GoPro Hero 13 Black vs DJI Action 5 Pro: Full Comparison

GoPro just released the Hero 13 Black and DJI just released the Action 5 Pro. Let’s go test these two out and see which one might be the right one for you.

Disclosure

Hey, just so we’re clear, DJI did send me the Action 5 Pro to test and Review, but they’re not paying me or reimbursing me or giving me any other financial compensation other than I get to keep the camera. The Hero 13, I purchased myself purely just so that I could do this video test and review and compare these two cameras.

Resolution Comparison

Now there is one thing that differentiates these cameras a lot, and that’s just pure resolution. For that, in video mode at least, GoPro wins. Now in photo mode, the Action 5 wins because it does 40-megapixel stills as opposed to the GoPro’s 27. But right now I’m filming 5.3K in the GoPro, 4K 30 on the Action 5, and the reason I saved that for up here is because there’s some decent scenery to look at.

So what I want to do is just give you a few clips of this up here and maybe some other spots we can look at and see how much of a difference there is between 5.3K on the GoPro and 4K 30 on the Action 5.

So let’s start out by comparing apples to apples: 4K 30 both cameras, both had their sharpness settings set to the same, which in my case is low because I prefer to sharpen in post if possible. And the Action 5 looks sharper to me, and if we crop in 200%, it definitely looks sharper, though there might be a tiny bit more noise. Uh, the Action 5 just definitely has a sharper picture.

But GoPro’s native resolution is 5.3K, so here we have 5.3K Ultra wide, same field of view as close as I can get them. And if we crop in 200% again, the Action 5 to me looks just a little bit sharper, which is kind of surprising.

Color and Skin Tone Comparison

But of course, if you’re like me and you end up filming yourself a lot, then you kind of want to see how it looks on skin tones and what the colors look like and how sharp it is on a face, stuff like that. So here we have some clips that is me walking toward camera, and in this particular instance, it’s been interesting because the Action 5 has this little white balance sensor in the O here. I feel like it gets better, more accurate colors overall.

One thing that GoPro always struggled with, in my opinion, was the skin tones and the natural colors. Now they added the natural color profile, which is what you’re seeing right now, which does a really good job of giving you that saturated look but not making the skin tones crazy. But I’m curious what you think between this and the uh, normal color profile in the Action 5.

Of course they both have log. We’ll switch to that next. And now you’re looking at the GoPro log in on the GoPro 13 and DLog M on the Action 5. And this is where you’re going to get the most flexibility you can out of these two cameras.

One thing that’s interesting is that the Action 5 actually previews the file in what it will look like colored, so you get a more realistic view of what it’s actually going to look like, where GoPro just gives you the flat color feed out, um, or at least I haven’t found a way to turn a like look on so you can see what it’ll look like when it’s colored. But this is going to be the most dynamic range you’re going to get.

So the sun is right behind those clouds there and these mountains are in shadow and I’m in shadow. What do you think? It’s hard for me to tell here. We’re going to have to uh, check it out at the studio.

Dynamic Range

There in those clips, at least to me, it looked like the Action 5 had a fair bit more dynamic range. Now DJI says 13 and 1/2 stops, which I guess depending on how you define that, sure, could be. I wouldn’t personally classify it as 13 and a half stops. That would be on par with like my Sony A7S3 or A1 or Canon R5 Mark II, but it definitely has a good bit more dynamic range than the GoPro does or in general other action cameras from what I’ve seen.

So one of the things that the Action 5 talks a lot about is 13 and half stops of dynamic range. Now that you know can be whatever, but it does appear to have really good dynamic range if you’re shooting in DLog. I’m shooting in log on the GoPro right now and DLog M on the or DLog M on the Action 5, but the GoPro does have an HDR mode. I’m kind of curious to see how well that does.

Now this is in the HDR mode of the GoPro, HLG HDR, which should give you the highest dynamic range. Now the sun’s directly behind me, my face would be directly in the shadows. That is about uh, as high dynamic range as you’re going to get, especially with the white snow and then the black rocks here. So I do feel like the Action 5 has better dynamic range overall.

Low Light Performance

One of the areas that the Action 5 and the GoPro differ dramatically is in low light performance. The Action 5 has that one over 1.3 in sensor, the GoPro has the one over 1.9 in sensor, but generally the Action 5 has much better low light, or the Action Series has had much better low light. So yeah, I think we found a place that we can go test the low light out. Shall we?

So here again is where the Action 5 wins hands down. It just has considerably better low light performance. But the other thing that’s interesting is inside this ice cave, you can see the bright highlights that are seen at certain places in the cave. The GoPro consistently was blowing those highlights out in order to expose the scene properly, where the Action 5 was preserving a lot more highlights. So again, this demonstrates the Action 5 does have a fair amount more dynamic range than most other action cameras.

