GoPro Hero 12 Black Adds AirPods Support, But New Max May Make You Want To Wait

GoPro has launched its latest flagship camera, the Hero 12 Black, with many new features that should excite enthusiasts and new customers alike. Its most noteworthy improvement may be its battery life, which has been doubled. Even with video stabilization turned on, that comes out to be 70 minutes of runtime at 5.3K60, 95 minutes at 5.3K30, or a whopping 155 minutes at 1080p30. The 5.3K mode is the new camera's highest resolution, delivering over 91% more resolution than 4K. Also available is the ability to record 4K at 4x slo-mo and 2.7K at 8x slo-mo, as well as 24.7-megapixel screengrabs and 27-megapixel photos.

The GoPro Hero 12 Black is available for preorder and will be released worldwide on September 13. It retails for $399.99, and an accompanying accessory — the Max Lens Mod 2.0 — can be bundled with it for an additional $99.99 or $79.99 if you're a GoPro subscriber. The Max Lens Mod 2.0 allows the GoPro Hero 12 Black to have three field-of-view settings, including an extra-tall mode called Max HyperView. With the attachment, the camera can record frames that are, when compared to the standard lens, 36% wider in widescreen mode and 48% taller in vertical mode.

Other features include simplified camera controls, Interval Photo mode, night effects for still images, and mounting threads that make the camera compatible with standard mounts and accessories. The GoPro Hero 12 Black will also be waterproof up to 33 feet.

Another new feature is pairing the GoPro Hero 12 Black with Bluetooth audio devices, including Apple AirPods. Not only can the wireless microphones be used to record audio to accompany the GoPro's video, but they can also be used to issue voice commands to the camera.

In addition to wireless headsets, the GoPro Hero 12 Black can also work with other GoPro Hero 12 Black cameras. By using wireless timecode sync, the camera can sync with an unlimited number of others to record your action from as many angles as you'd like, which you can then easily edit together. Footage can be transferred to editing software in smaller file sizes with no image loss thanks to optimized encoding. Editing and color grading footage from the GoPro Hero 12 Black will also be made easier thanks to its GP-Log with available Look Up Tables feature.

To utilize the full features of the GoPro Hero 12 Black, customers will have to pay for a GoPro subscription. With it comes a new desktop app that will seamlessly sync with its mobile app counterpart to make cross-platform editing and content management less of an ordeal. Subscribers will also be able to auto-upload an unlimited amount of footage to their GoPro cloud account — with no image loss — while the camera charges, as well as receive automatic highlight videos once the upload is complete. Additionally, subscribers can have damaged cameras replaced with "no questions asked."

While the GoPro Hero 12 has plenty to offer, if you want to shoot 360-degree video, you'll still have to wait for the GoPro Max 2. Founder and CEO Nick Woodman confirmed that the product is in development and that "it will be worth the wait." The Max 2 is the highly-anticipated successor to the original GoPro Max, itself the successor to the GoPro Fusion. The GoPro Hero 12's new larger sensor and Max HyperView mode can create immersive video by expanding the frame. Still, some GoPro users prefer 360-degree footage to capture what it's like to be at the center of the action.

Little is known about what new specs and features the GoPro Max 2 would have, but GoPro recently applied for a patent that could give insight into the new camera. The patent application implies that GoPro is working on software to help choose which frames from 360-degree footage should be kept and used based on context, camera motion, and other factors. Choosing particular frames or angles as starting points would help edit 360-degree footage.

Only time will tell how this software and the new GoPro Max 2 will function, but no matter the end product, it's likely there will be plenty of people ready to purchase it. In the meantime, the GoPro Hero 12 Black is available to preorder today.