GoPro Mission 1 Pro Unboxing: 8K60, USB-C Audio, and a New 1-Inch Sensor

Good day folks, Shawn here from Air Photography. In this video, I’m doing a quick unboxing of the brand new GoPro Mission 1 Pro. I’ve also got the point-and-shoot hand grip to take a look at. For a while there during pre-orders, GoPro was giving these grips away free when you pre-ordered the camera. I’m not sure if they’re still doing that or not, but we’ll take a quick look at it as well.

This is GoPro’s newest cinema camera. It can capture in 8K 60, and that’s the main difference between the standard Mission 1 and the Mission 1 Pro: frame rate. With the Mission 1 standard, you can only capture in 8K 30. Other than that, everything is pretty well the same between the two models. The ILS version, which isn’t available yet, is the one with interchangeable lenses, more for professionals and pro-level lenses.

For most people, they’re either going to want to go with the Mission 1 or the Mission 1 Pro. The GoPro now has a 1-inch sensor, as you can see there on the box. As mentioned, it’s 8K 60 frames per second with the Pro model, plus a lot of other improvements when it comes to low light, batteries, and other features of the camera, which I’ll talk about as I go along.

But yeah, let’s get into it.

What’s In the Box

The packaging is pretty standard, like we’ve seen the last couple of years. Right away, I notice we must update the firmware on the camera before we can use it. There’s some basic literature in there, and we got some stickers.

We’ve got a USB-C to USB-C data and charging cable, a silicone or rubber lens hood, and a curved sticky mount. There’s a thumb screw and the new Enduro 2 battery. What’s really interesting about this is that the new Enduro 2 battery — you can see it’s labeled there — is also compatible with your Hero 13 Black. So you can now purchase these Enduro batteries and use them in your Hero 13 Black. It’s a slightly bigger battery, so you’re going to get a little bit of extra record time out of it. And vice versa: your Enduro batteries from your Hero 13 Black will also run in the Mission 1 and Mission 1 Pro. There’s also a buckle mount in here. Pretty standard stuff other than the lens hood.

And then here we have the camera. There’s some protective paper on it that I’ll remove, plus a sticker on the lens. The front screen has a sticker, and the back screen has one too, again telling us we need to update the firmware. This back screen is slightly larger as well. They’ve also put a sticker on the microphone now. They clearly label that because a lot of people think it’s a door and try to open it, and they end up damaging it. It’s actually a microphone. If you’re brand new and just buying your first camera, that’s a microphone — it’s specially designed to allow water to drain out quickly. So if you’re filming underwater, when you come out, you’re going to have good audio right away.

New Buttons, Bigger Lens, and Deeper Waterproofing

As you can see, it’s labeled Mission 1 Pro on the side. A couple of things physically are new. These buttons are a little bit different — they’re bigger and a little thicker, both the power button, the mode button on the side, and the shutter button on top. And I don’t know if you can see on camera, but there’s actually a space underneath them. You can see right through underneath. That’s going to help if you’re capturing underwater. If you’re down really deep, that’s going to basically equalize the pressure, so the pressure from the water isn’t going to be pressing on the buttons. Nice little addition there. They’ve increased the waterproof capabilities of the Mission 1, too — it’s now waterproof down to a depth of 20 meters.

The lens on the front is quite a bit bigger. I’ll show you a size comparison with the Hero 13 Black. You can see the camera’s a little bit longer. When it comes to body thickness, it’s about the same — I wouldn’t say one is any thicker. It looks pretty close, but the way that lens sticks out, you can see it sticks out quite a bit.

It’s really important to note that the lens cover here is interchangeable, so you can remove it. But it is not compatible with lenses from your Hero 13 Black. So if you’ve got the wide-angle lens, the macro lens, or the ND filters, they are not compatible, just due to the redesign and the 1-inch sensor. They just won’t fit. GoPro hasn’t announced any other lenses like a wide-angle or macro lens yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s coming, because the lens cover does have the chips in it — like if you get the ND filters, it does have the chips where it will read them. So I’m assuming they’re going to be introducing some other lenses down the road. We’ll have to wait and see what GoPro does there.

GoPro Gets Serious About Audio

Another interesting change is that they now have two microphones on the front, which is going to offer better audio while vlogging. And it even has a microphone on the back now — you can see it right under the GoPro logo. You probably can’t see it on camera, but there’s a microphone right below the logo. So now if you’re doing any kind of commentary with the camera facing away from you, you’ll still be able to get good audio.

Another major improvement is that the Mission 1 now has USB-C audio support. So no more having to use those GoPro adapters or even the media mod. You can plug any USB-C mic directly into the side, and that includes wireless mics. If you have a DJI mic or the new Insta360 mic, you can plug that directly into the USB-C. You can still connect those microphones via Bluetooth directly to it, but you’re not going to have as good audio as something like Osmo audio, because it’s a proprietary system. With that said, GoPro is launching its own wireless mic system — that’s something new this year. It’s not available yet, but I’ll be ordering it once it is. They have a whole wireless mic set, including transmitters that can be connected directly to the camera. So I’m really looking forward to testing those out.

