This video is about comparing the GoPro Hero 9 vs other cameras that I own.
I will be comparing it against the DJI Osmo Pocket gimbal, the Samsung S20 Ultra and for reference, a full-frame mirrorless camera – the Panasonic S1.
The comparison will be based on 3 criteria
1) Image Quality
2) Stabilisation
3) Low light performance.
Check out the video to see how they compare to each other!
GoPro Hero 9: geni.us/HjMw
DJI Osmo Pocket: geni.us/wN3w5
Samsung S20 Ultra: geni.us/eWT5
Panasonic Lumix S1: geni.us/LumixS1
So I’ve recently broken everything, haha. I’ve recently just purchased the GoPro Hero 9. That’s the first ever GoPro that I’ve owned. So I thought I’d buy a few of the accessories as well. Now, I thought I’d compare this to some of the other cameras that I own. So in today’s video, I’m going to be comparing this to my Osmo Pocket Gimbal, my Samsung S20 Ultra camera, and the Panasonic S1 full-frame mirrorless camera that I’m shooting this video on right now, just for reference. So make sure you stay to the very end of this video to see how this all compares up.
Now, I’ll just tell you a few basic things about each camera and the criteria that I’m going to be judging them on. Now, the GoPro’s got a 1 over 2.3 inch, 23.6 megapixel sensor. The Osmo Pocket has got the same 1 over 2.3 inch sensor, but only has 12 megapixels. The Samsung S20 Ultra has got a 1 over 3.3 inch sensor, so that makes it bigger than these two, with 108 megapixels on there. However, using pixel binning technology, it uses 9 pixels to create one, which gives this an effective 12 megapixels. And the Panasonic S1, which is a full-frame image sensor with 24.2 megapixels.
So for the sake of the comparison, I’m going to be judging these cameras on three key areas. One is image quality, second is stabilization, and the third is low-light performance. So here’s a brief table describing some of the differences between each camera.
| Camera | Image Sensor Size | Megapixels | Aperture | Maximum Resolution | Bitrate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GoPro Hero 9 | 1/2.3 inch | 23.6 MP | f2.8 | 5K30 | N/A |
| Osmo Pocket Gimbal | 1/2.3 inch | 12 MP | f2.0 | 4K60 | 100 Mbps |
| Samsung S20 Ultra | 1/3.3 inch | 108 MP | f1.8 | 8K24 | N/A |
| Panasonic S1 | Full-frame | 24.2 MP | f4 | 4K60 | 150 Mbps |
I’ve already told you about the image sensor and the megapixels on them. You can see the aperture on each device. Just for a quick overview, the aperture is the amount of light, so aka the hole size, that can pass through to the sensor. And the bigger the number, the smaller the hole, the smaller the number, the bigger the hole. So in this case, you can see that the S20 Ultra has got the smallest aperture size, which means it’s got the biggest hole that allows the light through. Then you’ve got the Osmo Pocket, then the GoPro Hero 9, and then in my case, I have a lens that only goes down to f4. However, the image sensor is bigger, so it should still be better than all of the other cameras. The maximum resolution, which is 5K30 for the GoPro, 4K60 for the Osmo Pocket, 8K24 for the S20 Ultra, and 4K60 for the Panasonic S1. The bitrate, which is the maximum number of bits per second, so that’s the data per second that is being captured.
Obviously, the more data that can be captured, the better the quality of the image. Slow motion, what kind of slow motion each camera has. So you can see that the S20 Ultra can go to the slowest motion, however, only at 720p, but the GoPro Hero 9 can do 1080 at 240 frames per second. And finally, the level of stabilization that each device has. So the GoPro has got HyperSmooth 3 and Horizon leveling. The Osmo Pocket is an actual gimbal. The S20 Ultra has got optical image stabilization, and the Panasonic S1 has got in-body image stabilization, plus lens stabilization as well.
This is how I set up my camera rig in order to capture the footage. Let’s go over to some of the footage that I’ve captured to see exactly how they compare. Don’t forget to hit the like button if you’re enjoying this video, and make sure you subscribe if you haven’t already.
The settings that I used for each camera were as follows. The GoPro was set to 4K 25 frames per second. Everything else was set to auto. I had the GoPro color, HyperSmooth 3 on. The lens mode was linear and Horizon leveling on. Sharpening was set to medium. The Osmo Pocket was also set to 4K 25. Everything else was on auto. It was in the standard color mode, and normal pan follow gimbal mode. The S20 Ultra doesn’t have a 4K 25 mode, so I put it on 4K 30. Everything else was auto, and I used the standard Samsung camera app. The Panasonic S1 was set to 4K 25 using the auto mode, which is IA. It had IBIS on, and lens stabilization on as well.
This scene is to establish what the daytime quality is like on each one of these cameras. As you can see, you’ve got a beautiful sky with clouds. You’ve got a very colorful little sunflower spinner, and then you’ve got a slightly darker fence, and some plants, and a tree at the back to see what kind of level of detail we can have, and the color that all these cameras produce. I can see the GoPro has a wider angle, even though it’s set to the linear mode.
You can see there is visible noise in the darker areas. Everything is in focus, but to me it looks a little bit oversharp. It looks very digital, and it looks very oversaturated. And then you have the Osmo Pocket, which looks a little less sharp. It has a more natural color to it. The image is softer, which makes it look like there’s less noise. Not everything is in focus, which means there’s a little bit of bokeh, and the image is darker than the GoPro itself.
