GoPro HERO3: White Edition – (197’/ 60m Waterproof Housing)

Although a little temperamental at times e.g. the battery sometimes ran out sooner than recommended times (might have just been the battery) it takes good videos and pictures and is quality for water shots and a perfect size for travelling. I would defiantly recommend some form of stand or holder accessory to hold it steady when filming on the go and also if you are planing to take it into the water the sponge attachment allowing it to float is a must have, don’t want all that technology lost at the bottom of a lake!

Edit: apparently the same review is tagged to both the Hero 3 White and Black, which makes no sense since they are entirely different, but I guess I’m going to have to edit this to cover both cameras. Here goes:

I’m a current Hero 2 HD owner. I ordered a Hero 3 Black and Hero 3 White from GoPro themselves. I ordered a Wifi bacpac for my Hero 2, two Battery BacPac’s for Hero 3 and a second Hero 3 Black from Amazon. I wanted all my cameras to be remotely controllable. I bought the two black editions for the supposed better low light performance, and the White to complement my Hero 2 where I just wanted more cameras and light wasn’t a concern.

The pairing process to hook all the devices to the remote was easy enough but it went downhill from there. I’m editing this to bundle the product reviews together to identify differences. Here are problems I specifically encountered with the White Edition and wifi capabilities:

1) The wifi is supposed to remain active all the time once you turn it on. Yes this will ultimately drain your battery but that’s for you to worry about on your own by choosing when to turn the wifi feature on. This did work correctly for me on the Hero 3 Blacks and my Hero 2 with Wifi BacPac. By remaining active, you can turn the camera on and off using the remote and start/stop recording via the remote. At some unknown interval, the White Edition camera would simply turn the wifi off on its own. I didn’t spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly when that occured but it was often less than six hours.

This means if you want to have the cameras sitting around active, you need to regularly turn the camera back on and re-pair it with the remote. You can’t just re-enable wifi on the Hero 3 (any of them) because the menu won’t let you; the process of turning it on from an off status forces you to choose to pair with a remote and then choose to pair with either the current remote or a new remote. You then have to turn the remote on in pairing mode to complete the process. It would be a lot less annoying if you could simply turn wifi back on but you can’t without going through the whole process. Fortunately the remote does not lose its pairing with the other units.

The Hero 2 HD + Wifi BacPac and the Hero 3 Black do not exhibit this issue. They will keep their wifi active until you turn it off or the battery dies.

2) If you manipulate the controls on the White Edition camera manually after you have turned wifi on, wifi will turn off. So, once paired and working via remote, if you decide to record something by starting the camera using its controls, wifi will turn off and you’ll have to go through the whole pairing process again. The Hero 2 doesn’t care, and most of the time the Black Edition didn’t care either.

Both of these above issues with the White Edition have been confirmed as known issues by “Steve D” in GoPro support. They claim at some point a firmware update will be released to fix it. I’m not holding my breath on that because they’ve been having wifi bugs for many months now from what I’ve read.

My other notes that apply to all models:

1) Battery life is pretty poor if you’re ‘upgrading’ from a Hero 2 HD. The White Edition has a battery life of a few minute more than an hour while continuous recording at 1080p / 30fps, so nearly half what the Hero 2 HD has. The Black Edition is ever so slightly less than the White.

2) The white edition is actually a bit of a downgrade in image quality and features from the Hero 2 HD; for example, you can’t control the field of view at the two highest resolutions like you can on the Hero 2 HD. The quality is not quite as good either.

The Hero 3 Black Edition does let you control the field of view even at the very high resolutions. You may lose ‘narrow’ in some cases but you still retain wide and medium. Some options come and go depending on whether you enable ProTune mode or not.

3) The firmware upgrade process doesn’t use the Cineform program like Hero 2 uses; you have to use a java-based updater via the GoPro website and I could not get it to work. I had to do their manual upgrade procedure instead which means typing in a bunch of information including the camera’s serial number which is conveniently hidden under the battery, giving your camera a name and then they generate an updater tied to that specific camera serial which you place on the SD memory card, power the camera off and on and it will update itself. This is quite annoying since if you have multiple cameras to update, you have to type all the info in and get a new download for each one.

4) The USB and HDMI ports are covered by a removable door that is not attached to the camera, so prepare to lose it.

5) The White Edition does not include the same attachment brackets the Black Edition includes in the box. You lose the three axis arm and an additional snap in bracket.