Another interesting thing: right above the front-facing screen, there’s a new sensor. It’s an anti-flicker sensor. If it determines that there’s light flickering when you’re filming indoors, you’ll get a notice on the screen. That’s a nice little feature as well.

Battery Performance and the New GP3 Chip

Another big improvement of the Mission 1 series is battery performance — longevity, recording, heat dissipation, and even quick charging. These Enduro 2 batteries now support quick charging, so you can now go from empty up to about 80% in about 20 minutes. I’m going to be doing some tests with that as well. And supposedly, the heat issues that GoPros have been notorious for have been solved with the GP3. It’s a lot more efficient, so again, I’ll be testing that out.

So I’ll power it on here and check the battery level. I’ll select English, agree to the terms, enable GPS location, and leave voice control off for now. Now I’m going to launch the GoPro Quick app. I’ll tap on GoPro, add a new camera, and you can see it’s found the Mission 1 Pro. I’ll tap connect. Now it wants to join the Wi-Fi network of the camera, and there’s the firmware update for it. I’ll tap continue and let it do its thing.

A Closer Look at the Point-and-Shoot Grip

While that’s updating, let’s take a look at the point-and-shoot grip. Inside the box there’s some literature about the product, and that’s it — it’s all kind of together in one unit. Some people might have use for a product like this, others may not, and this isn’t a new concept. There have been cages and grips like this available for a while for different action cameras.

As you can see, we can open it up — you just want to make sure the shutter button is lined up. These cages are actually modular and multi-purpose and can be used in a couple of different ways. We can remove this top portion by unlocking that button on the side, pressing it in, and that removes the hand grip. Now this can be used as just a standard cage if you want some extra durability for your camera, or a cold shoe for mounting accessories, or a simple way of mounting the camera vertically, since it has the vertical mount on the side. We insert the camera the same way, open it up, and the power button is still accessible on the side. On this side there’s a button so we can still access the battery compartment if we need to swap out the battery or memory.

The magnetic mounting system hasn’t changed, so if you have magnetic mounts from your Hero 13 Black, they’re fully compatible. And with this cage, you can mount it right on the side there. Now, I’d be a little leery about mounting this on the outside of a vehicle or something with a lot of movement in this configuration, when you’re using that side mount, just because there’s not really a lot holding it on. I’d be a little nervous about it letting go. But of course, the bottom is fully accessible, so you can easily attach it that way as well.

A Whole New Menu System and Capture Modes

The new 1-inch sensor, the ability to capture in 8K 30 or 8K 60, and the new battery improvements are great. But one of the biggest improvements is the new GP3 chip. That’s going to allow a lot of these advanced features, such as 8K video, and it also allows for heavy processing to enable some of the new modes they’ve included, which I’ll be testing out in my full review. So let’s power it on and take a quick look at the menu system.

You can see it has changed quite a bit. When we swipe through the different modes, there are all different modes now. We have the new low light mode, a slow motion mode, and a new sport point-of-view mode. There’s video mode, photo mode, and time lapse mode. The ones highlighted in blue are enabled by default. But we also have one called night effects that we can enable. We have subject tracking — the Mission 1 series now supports subject tracking, which I’ll talk about more in my review with some demonstrations. We have a vlogging mode, a dive mode, looping mode, open gate mode, and an endurance mode. It’ll be really interesting to test some of these out and see how they perform.

Another thing they’ve done is add a whole new audio menu, because GoPro is really taking audio seriously with the Mission 1 Pro when it comes to compatibility and functionality. We can go to our settings here, and you can see we have a dedicated audio page. Right now it lists main track and track two, but they’ve got a line through them because we don’t have any external mics connected. We can tap on that, and depending on what mic we have, there’ll be all different options we can adjust. We can also put an audio meter right on the front screen — and if we have other mics connected, we could put a second audio meter on there as well.

What’s Coming Next

I’m not going to go too much further into the menu system — I’m going to make a separate video about that. This is just a first look at the new Mission 1 Pro, a quick unboxing. Of course, if this is a camera you’re interested in, make sure you stay tuned, as I’ll be covering it fully, including a full review, probably in about 30 days, maybe 3 weeks, once I’ve had a good amount of time to use it in real-world situations. I’ll offer up my thoughts on it. We’ll be doing some comparisons, some different demonstrations, and perhaps a full beginner’s guide for those who are brand new.

Hopefully you enjoyed this video and found it had value. Thanks a lot for watching, and we’ll see you in the next one.

This article is based on a video from Air Photography, produced by Shawn. You can find more of his work on the Air Photography YouTube channel and read more of his articles on his DroneXL author page.