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.
Insta360 is a Chinese company designed in Shenzhen and built there, too.
People think this doesn’t matter, but GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place.
A similar pattern happened with drones with DJI, intentionally killing all non-Chinese drone brands. And with BambuLabs (founded by ex-DJI) with 3D printers (the only good non-Chinese printer that doesn’t cost 10-100x as much is Prusa, and they’re facing extremely strong headwinds).
Legitimately better Chinese products (incredible engineering) that have massive industrial policy support, probably industrial espionage support (as in the case of DJI for certain), massive influencer marketing campaigns, and near zero cost of capital. When China wants to deindustrialize non-Chinese industries for strategic and/or natsec reasons, they are incredibly good at it. (And note it’s not US-only, China targets basically ANY brand that isn’t Chinese. China absolutely does this to Europe as well… and you can see them doing it in real-time with automotive.)
The only surprising thing to me is how people just act like it’s not happening. I guess for people who don’t have any experience working on federal government adjacent aerospace stuff, the idea of natsec considerations for IT hardware seems entirely abstract, but it’s incredibly real if you do.
It doesn’t even have to be foreign - it can just be corrupt self interest.
What other explanation is there for attacking Venezuela and Iran?
You could ban Chinese IoT devices. Or spur local industry. But we aren’t talking about the military relying on Chinese hardware or something.
It seem to me that China choosing to subsidize industry it is not so different than the US choosing to subsidize Roads, Autos and OIL.
In both cases it does seem to work splendidly as intended.
Other than political inertia (or economic reasons far beyond my ability to fathom) there is nothing to stop the US from following suit.
I accept "free market" is a term of art probably from before global trade reality and could be narrowly redefined to mean whatever one wants (or wanted when it was coined) but in my ignorance I see it simply as free to choose actions and responses.
But I am far far away from opinions I am qualified to hold, think I will shut up now.
I do know liberal is used as a derisive term by the people we (US) are being led by which leads me to cognitive dissonance parsing your statement.
https://www.oecd.org/en/blogs/2026/06/industrial-subsidies-h...
It's almost like you believe the US remains interested in promoting free trade.
If it did, it wouldn't be levying illegal and constantly changing import tariffs, in violation of international trade agreements that it has signed up to.
You cannot buy them because they are dumping them??????
It's the thing that happens when a foreign exporter sells goods in your country below their production cost (or far below what they're charging domestic customers). It's done to fuck up the foreign markets for those goods, or, in China's case, as a relief valve for malinvestment.
China drastically overfunds EV production. There's a whole weird story where provinces apparently competed to get slices of the EV production business, which resulted in a large number of competing firms, producing far more vehicles than the Chinese domestic market could consume.
This isn't just a US thing. Europe tariffs the heck out of these cars.
If they're being dumped there is an oversupply, and people are spoilt for choice. The market is awash with the dumped product.
Not being able to buy them is the exact reverse of that.
Your claim is that the reason people cannot buy the vehicles ISN'T because they are being dumped BUT because the government SAYS they are being dumped and has therefore actively prevented them from being sold.
The supposition is that it's an accurate claim by the governments - there are reports that the Chinese manufacturers are being restricted by their government and that there has been a period of over production, but how much of that is true and how much is propaganda is very difficult to actually ascertain.
How do we make a system everyone is to abide by when the US can just rewrite the rules when it suits? Order collapses when a huge country behaves this way.
The US chose their market (arms). The Chinese chose consumer goods. Go figure.
Not saying this is uniformly bad, because without the law the number of businesses with the ability to manufacture this stuff would trend toward zero, but it is a form of subsidy.
Anything the federal government pumps money into tends not to do as well.
It winner takes all econony is literally based on destroying the competition as such.
Stop crying already. US subsidizes a boatload of things.
So if we're getting spied on anyway, why not buy a better product?
I generally agree with your point about value extraction vs. re-investment.
What would the attack vector be? I’m not saying there isn’t any, I don’t know much about aerospace and this sounds interesting.
The cameras. But quite how, I don’t know.
> GoPros are used all over in aerospace
They hardly have time to compete, busy as they are with foot-shooting practice.
Stuff like this: https://sensofusion.com/dronefactory/
If and when AI commiditizes professional services, it would be good to have modern industry to fall back on. With 3d printing the gap isnt insurmountable yet.