Slow Motion Capabilities

Another thing both these cameras have is lots of slow motion options. Now there is this little bit of water coming down here. I think that’s a great place to show off the super slow motion modes that both of these cameras now have.

Now the Action 5, you can film in 1080 240 frames a second, and then after you film a clip, if you like a certain spot, you can hit the slow motion button and have it slow down to 960 frames a second. I’ve had mixed results, most of them have been good. Some of it I think mostly just depends on subject material.

With the GoPro, you can do bursts of 5.3K up to 120. You can do bursts of uh, like there’s a few other options. I’ll show you here on the screen that you can get some incredibly slow motion shots.

There is one more thing that the GoPro 13 has as an advantage over the Action 5 is that it still stabilizes in slow motion modes. The Action 5 does not, so you want to film in the normal mode with stabilization and and then use the slow motion afterward. Basically, slow it down in post.

Waterproofing

Nice thing is both of these cameras are waterproof as they come straight out of the box. The GoPro Hero 12 is waterproof up to 10 m, where the Action 5 is waterproof up to 20 m. But the Action 5 also has some like depth gauges and some other stuff that if you’re a scuba diver, I could see coming in really handy. So but it’s 33 ft on the GoPro, 65 feet on the Action 5. I don’t have any water that deep here, but I do have this pond here. I’m not going to swim in it because it was frozen last week.

Photo Capabilities

Now while I don’t consider either one of these cameras to really be photo cameras, even though the Action 5 takes 40-megapixel stills and the GoPro 13 takes 27-megapixel stills, you can see the photos here side by side. Like they’re nice, they’re detailed you get a fair amount of latitude to play with them in post, but if you crop in like 300% or so here, you can see the difference and again here. So I don’t know, they’re okay, but they’re not photo cameras. Again like it’s nice to have if you need it, but it’s not quite like taking photos with a DSLR or a mirrorless camera.

Audio Performance

So one thing that pretty much no action camera, no matter what, is going to have good audio is when you’re in wind. Even though they they all have noise reduction, it’s just not necessarily the best. So I’m going to show you what the no noise reduction and then what a little bit of wind reduction and their various modes of wind reduction here are built into camera.

But then we’re going to switch to something like the DJI Mic 2, which you can switch to. Both of these will pair to an external audio source. The DJI Mic 2 pairs directly to this, and you can pair up to two transmitters to the Action 5 Pro, which is very nice if you’re going to have two people talking on camera. But the GoPro will pair to one external audio source as well. We’re going to compare the audio samples.

So I did find an interesting bug with the GoPro on external audio paired audio sources is if you hit the quick capture mode, it doesn’t like relink to the audio source. It it like, or at least it doesn’t change to the audio source or doesn’t tell you that it does. So there’s the bug when you go from an off state and you just hit the power or the uh, record button to go straight recording, it doesn’t link back up to the microphone.

So if you power the GoPro on, it will relink like the Action 5 does, but if you just hit the quick capture mode, it doesn’t. But if you exit the quick capture mode, keep the GoPro on, then it will relink as soon as you’re done recording that clip. But that in my opinion is a pretty big win for the DJI Action 5 Pro is you don’t have to think about it very much.

Stabilization

Both of these cameras have incredible stabilization. So I’ve turned it off right now just to show you like I am not walking on easy stuff to walk on. But let’s turn both of them on the first level of stabilization.

And now they’re both on the first level of HyperSmooth 6 and RockSteady uh, whatever version we’re on of that, which is also pretty good. But it’s pretty incredible what these can do.

And now both of these are on their boost mode, which gives you the highest level of stabilization. But both of them also offer horizon balancing. So now I’m on the horizon balancing mode on both cameras. The Action 5, you can only tip up to 45°, whereas the GoPro, you can tip in 360° and and keep the horizon perfectly level.

Now you can do that with the Action 5, you just have to be filming in 2.7K. So now I’m filming in 2.7K on the Action 5 because that’s when it gives you Horizon Steady, which is the 360° horizon leveling mode. So as you can see, like I’m you know going completely around and both cameras keep the horizon about as perfectly level as you can get. And that is very handy if you’re in a place like this where you’re just running around and you’re not really thinking about like how you want to keep the horizon and level, but you want it to kind of stay level, it works well.

Now there is one more thing about stabilization of both these cameras is GoPro has ReelSteady, which it doesn’t matter stabilization is on or off. I’ve got it off right now so you can see the difference. I’ll turn ReelSteady on right here. And this is GoPro after it’s been stabilized with ReelSteady, which is fantastic, especially if you do FPV stuff.

But the Action 5 has integration with Gyroflow, which means you can use it later to stabilize in post. The caveat there is that it has to be in wide angle mode and, Rock Steady has to be turned off, but it does give you some very nice stable footage. This is an example of it off right now, but if we turn it on, you can see how much more stable the footage gets using, Gyroflow, which is fantastic. Also same thing if you do FPV.

