It really is amazing at how much technology they have crammed into such a small space. It really shows that gopro cares to get out a quality product unlike some other manufactures. Great video, as a electrical engineering major, i definitely enjoyed it.
I think GoPro's main driving force is the number of high spec Chinese copies appearing for a quarter of the price with almost undistinguishable performance. Like the SJ4000 WiFi which beat GoPro to having a screen on the back.
Not to mention the load of extra functionality like control over things like white balance. If you do a RU-vid search for SJ4000 GoPro comparisons it's almost identical side by side footage.
bigclivedotcom Not so really. With SJ4000 and clones you never really know what you get. GoPro is more expensive, but it just WORKS. Optics are high quality and you actually have warranty too. If you have time to play around, you can save few dollars with SJ4000, but it's a joke when you need to do professional work.
***** Well I've got a GoPro hero 3 black and it has some glaring omissions like manual control over white balance? Instead it just creeps the balance about in the background with very odd colour effects on static images. Looking at the side by side comparisons on RU-vid I'm actually tempted to buy an SJ4000 and see how it compares to my GoPro for workshop videos. If anything the knock-off's are the boot that GoPro need to write leaner firmware for their cameras and add the painfully missing features.
bigclivedotcom to be honest, i bought an sj4000 from t-mart when they had them on sale for £30... not a bad price so i got one... it is really impressive, but if you then buy a gopro black 3+ (beats the sj4000 by a mile in my opinion) and just got my gopro 4 black with a detachable screen on the back, the quality of that is just in a completely different league to my sj4000... from what i can see, the sj4000 looks very sharp, almost too sharp... very jagged pixel-ation going on... where as both my gopro's have very realistic clarity, the colours don't have a ridiculously high dynamic range like my sj4000 has... i was so excited when i received my sj4000, its unbelievable for the price how good it is, but its incomparableto the new gopro's that are coming out
Jack Allen At that cost I fear you may have got one of the SJ4000 clones. (Yes, a clone of a clone). When it's so cheap it may look like the original and have the same name, but it may be just a cheap dashcam inside.
EEVblog Ive done alot of recording on a hero 3+. From my experiences the housing around the lens gets very warm after a short period. I think this is what they are using to dissipate the heat of the sensor. I believe thats why they changed the design of the hero 3 from that of the hero 2. It also works very well at keeping the lens from misting over, especially in under water shots
As someone with the Hero3 Black, it's good to know the Hero4 Silver is basically the generation-jump comparison to the H3 Black. And yeah, the 720p240 and 4K capabilities of the Ambarella A9 being limited to the H4 Black whilst the H4 Silver gets 720p120 and no 4K does make sense for keeping the thermal output of the chip a lot lower for the rather passive heat management in the Silver, whilst the Silver gets the LCD touchscreen and the Black doesn't. It's rather hard not to drool over how beautifully designed the H4 Silver is, whilst watching the teardown. XD
What a great video, I really enjoyed your knowledge and it was giving me some real insight into the toys we use all the time. I feel it is important to know how at least as much as my limited experience can, how things are made and what goes into the toys we use in our everyday lives. Love your website.
He did get the FLIR TG165 for free and he already owns a higher model. So: Why be careful? This GoPro seams to be paid with his own money and to be used for his other hobbies. So the teardown was not the main reason to buy it.
Looks like a great day to charge up the Sinclair, whack the GoPro 4 on and take a spin to see if the vibration dampening is any better. Have a great day Dave! Thanks for the teardown, interesting.
Thanks for doing this tear down Dave! I live for these little camera's and use them a ton! Their performance in cold weather (i.e. Snowmobiling) still worries me. Back with the Hero 1 we could go for hours on one battery, but with all these newer ones it seems I only get maybe an hour or less of record time.
@EEVblog I do believe they're using the lens housing as the heat sink. Even when the camera is inside the waterproof housing you can feel the metal black square lens housing getting pretty hot.
About the heat dissipation: the lens itself is a "heat-pipe" itself and when you are using the waterproof case the heat go to the black "ring" around the lens! Pretty cool and genious! (i discovered it becouse it get hot while doing 4k)
Well done on the teardown, nice presentation, video and sound quality. One point if I may always missing from these teardowns is a little bit of detail, What is the smallest passive component on the board, smallest component pitch and PCB thickness?
My Go Pro , drop in water ....swimming pool with case opened ! in 2 weeks dosent turno on again . do you think if i open it , and put in rise ....could be turno on again ?
Now i know why GoPro charge a premium price for this superb sub compact video camera. The technology and research into designing this camera must have been very intense. Love mine, it takes incredible video.
There is no polarizer on a camera sensor. On single chip sensor designs there is a Bayer filter mounted very close to the pixels. On three chip sensor designs there are RGB filters on the beamsplitter prism.