However, our country is run by lawyers, not engineers, so I dont have too much hope. At least a lot of our billionaires started out as engineers...
No. Not even close
China wants its place at the table.
With Erope and USA
People seem to think a developed China is a threat. But they are not staying in rural poverty for ever for our sake. That is not a threat.
They are not trying to "deindustrialise" anybody, just finding a place amongst equals
The U.K. has just nationalised a steel plant which had been bought by China to stop it from being destroyed, and of course the economic right wing hate this as steel is far cheaper to import.
If that scam of a man wins the next election, it’ll be quite the show.
For one, I had a GoPro whose sensor broke after about 20 minutes of recorded. I ended up getting 3 different replacements, all of which also broke. In the end I just forgot about it when my home burnt down in a wildfire. I got an Insta360 with better picture quality that's also been more reliable for a similar cost.
And I would have loved to buy a Prusa printer but I got a Bambu P1S combo for $600, an equivalent Prusa plus the $300 shipping to Canada would have been ~$2500 CAD. For making trinkets for my 3 year old son plus the few random other things I'd make it's not worth it to pay 4x the money.
Maybe it'll forever be this way due to the differences in cost of living but I do feel as though there's a million barriers to entry to building a business in North America, at least a business that's not fully online.
Neither one of those are equivalent to a P1S. They’re 2 tiers above it. Equivalent Bambu printers sell for about the same price.
I have printers from both companies. There are tradeoffs for each, but Prusa isn’t 4x more for an equivalent printer.
Wasn't that the thing like ~30 years ago? All the western companies pushing manufacturing into China for increased profit?
Capitalism and the west gave all that power away :), you deindustrialised yourselves.
In what way exactly? The camera will magically communicate to the mothership?
Sounds very similar to another US company - Garmin. They are still popular, but have been raising prices a lot every generation, because for a long time there was no real competition [1]. At this point, Garmin watches that have mapping support have an introduction price of >600 Euro. Even at that price point, zooming or panning maps is excruciatingly slow (sometimes taking up to 10 seconds to re-render) because they have used the same CPU/MCU for multiple generations while increasing screen resolution. They also haven't really innovated a lot as of recently and are moving some new functionality behind a subscription.
This has opened a large gap for Chinese competition. Now you can get a Coros Nomad that goes head-to-head with models like the Garmin Enduro for 350 Euro. They don't have full feature parity yet, but they are so rapidly adding features that they will at some point. Also, in contrast to Garmin, they seem to be using modern microcontrollers, so panning or zooming a map is insanely fast in comparison, while still having ~20 days of battery for daily use.
[1] Of the traditional competitors, Apple Watch Ultra and Galaxy Watch Ultra have gotten closer, but are nowhere near the battery life, robustness, mapping support, mapping + workout support, etc.
Apple, Google, and Amazon could all make sense. Google would see the business as an opportunity to strengthen its existing IoT portfolio. Apple an opportunity to add to its integrated consumer electronics offering. Amazon would be more a play to improve GoPro's margins. They could easily push it with prime deals, etc.
I could also see Samsung getting in.
Regardless, expect to see more integration, AI features, etc, after acquisition.
Are there any competitors on the market that also have this feature? I've looked around a few times in the past and haven't found any. Many cameras say that they have an IMU, presumably for image stabilization, but they don't seem to record or expose that data.
I had a GoPro many years ago. Eventually sold it because I needed the money for other things.
Been thinking about buying a new action camera eventually.
Got any recommendations?
The one that interests me the most of the ones I’ve seen is the Insta360 X4 Air plus an underwater case for it.
I want to be able to bring my camera swimming, bicycling, hiking, etc. And I think 360 degree cameras are pretty cool. Hopefully it’s not just a gimmick that loses its appeal after a few hours.
Would you mind providing a recommendation you have first hand experience with?
What makes gopro the standard in proper productions (and science etc) is that they're so hackable with the gopro labs software. With that, all the other cameras are toys in comparison for professional usage.
Man I still can’t believe how bad the rollout of the karma was. I remember at the time everyone in my professional circles was buzzing about it. Then they started literally falling out of the sky. Feel like they never recovered
Such as?