price. It's oversharpened and oversaturated to cover up deficiencies, and that may work for some YouTube videos, but it's a $400 device that's miles behind any $500 mirrorless.

So I get it that if really want to go snorkeling or mountain biking with a camera, this might be a good choice, but that's a tiny market, and for everything else, why would you buy it? If you want cell phone quality video, you can use your cell phone. If you want professional quality, you can spend the same amount of money on a mirrorless from Canon, Panasonic, Sony, or whatever.

jitl4• 4 days ago

the action part of “action camera” is the reason why you buy an action camera. if a normal camera is fine then yeah, you don’t need it.

vorpalhex• 4 days ago

My strong photographer opinion is that you should buy the oldest action camera that meets any resolution/framerate needs and treat it almost like a disposable. Buy on sales or used units. Use them on shots you genuinely are unwilling to use a mirrorless for - strapped to the front of a bike, magnetically attached to the side of a car, strapped to someone jumping in a lake.

crote8• 4 days ago

treat it almost like a disposable

And that's why GoPro is dying: they are selling a premium product in a market of disposables.

crote8• 4 days ago

The GoPro has always been explicitly marketed as an action camera - to the point that people for a long time called any action camera "a GoPro". Comparing them to smartphones or mirrorless cameras is completely missing their point: nobody would buy them for regular point-and-shoot activity.

You buy a GoPro to mount onto a dirt bike, or on your helmet during caving, or on a chest harness during a skydive, or on the front of your surfboard: all activities where a smartphone or a mirrorless would die on their first use.

GoPro isn't failing because the concept is wrong - the market is massive. GoPro is failing because its competitors started releasing clones which are both better and cheaper. They are the expensive premium brand in a market where buyers expect their product will need to be replaced when it inevitably can't handle the abuse anymore.

skippyfish3• 4 days ago

No, that's precisely my point. It's only an action camera, and you assert that the market is massive, but I don't see it. Just how many millions of units can you sell to YouTuber spelunkers, YouTuber mountain bikers, YouTuber paragliders, YouTuber divers, and so on?

The reality is that even in "action" situations - the situations where normal people want to capture memories of hiking, biking, boating, etc - normal cameras, including cell phones, are usually more than enough and GoPro somehow managers to be worse.

jitl4• 4 days ago

it’s very much like iRobot vacuums - more expensive and less performant than the chinese competitors that have totally overtaken the market. iRobot sad story, but so behind. i have a chinese robot from 3i that fills its mop water tank from humidity in the air. and my action camera is an Insta360 that does great 360 video underwater without a case.

rjrjrjrj4• 4 days ago

So I get it that if really want to go snorkeling or mountain biking with a camera, this might be a good choice, but that's a tiny market, and for everything else, why would you buy it?

I don't think people are cross-shopping action cameras and mirrorless cameras. Either you want a wearable light-weight shockproof, waterproof camera or not.

Worth pointing out that your experience is with a model from a decade ago. The current Hero model is the 13.

radicality• 4 days ago

Ah damn I just bought their new Mission One a few weeks ago (upgrading from a Hero 10). Already quite angry though since it seems the batteries are basically the same shape for both, except the connector is in a different location, so the 3 existing batteries I have for the Hero 10 are not compatible, which is a shitty move from GoPro. Well I guess either way I won’t be buying gopros anymore in the future.

abalashov5• 4 days ago

As a cyclist (and former racer), I still want to know how to capture videos with telemetry overlays (speed, power, HR, etc) from my head unit in a straightforward way. NorCal Cycling's videos - https://www.youtube.com/@NorCalCycling - are an excellent demonstration of this at work.

Yes, I've done the Garmin VIRB Edit thing, which is the very approach recommended by Jeff (NorCalCycling) in his tutorial videos on the subject. It feels like something out of 2005. It is incredibly labour-intensive and imprecise unless you're fortunate enough to be in relatively short criteriums where you've got the battery runtime to just record the whole race. Most real-world events and rides require one to turn the camera on and off at certain moments, which then requires _hours_ of stitching together clips and correlating them to GPS fixes from the head unit (in the FIT file), and quite imprecisely at that.

