When I took a vacation on the beach last summer, a friend allowed me to borrow a GoPro camera. It was my first hands-on experience with the camera and I had a lot of fun shooting underwater shots of fish and other critters. Now a new version of the action camera is available and I’m trying to decide if it is time to get one of my own. There are links to purchase the camera from Amazon and I do receive a small commission if you buy from my links. Unfortunately I haven’t received a free camera from GoPro for writing about it.

When GoPro cameras first arrived, they provided one of the best solutions for shooting “action video” from a small camera. Of course the GoPro HERO5 can still shoot great video and it can do it all the way up to 4K resolution! You aren’t limited to just video, it also shoots still shots at 12 megapixel.

Older models included an underwater box that allowed you to take the camera down 100 feet without worrying about the camera. The HERO5 allows you to take the camera to 33 feet without a protective box. For those who want to go deeper, the housing can still be purchased separately. It is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of accessories that are available to help you use the GoPro in most any environment mounted to almost anything.

Another big change is having an 2″ LCD touchscreen on the back of the camera. When I was shooting underwater photos, I had no idea what I had until I got back to my computer. Having a touchscreen is very, very appealing to me and would have allowed me to shoot better photos as I’d have both a preview and a result.

While it won’t work underwater, you can give voice commands to the HERO5 such as “GoPro, take a photo.” Add advanced image stabilization, geotagging and the ability to shoot RAW photos and this is a big upgrade from the older model that I used!