GoPro Fusion

GoPro Enters Panoramic Camera Market

GoPro took a long time to enter the panoramic camera market. It turned out that the company wanted to shake up the market by offering something new to customers. As a result, their Fusion is one of the most innovative panoramic cameras of 2018. Although it was officially released at the end of 2017.

OverCapture

The main feature of Fusion is the ability to "cut" regular videos for social networks and blogs from 360-degree videos. This function is called OverCapture and works as follows: you send a spherical video to an application on a smartphone or laptop, look for the desired fragment, set the resolution and boundaries within the 16:9 format and voila. The video is ready. In general, GoPro software greatly expands the possibilities of working with the camera.

Ergonomics and voice control

The second feature of Fusion is the overall thoughtfulness of ergonomics. For example, there is a “quick capture” button that allows you to instantly start recording, even if the camera is turned off. If you have ever missed footage because the camera was on, then you understand how convenient this is. In addition, Fusion understands voice commands. Moreover, you can not only command the camera to start recording, but also set voice tags in the necessary fragments of the video so that you can quickly find them later.

Recognizable appearance

As for the appearance, Fusion adheres to the standard GoPro design: it is the same strong and compact rectangle gadget made of high-strength plastic. However, unlike its twin brothers Hero5 and Hero6, Fusion has become more rounded, which only benefits the camera.

Ultimate photo and video quality

In terms of photo and video capabilities, Fusion gets a solid A. It records spherical videos in an unusual 5.2K format (5228×2624 pixels) at 30 frames per second. Or 3K at 60 fps. The maximum size of panoramic photos is 18 MP. However, you wouldn’t expect anything else from a camera with a price tag of under $700.

Boy Scout Kit

In addition to all this, GoPro Fusion boasts a full set of boy scout features - the camera is equipped with a GPS compass and accelerometer, can communicate with the outside world using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and USB Type C, is not afraid of diving to a depth of 5 meters and is compatible with any GoPro mounts.

The only downside of the camera is the system of storing data simultaneously on two MicroSD cards, which makes it difficult to transfer data to a computer.