6) I could never get the GoPro Preview App for Android to actually display an image on my phone for Black or White editions. I believe it only works at certain resolutions and 1080p is not one of them. You also have to communicate with it by having your phone connect to the camera using wifi, so your phone is going to lose internet access while controlling the GoPro. I was able to use the phone to stop and start recording but that was it; so between that and losing internet, the app is not particularly useful. The WiFi app can ONLY talk to one camera at a time, it is not like the remote that can stop and start many cameras.

7) On the White Edition, the micro-HDMI port doesn’t actually work; I’m sure they’ll be fixing that in a future firmware update. It does work fine on the Black Edition and the mini-HDMI on the Hero 2 HD works fine as well.

8) The wifi will randomly disassociate from the remote control on both models of Hero 3, in addition to the turning off issue it has on the White Edition. The White Edition was more susceptible to this issue but I did have it happen once on the Black and the only way I found to get it to pair again was to flash the firmware again; just trying the normal pairing process failed.

9) Of the three Hero 3’s I purchased, I shot, or attempted to shoot, several hours of footage per day for five days. By the end of the second day, one of the Black Edition cameras would no longer power on at all. I swapped its battery to confirm that was not the issue. I tried the factory reset procedure I found on youtube, no luck. This unit is effectively dead. On day three, the second Black Edition would no longer function on its internal battery, however, it would still work fine using an attached Battery BacPac, so my recording time was halved but it at least remained working. The White edition continued to function this whole time, it just had the wifi issues and picture quality was not so great. The Hero 2 HD keeps chugging along for what’s been years now; it almost feels like it came from a different company these Hero 3’s are so poor.

Anyway, all three Hero 3’s are on their way back; I simply couldn’t deal with the problems and worried they would continue until the warranty was up and then I’d have no options.

My summary is basically that the White Edition is a waste of money because of the reduced picture quality (compared to Hero 2 HD and Hero 3 Black Edition), and especially if you intend to use the currently broken wifi features or the currently broken hdmi for positioning and/or playback.

The Black Edition is the way to go if you need increased image quality over the Hero 2 HD, but if finding it to not work would ruin your day, vacation, job, etc.; i.e. if you are in any situation where you really aren’t going to tolerate a failure, then I’d recommend you either buy two (or three) or choose something else. The Hero 2 is nowhere near its image quality, but when I have two (bought from different entities, Amazon and GoPro) develop either a partial or complete failure over the span of four days, I don’t see how you can safely rely on them to work.

I’ve been messing around with the new GoPro and it isn’t that bad. The part that sucked the most was having to update the Firmware before I even got a chance to use it. The updating process didn’t take more than 10 minutes, but it still was kind of a bummer.
That aside, the only real downside to the Hero 3 White is that it’s low-light video recording isn’t the best. I’m not talking about at night time either, but in a dim lit room. The flipside is that once it goes outside the picture quality is awesome.
It is also easy to operate. One button to record, one button for “Options”, and a Wi-Fi button. I was worried at first since there was really no instructions that came with it but after a minute of messing around with it I got the basics down.
All in all it was worth the $200 dollars. Once you get past the “I can’t use it straight out of the box” mindset it is pretty fun. I look forward to recording all of my outdoor adventures with this thing.

Wonderful gopro!
This Gopro can shoot at 1080p 60 fps
Since I use this gopro for many stuff like “Atv, pool, putting on a drone, cleaning the toilet (Yes I know eww but hey at least it has wifi to see what down their to unclog it!”
What I like. I like it when it records 1080p 60fps. Takes wonderful pictures. Also time laps.
What I don’t like is that audio is bad but it’s a action camera. The wifi drain the battery way faster.
So far no issues.

What is in the box.
1-Usb cable (Charger too)
1-stand
1.screw to hold the Gopro.
1. adhesive
1. removable waterproof case

What you need to buy,
1 ssd
Max is 64.

I can say this is the best camera is you are the one who likes to snorkel. OR put on a roller coaster.
This camera can beat the other camera that are non gorpo. This will last a while too

What I can say, Best action camera for the price.
Ps I do recommend the camera! to everyone!

You really do get what you pay for in this world!! i got a lesser make from amazon for £99.00 and it was just crap!! so sent it back and got this and its awesome! they know what they are doing with the action cams as they have been doing it the longest but now the big company’s like Sony Bla Bla Bla have noticed that there is a demand expect those sorts of company’s to catch up quick now but for the moment go pro is still the way to go!!