Then the S20 Ultra looks similar to the GoPro with a slightly different field of view. It has a bit of bokeh at the back, so not everything is in focus. Just like the GoPro, it edges on the side of warm, compared to say the Osmo Pocket and the Panasonic S1, which edge on the cooler side of the picture. You can see a lot more noise in the GoPro Hero 9.
When it comes to the comparison of my face, you can see the GoPro Hero 9 just doesn’t look as great as say the Osmo Pocket and the Lumix S1, which look more natural and have actually a better clarity to them. The GoPro looks very digital, as I mentioned before, and the S20 Ultra is doing a little bit of a better job than the GoPro. I do love the color of the sky in the GoPro.
So for the Gnome, you can see that the Osmo Pocket has overexposed the face, and it’s purely just a white blob. And again, the GoPro and the S20 Ultra are on the warm side. The Osmo Pocket and the S1 are on the cooler side.
This is testing for the stabilization between the four cameras. So for the stabilization, you can see the GoPro Hero 9 is doing a fantastic job. If you compare it to the Panasonic S1, you can see that even with IBIS and lens stabilization on, it’s not doing as good as the Hero 9. So the GoPro Hero 9 has got fantastic stabilization. The S20 Ultra and the Osmo Pocket are similar. So you’ve got a physical gimbal versus optical image stabilization. And the Panasonic S1, even though it has IBIS and lens stabilization, isn’t as good as the other three.
This is testing for low light. You can see the GoPro Hero 9 is having a very hard time at keeping the noise down, and there’s so much noise in that picture.
The S20 Ultra is doing a good job at making a bright picture. However, it’s very fake and smoothed over – very digital and smoothed over is what it looks like. I’d say the Panasonic S1 and the Osmo Pocket are probably the closest to each other, even though the Osmo Pocket is a bit darker than the Panasonic S1, which is a full frame sensor, and therefore low light performance would be better than any of these devices. The Osmo Pocket does hold up to it, in my opinion. That will be down to the fact that even though the GoPro and the Osmo Pocket have the same size sensor, the Osmo Pocket has less megapixels, which means that each pixel is bigger than the pixel on the GoPro Hero 9. Therefore, each pixel can capture more light.
And there you have it, a comparison of all four cameras. I had to put each one into auto mode because I was unable to manually set the same settings on each camera in order for a fair test. So I put them all on auto, but the Samsung was the only one that I had to put on 30 frames per second as opposed to 25 because that wasn’t an option.
So I’m leaving it up to you to decide which one you liked better, which one will fit better for your purposes. However, my opinion, which I kind of said as I was doing the comparison anyway, is this. The GoPro seems a little oversaturated, and it’s got a lot of noise, and I think that’s down to the fact that it has so many megapixels crammed onto a tiny little sensor. It’s also a little bit on the warmer side, as well as the Samsung S20.
The Osmo Pocket, on the other hand, has got the same sensor but less megapixels, therefore it makes it better in a low light setting. And I believe the colors and to a certain extent the image as well looked a little bit more natural just like the Panasonic S1. So I would match the GoPro with the Samsung S20 Ultra camera, and then I’d match the Osmo Pocket with the Panasonic S1, even though the Panasonic S1 blew all of them out of the water purely because of the bigger sensor size.
And from this test, you can clearly see that size does matter.
The full frame sensor on the Panasonic S1 blows all three of them out of the water. I knew that in the beginning anyway, but I just wanted to stick it in there for reference.
Now, this is not a perfect scientific test. It was just me trying to compare what the cameras were like, so I just attached them all to the body and just shot at their standard profile. I may have got better results if I had stuck each one onto a flatter profile, and then color graded to try and match them up evenly, but I just wanted to show you what the colors were like out of the box and the image quality was like out of the box without any post-processing.
Now, in all honesty, for all your needs, any one of these cameras will work. So the GoPro for me has a place that it’s the first GoPro that I’ve ever owned. I wanted an actual action camera, even though the Osmo Pocket has got a nice image. I’ve used that for quite a bit of time.
The GoPro is something that you can just stick, say, on the top of a car. You can put it in extreme conditions, which you can’t do with the Osmo Pocket because it’s a really fragile little gimbal.
Now I had hoped that the GoPro would have had a better image quality than the Osmo Pocket, considering these two were released about two years or so apart from each other, but that isn’t the case, and I actually prefer the image quality of the Osmo Pocket, and I have used it for a longer time as well, but that isn’t me suggesting that don’t go for the GoPro, only go for the Osmo Pocket. It’s all dependent on your own personal taste and your own use case scenario as well.
I will be doing a full review on the GoPro once I’ve used it a little bit more, and the latest firmware update has been released. I believe there’s quite a few fixes in there for this, so I’d rather review it after that.
In the meantime, there are plenty of other reviewers that have done full reviews on the GoPro 9, so by all means, go and check them out.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this very basic comparison of some of the cameras that I owned to see what the GoPro is like compared to them, and if you haven’t already, please make sure you subscribe and hit the like button.
I have a lot of other tech that I’m going to be reviewing. I’ve just recently bought the Tab S7 Plus, so there will be a review of that coming up soon as well.
Once again, thank you so much, and I’ll see you in the next video!
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