GoPro Hero 5 Release Date Delayed To Wait For Company’s First Drone?
The GoPro Hero 5 release date might be pushed back to October this year as the company gears up for the launch of its first ever drone, the GoPro Karma. It is believed that GoPro will launch the fifth generation action camera alongside the highly-anticipated drone which was first announced in December 2015.
Earlier this month, founder Nick Woodman said at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas that their aim is to make Karma compatible with all past and future GoPro gadgets.
“We make everything backwards compatible, our goal is that your older GoPro will work with anything new we make, and vice versa.”
The company already released a video of Karma’s aerial photography, but it hasn’t unveiled the image of the product itself.
GoPro will go head to head with DJI, a renowned manufacturer of easy-to-fly consumer drones. There are claims that Karma and Hero 5 will come out at the same time to allow GoPro to sell them in a featured bundle. Some, however, believe that the drone will be released a few months ahead of the new camera to see how well it does as a standalone product.
Speculations have likewise emerged that the company’s delayed GoPro Hero 5 release date would give developers more time to improve the camera’s features. Early reports claim that GoPro Hero 5 will come with the Ambarella H1 System on Chip that will enable users to record videos using 4k resolution at 60 frames per second.
While GoPro Hero 4 Black functions at the same resolution, the upcoming camera will have a higher speed. GoPro Hero 5 is expected to have an improved 2.7k performance as well as higher frame rates for 1080p video capturing. The camera can reportedly film at a depth of 60 meters, a far cry from Hero 4’s 20-meter capacity. GoPro remains hush about the official specs of the camera.
GoPro enthusiasts are understandably disappointed, for they have been waiting for the new action camera for more than a year already. Some thought that they would get their hands on GoPro Hero 5 in September 2015, a year after GoPro Hero 4 Black came out. The company apparently did not follow the trend applied by most gadget manufacturers on their product releases.
desperately wanna buy the GoPro hero 5 so it'd be pretty cool if it was released before this summer
— melanie (@melaniediane__) January 16, 2016
Reports then surfaced that GoPro would launch the camera in October last year, which was then moved to December to coincide with the holidays. None of the guesses turned out to be precise because Hero 4’s successor wasn’t launched.
According to Day Herald, GoPro needs more time to plan the GoPro Hero 5 release because stakeholders do not want the camera to have the same fate as its predecessor. That camera failed to surpass sales expectations, which resulted to a dramatic drop in its price. As per Value Walk, the camera retailed for $399 when it first came out, but its price dropped by at least 50 percent a year later.
“The company made a tremendous error with the pricing of the Hero 4 Session and in order to rectify the poorly priced addition to the products line. GoPro tried to sell it at $399.99 at release, but lack of sales means the company has twice slashed the price and it now sells for $199.99.”
GoPro Hero 5 is expected to retail for $450-$550.
[Photo by David Becker/Getty Images]
