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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

> 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.

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."

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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