There has to be a more 2026 solution to this. All you need to do is correlate the footage to the FIT data points by timestamp, in the temporal domain.

If Garmin came out with one, it would absolutely annihilate this space. To the best of my knowledge, there is no competition that offers anything turn-key, though perhaps the best of my knowledge has not aged well and by now there is something. It's maddening.

shepherdjerred• 4 days ago

Am I wrong in thinking you could do this with ffmpeg, your video files, and your data from Strava/Garmin/whatever? This feels like a program an LLM (or human!) could write pretty easily

abalashov5• 4 days ago

You would think it would be that straightforward. However, accurate synchronisation on GPS or temporal attributes would be required.

Judging by the paucity of software to do this, historically, it is not a straightforward problem, or all the devices involved don't generate all the data points required.

The real mess is when you have 26 clips from a long event to string together. It can easily take a day and a half to make a 3 minute montage out of that.

OJFord• 4 days ago

Yeah I had a little script to do something similar (no video, but merging data) just for Strava recording a while back. Had forgotten all about it until this description & 'FIT files'.

Video's a bit more complex no doubt, but like you say all the pieces are there, SMoP.

rjrjrjrj4• 4 days ago

Insta360 does this out of the box.

abalashov5• 4 days ago

Does it?

massagedpelican• 4 days ago

I truly hate to suggest this, but the meta vanguard nails this to a tee.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/10/oakley-meta-vanguard-rev...

abalashov5• 4 days ago

Hey, there has to be a legitimate use-case somewhere. Thank you!

deepsun• 4 days ago

Dunno if useful, but in RC hobby area we have had OSD (on-screen displays) for decades. Both in analog and digital video, with recording (analog OSD there's just a small chip). Although analog is probably not relevant for you -- quality is crap and you don't care about milliseconds latency as we do, so go with digital (and not HDZero, they are technically digital, but heavily invested in low-latency, for pro racers).

Just don't buy DJI -- they absolutely want lock you in to their tools, parts are often not compatible even within DJI, require to create an online account, require an app (from a custom .apk on android) and in general have questionable privacy.

Of the open-source systems there's a new OpenIPC system with a most popular implementation of RunCam WifiLink 2 that supports onboard SD card recording [1] [2].

More proprietary (but still cross-compatible with others) is Walksnail Avatar V2 [3] with 32GB of internal storage.

For your case, you don't need a VRX (receiver), although you can totally give it your your buddies to see your race (with OSD) in real time. VRX can be built-in to goggles (if the same company), or as a separate module that connects to your preferred goggles over mini-HDMI, also with recording. [4] [5]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP7Ns7H9wvI&t=49s

[2] https://shop.runcam.com/action-camera-categorie/

[3] https://www.caddxfpv.com/products/walksnail-avatar-hd-kit-v2

[4] https://shop.runcam.com/runcam-wifilink-rx/

[5] https://www.caddxfpv.com/products/walksnail-avatar-fpv-vrx-o...

pvachon• 4 days ago

Sounds like you want https://goprotelemetryextractor.com/telemetry-overlay-gps-vi... — feed it your GoPro footage, your Garmin FIT file, set up your gauges as you so desire and you’re off to the races (or the rendering at least). I suspect a lot of cycling Vloggers use it.

abalashov5• 4 days ago

Thank you! This looks like it might be the ticket.

lostlogin13• 4 days ago

That’s really impressive - to anyone passing through, the video is with a watch.

hatsunearu• 4 days ago

IMO the image quality on GoPro is still the best. I don't understand why people say it's horrible. For flat video it outperforms Insta360 and definitely DJI.

topspin2• 4 days ago

Betteridge enters the chat. GoPro's market is changing: strong competitors now make solid, low cost alternatives. GoPro is moving deep into professional markets where margins are high, and leveraging their position as a US company whose products can be utilized by sensitive customers.

GoPro will be fine. They just won't be the go-to for every YouTuber any longer.

hmokiguess3• 4 days ago

I bought my first GoPro for a scuba diving trip in Mexico once. Was super excited, it was my first scuba diving experience too.