If a GOPRO 4 silver gets wet outside the plastic housing, would it be a good idea to open it up and let it air dry? Whats the chances it would still work?
Dave, it is becoming more usual to loose reference of size in many of the shots on the videos. In this video I couldn't get a clear idea of the size of the camera, which seems to me very small, let alone the size of particular details like the mic, etc. Maybe you could show relative sizes when appropriate. Thanks.
Great video! My wife pulled out her old Hero4 silver her friend tried to fix (shutter button was not working). I carefully pried it apart and can see there is a ribbon cable running from under the shutter button that is not inserted into it a port, any ideas how to get that back in there?
wonder if they bothered to use arm9 and 11 built in flash ip security features or if you could jump the boot loader pins and boot in usart or something or jtag and flash the chip to create diy 720 240 fps? would be an immense amount of work but if we know it has the capability. i guess it's just a matter of data and clock speed or memory bus speeds and clock speed. could be the chip manufacturer says it can do it but gopro realized it really wasnt feasible.
Cool video, but if the GoPro uses a Sony's sensor and so does Sony and other manufactures use the same on their cameras, why would the final video image look different as far as color or light sensitivity some cases? Thanks!
Well. The sensor reads the data from the light. But diffrent cameras use diffrent lenses that bend light diffrently, so diff 1. The data is (unless raw function is available) tweaked and changed a bit, so diff 2. Then the camera could save it in diffrent ways, with compression or without. 8 bot color or 16 bit, so diff 3. If you could shoot with 2 camera with the same sensor in raw in the same file format, possibly even with the same lense or very similar, it will look almost the same!
Hi, do you know what chip is responsible for the LCD light? I have a Hero 4 Silver and the light is so dim, almost looks off. Have replaced the LCD but the problem never got solved, I think it has to do something from the board. Any info where to look at would be appreciated, thanks!!
heyy man. great video. I'm trying to knock off some extra parts to reduce the weight on my drone. I wanna lose the lcd and housing. you think it's possible?
Didnt wanna mess with the GoPro. I stripped my old Xperia of everything except the battery and motherboard. Its about 22 grams now. Before removing the LCD/digitiser I installed a self starting IPcamera and hotspot app. So I have FPV starting at boot without needing a touchscreen =D
hi, i have a question, i dropped my gpro4 silver , lens is cracked and the unit does not turn on at all, i replaced the battery, NOTHING, i want to make sure it will turn on so i can purchase a new lens. let me know pls thank you
Afternoon today I tried to change my lens in my GoPro I completed all the steps however when trying to take the lens out the sensor board came out (flat flex board 11:28) I through that I put it back correctly but when i now turn my GoPro on the screen come on but is black and even when I touch it nothing happen please help?
Awesome video! Thanks. @17:10 you assume its the A9...? I would have imagined they'd save costs by still using the A7 on the Silver (and ofcourse, the A9 on the Black). Keen to hear more from you on this...
EEVblog ah, thank you! Two more questions : What is that tiny battery in there for? Also, why do you assume it's a new sensor and not the same one? Thanks...
I had a question about this too. I assumed that the reason the Black was $499 was to account for the cost of the A9 chip. Otherwise why would they have throttled the Silver to 4K 15 FPS if it had the A9 chip? I agree the sensor is definitely updated (sharpness tests between the 3+ and 4 show this) but I am not sure it is the A9 chip in the Silver.
Kutibh Chihabi To answer your question of "why would they have throttled the silver"? Two reasons i can think of : 1) Heat 2) Product differentiation - its all about making money after all (eg. some cars have the exact same engines, but are sold in different states of electronic tune and for a several $ difference)
12:00 What does that yellow pin/switch do, above right test point and to the left of wifi chip? It is pressed down by the battery compartment when assembled and supposed to do something. But what exactly? Camera switches ON regardless. .. even thought it freezes later, no matter what I do :(
Hi, could you help me with few gopros 4 silver and black that are like new but DEAD! I contacted the support team via gopro website but did not help. I believe a component needs to be replaced!
which battery model is on the board so as not to lose the settings and date / time? I need to change mine, but before opening it, I already wanted to buy the battery. If you can help, thank you
whenever i plug in the gopro in my computer it says that unplug the device that is causing too much power. It's the only device that is plugged in? what could the issue be?
hi..i have a go pro hero 4 silver but the wifi not working if open wifi not show wifi icon from lcd and also the led light no blingker...what is a problem? i need to fix..thank you
I'm going to take a guess that this couldn't wait till Tuesday? Lol. It just seemed like you were so antsy to dive into that piece of equipment that you couldn't wait. Otherwise, this was an interesting teardown, thanks Dave.
hi EEVblog, I'm just wondering if i could send you a brand new lcd screen for the go pro 4 silver and you take out the old screen and put the new one in it cause mine cracked. ill pay postage
