The leakage of the obvious packaging for GoPro's Hero9 Black suggests that the next iteration of the popular action camera will see a number of exciting changes.
With Osmo Action from DJI and the recently launched One R system from Insta360, GoPro has some serious competitors on its heels, so it has to be done right with the Hero9 Black.
German tech site WinFuture, which received the packaging, is confident that this is the real deal. The label suggests that the Hero9 Black will be the first GoPro in the series to feature a front-facing color display that places it next to the Osmo action, making it an even friendlier vlogging camera.
The image sensor will reportedly get a bump from 12 megapixels to 20 megapixels. Rumor has it that the device may be able to record 5K videos from 4K at the moment. However, there's no word on whether GoPro will improve image quality by increasing the size of the sensor to an inch to match any of the mods available with the Insta360 One R.
A decent battery upgrade seems to be on the way as well, increasing it from 1,220 mAh with the Hero8 Black to 1,720 mAh, which gives users extra wiggle room before worrying about charging or swapping out - assuming that new front display doesn't devour all of that extra power.
The GoPro Hero9 Black is also expected to have improved electronic stabilization from HyperSmooth, a popular feature introduced with the Hero7 Black to offer "gimbal" footage.
There's no word on when GoPro will announce the Hero9 Black, but its habit of releasing an update every fall suggests an upcoming reveal.
Digital Trends reached out to GoPro in the futile hope of getting a glimpse of the expected upcoming release and we will update this piece if we hear anything.
If you are in the action camera market, you probably want to see what the Hero9 Black has to offer. If you can't wait, take a moment to check out the latest lineup of the best action cameras from Digital Trends right now.
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