As soon as we hit deeper waters the capture button pressed itself down due the pressure and it wouldn’t come back up. That, unfortunately happened in a way that I couldn’t start a capture. Lost the entire thing, despite the camera being perfectly fine after we came back to surface.

Hated them ever since.

belorn• 4 days ago

For scuba diving you will want to have a house for the camera regardless of brand. It not only lower the risk of damages, but it is also more explicitly designed for depth without needing to compromising for non-divers.

That said, GoPro is not the best for low light environments, and the battery is a bit temperature sensitive, both which can be an issue when diving.

Mawr3• 4 days ago

Hahahah. Do you seriously just take random objects deep underwater and expect them to be designed to withstand that sort of an environment?

Was the GoPro you bought rated up to that depth or something? After a cursory look online, they're only rated down to 10m, which is about what I'd expect.

hmokiguess3• 3 days ago

It was rated 30m, I went down less than that, and I used their enclosing thingy. Yes, I did expect it to work as their marketing team managed to convince me of such.

It wasn't a random object, it was a camera marketed for such environment.

werdnapk• 4 days ago

GoPros (at least the early generations) required a special housing for use in water. My first GoPro was a 2 I believe and I bought it for scuba and it was terrible. Then the newer models came out promising better performance for diving, so I upgraded... and it was terrible as well. Gave up on GoPros after being sucked in twice and not getting the results I was hoping for. It was ok for other things, but anything involving water was not great.

I believe things eventually got sorted out for water use, but I was no longer a customer.

hmokiguess3• 3 days ago

Totally, I had the 4th generation one, and I used their water case enclosing. It was less than 30m deep, and within their safe range.

baby9• 4 days ago

I've owned a bunch of gopros and I feel like they've always had the same kind of bugs. Random crashes, things not working anymore. It's really bad, so bad that I had plenty of videos that were missing sound, or just corruption in general.

Then they started this subscription thing and I was like, finally, they're going the SaaS way, they will make so much money, and they will be able to improve that camera that basically never seems to improve much version after version. I bought a bunch of put options, and I lost all my money, every time I put back some in the put options.

Now I have the insta360 go ultra and... I think go pro is going to die. It's just so good.

windowshopping• 4 days ago

If you thought they were going to finally improve with SaaS why did you buy put options?

zerocrates• 4 days ago

"Ah so that's why I kept losing money!"

But seriously, safe to assume they meant to say calls and just accidentally wrote the wrong one.

lardosaurusrex2• 4 days ago

You... invested in the crappy company being crappy that did the crappiest thing all the crappy companies do aka start a subscription...

and... -- and please correct me if I'm wrong -- got burned by it?

???

recursivecaveat• 4 days ago

Extremely similar to iRobot (Roomba). They both practically genericized themselves by inventing and dominating the product category, then just couldn't keep up with the competition. GoPro does feel more self inflicted though. Their drone was a failure, and they burnt a lot of money trying to do some kind of pivot to being a media company.

nikodunk• 4 days ago

Was just about to say Roomba too! Next up IMO is Philips Hue, which don't support Matter and cost $25, vs. Matter-enabled Amazon brands that cost $7.

tomaskafka5• 4 days ago

Hue also peaks at 20 W sources which leave even small room in the dark (for comparison, I have 70 W of LED lighting in the kitchen central light).

kowbell• 4 days ago

Got any you'd recommend? I've been paying the Hue tax because they're the only bulbs I've had with zero connectivity issues ever across several years, whereas every other brand I've tried has been very unreliable.

Gigachad5• 4 days ago

IKEA is winning here rather than a Chinese brand.

griffinli• 4 days ago

Hue does support Matter. Hue is expensive but delivers a premium experience, unlike the products talked about in this thread that are expensive but not better than the competition.

ghtbircshotbe• 3 days ago

It sounds similar to a lot of US products. They outsource all production to China, then China essentially start making copies of their products and charging a fraction of the price.

tomaskafka5• 4 days ago

My guess is that action cameras are 20 % need (professionals, documentary crews etc) and 80 % fashion (people buying them and them using them for a few shots twice a year on the holiday), and the fashion component peak is over.

junaru• 4 days ago

What does one buy if they want a 1080p60 action cam with stabilisation that doesn't overheat, has good battery life and acceptable low light performance (think rainy day in the woods)?

arjie• 4 days ago

It’s the classic situation. China can outcompete all this stuff. It doesn’t really matter. Roomba, GoPro, they’re all going to be crushed by Chinese manufacturers. You just can’t get the margins to work anywhere else and if you do the R&D you’re a sucker.

