My first impressions of the Hero 7 are as follows…

To get the firmware into the Hero 7 you firstly need to charge the battery in the camera, not something I recommend. I never charge any batteries in any cameras and the Hero 7 is no exception, it gets physically hot as does the battery so I opted for GoPro’s own dual charger as it comes with a spare battery.

Talking of batteries I find them surprisingly big for the intended slot, if that plastic tab breaks you will not be able to remove the battery, this was a shocking find as the batteries for the Hero 4 were fine, the tolerances are far too tight.

My firmware update would not apply for the first hour of having the 7, causing me a lot of anguish then I remembered you can apply the software manually via the micro SD card.

I tried this after resetting the camera back to default once again but still no joy.

Finally via my iPhone Ten I got the firmware 01.51 to go into the Go Pro but not a smooth as process as I was expecting.

To setup the Go Pro with the iPhone on the other hand was a lot less clunky than I experienced in the past with my Go Pro 4.

Strangely for all the extra processing power you still get a blank screen on the iPhone when you hit the record button something that really annoyed me in the past, the only consolation is that you now get a live feed on the small screen that comes with the Hero 7, possibly something to do with Protune being switched on.

The Hero 7 keeps freezing so I am sending it back, meanwhile I will show you a video from a chap in the states who has had all the same problems as me.

Sadly the footage out of the Hero 7 Black at 4K 50p were the best I have seen from any GoPro but the software bugs outweigh the joy of using it.

UPDATE As of January 2019 we are now on firmware version 1.70 the FW via the iPhone is a lot easier and the freezing issue seems to have been resolved. One thing I did not mention was how good the gimbal-like stabilisation is.