Adding a 23.6MP sensor and new key design and engineering features, GoPro upgrades its flagship action camera with more of everything with the rugged HERO9 Black, providing high-detail 5K30 video and 20MP photo capture alongside new collections of professional settings and practical functions.

The front display, which in the previous HERO model showed status information, is now larger at 1.4″ and offers a live view, allowing you to frame shots for vlogging and similar uses. A new HyperSmooth 3.0 digital image stabilization with in-camera horizon leveling lets you produce even smoother, more stable videos without a gimbal. While a full-on action camera, the HERO9 Black makes use of its immense feature set to also let you use it as a webcam and for 1080p Full HD live streaming, providing a comprehensive solution for all your action cam adventures and more in a robust design that’s 33′ waterproof without an external housing required. An optional dive housing can additionally be used to take the camera into much deeper waters.

Another new addition is a suite of Power Tools features, including a feature called HindSight that, when turned on, allows you to record 30 seconds of video prior to your hitting the record button, ensuring you’ll never miss that important unexpected moment at a ball game or other event.

While all these features already combine to offer a powerhouse system, the HERO9 Black is further complete with many other features carried over from previous versions of the camera, some of which have also been enhanced. These include a large 2.3″ rear touchscreen with touch zoom, raw photo and audio capture, time-lapse and night-lapse, 8x slo-mo, an advanced 100 Mb/s bit rate, three microphones with advanced wind noise reduction, Protune features with professional video and audio settings, 14 voice commands such as, “GoPro, take a photo”, and much more.

The HERO9 Black has a built-in, flip-out 2-prong mount on the bottom, letting you easily attach it to over 45 mounting accessories available from GoPro for all your applications, whether extreme sports or live streaming to Facebook. Moreover, to further expand the functions of the camera, multiple optional add-on mods are offered, such as the Media Mod, which adds an external mic and additional mounting and signal output options for more of a multimedia workflow. With social media in mind, the camera also lets you switch into portrait mode to capture images in the format ideal for platforms such as Instagram. The battery for the HERO9 Black has a 30% longer, 1720mAh capacity in comparison to the previous model’s battery, allowing you to operate the camera for longer periods on a single charge.