I’ve had a few GoPros and a few GoPro 360s. I also had Roombas so you can blame me as the brand killer.

TheJoeMan2• 4 days ago

If you look at these US high-tech consumer products, many companies started out much “simpler”. GoPro was a disposable film camera and a wrist-strap, and iteratively got to where it is today. The iPod came out much before the iPhone. As you say, the R&D is a hard sell when you have to go from 0 product to a fully featured state-of-the-art. Somehow, these Chinese companies can spend years copying and then once locked in go on a new-features blitz.

8n4vidtmkvmk• 4 days ago

So why doesn't the US do it in reverse? Surely there's some R&D going on in China that US can reverse engineer.

stevage• 4 days ago

Is GoPro not manufactured in China?

thephyber4• 4 days ago

Some in China, but also Thailand and Mexico. They seem to be playing whack-a-mole with manufacturing contractors and changes to tariff policy.

PunchyHamster3• 3 days ago

Bad examples. Roomba and GoPro failed to their own complacency while competition jumped over them.

Car industry is better example, west tech export just to get cheaper prices fueled the growth of local companies that then outcompeted the west by just industrial might.

dabinat• 4 days ago

I remember using these on movie sets as crash cams - a cheap camera that could be mounted on something fast-moving so you could get cool action shots without risking the $100k primary camera. But the main selling point for this use-case is that they were cheap, and that’s a fight the Chinese companies will always win.

dd_xplore• 4 days ago

My only gripe with GoPros is lack of external mic like dji ecosystem.

ge96• 4 days ago

Only reason I'd choose them over Insta360 for example is that weird manual phone app permissions to activate the camera Insta does. I don't know if go pro doesn't do that, haven't bought a modern go pro in a bit.

I will say the Insta 360 Go 3S is an amazing camera physically it's so small and convenient. They could improve the algo when you pan over a pavement that conglomerate pattern looks sickening when you pan.

tclarke142• 4 days ago

I had a GoPro Hero 7 and 8. In the -10c snow they battery wouldn't even last for 5 minutes. It's a bad product and just like with cars and solar the Chinese are ruthlessly out-engineering the west.

mft_• 4 days ago

I had the same problem with (I think) a Hero 3 over a decade ago; given snow sports is a key use case, this is poor.

TheJoeMan2• 4 days ago

I never understood if I was supposed to turn it completely off on the ski lifts or leave it in “sleep” for best battery life, and like you say the battery in the cold was just disappointing. Some irony though with another HN commenter having an overheating issue.

linsomniac• 4 days ago

TheOutdoorBoys youtube channel mentioned something about special batteries for cold temps. -10c for many of his hiking and camping trips isn't unusual, and (as I understand it) he did weekly videos with Go Pros for a decade. He probably knows a thing or two.

jodiug2• 4 days ago

This is true. They sell special "winter batteries" now. What a poor decision...

lencastre• 4 days ago

the end of GoPro happened with the first DJI Action

t0mpr1c311• 4 days ago

Yes.

jongjong• 4 days ago

Not to mention that they're now competing with fake AI slop videos. People don't have so much interest to record their sporting achievements anymore since the video no longer serves as social proof.

alfg• 4 days ago

I've only owned 2 GoPros, the latest one I purchased back in 2020. I use it mostly for motorsports related content and it did it's job well, but never had a need to replace or upgrade to the latest. Now there's so many options.

asadm• 4 days ago

GoPro should pivot to making robotics and ai cameras and watch the stocks fly.

misiek082• 4 days ago

As a scammed customer - this was inevitable. They promised great improvements model over model and didn't deliver.

I bought model 9 and since beginning it overheats, randomly stops recording or just shuts down. There were promises to fix this with firmware updates - didn't happen.

redwood• 1 day ago

I'm surprised Meta hasn't already acquired them

Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?

Related Stories