Battery Life and Compatibility

Now on the subject of batteries, both of these cameras have new batteries. They are different capacity batteries. The interesting thing is that the Action 5 comes with a 1950 mAh battery, but it is exactly the same as the Action 4 and Action 3. And so if you stick the Action 3 or Action 4 camera battery in there, the camera will work exactly like it should. And so far I haven’t found anything that it won’t do on the Action 3, Action 4 batteries other than it just won’t run for quite as long. So that’s kind of nice if you already have an Action 3, Action 4, and you want to upgrade the cameras. You have batteries that at least will work for it.

The GoPro also comes with a new battery, but the difference is that while it is also a higher capacity battery, they change the connection. So while the batteries are exactly the same size, and I mean exactly the same size, they change the connection point. So you can’t use your old batteries with the new GoPro. Now I’m sure that some of that is to you know, make sure it has longer run time and better overheating performance maybe.

So I did run some overheating tests here in my house, which I keep at about 68° in this room, and I did it with a fan to run the batteries completely dead to see how long and 4K 30 they would run. And I got 111 minutes of 4K 30 out of the GoPro Hero 13, and I got 168 minutes out of the Action 5, also at 4K 30.

Then I decided to run overheating tests by removing them from the fan, having them just sitting there by themselves, and running them as long as they would go. Again, I got 111 minutes till the GoPro battery died and 170 minutes till the Action 5 battery died. So neither one of these overheated filming at 4K 30 in a 68-degree room, which I think is about 20, 21°C. So that’s a big improvement for the GoPro because in the past, it had major issues overheating quite a bit.

Charging Speed

So right now, the GoPro is recharging using 10 watts of power off of my Anker recharging system here, but the Action 5 is using 26 watts. So that’s quite a bit of difference, which means the Action 5 is likely going to recharge a fair bit faster. And the GoPro just dropped to 7 1/2 watts, and the Action 5 is still at 26, 26 watts of recharging.

Essentially that means the Action 5 is going to recharge in a lot less time, which is one of the features that DJI added to the Action 5 is this sort of fast charge mode where it charges the battery up to 80 or 90% as fast as it can without damaging the battery and then slows down for that last 10%.

Physical Differences and Features

Beyond all the differences that we’ve just seen and explored extensively on the mountains, there are a lot of other changes as well. First off, the GoPro is slightly larger than the Action 5. They’re both about the same thickness, and it’s slightly heavier.

And also the Action 5 and the GoPro have very differently sized screens here as you can see. The Action 5 has a very large OLED screen where the GoPro’s is a bit smaller. They both have front screens as well, but the Action 5 actually has a touchscreen on the front, so you can make changes to pretty much everything. It works exactly like the screen on the back, whereas the GoPro does not have a touchscreen on the front.

Now both these cameras offer a quick capture functionality where you just push the record button and they will start recording or do whatever mode you set up in the setting. However, in my experience, the Action 5 is consistently 2 seconds faster to start up than the GoPro Hero 13 is. Now this might change with firmware updates down the road, but for now at least, the Action 5 starts up and starts recording quite a bit faster than the GoPro does.

They both offer a quick switch button which allows you to cycle between both uh, and you can also set up custom modes on the Action 5, and they both offer pretty similar menu functionality where you have access to some pretty quick and commonly used items or you can go into the deeper preferences.

The Action 5 is where you can switch between the internal storage or the external storage, which is a big thing, and you can format it as well, whereas the GoPro has no internal storage and if you want to format, you go down to reset format SD card.

One thing the GoPro has is GPS built into the GoPro again. They put that back in there, which I’m glad to see that they did. The Action 5, you have to get an accessory to have that GPS included in there.

Pricing and Packages

And then we come down to price. They’re both priced pretty similarly actually. The GoPro 13 is $399 unless you’re a GoPro subscriber for $99 or $49. I believe occasionally you can find the subscribers on sale.

So if you do that, then you get it for $100 off, which puts it at $299. But then if you want to add any extra batteries, you’re going to be into like another $50 because this has a brand new battery. You’re going to add at least one, they’re $30 apiece, and if you want to get a dual charger, then you’re going to be into another $80. You can get a similar charging stick to the Osmo Action 5 Pro’s charging stick, and that’s going to run you $130.

Now when it comes to the Action 5 Pro, it is going to run $350 or $349 for just the camera, which comes with the battery, or $450, which is the adventure combo, which means you get a selfie stick or an extension rod and three batteries and the battery charging case, which I absolutely love. Now if you want to add the charging stick,charging handle, that’s going to be $99, and if you just want to buy extra batteries, those are going to run $32 each.

Next, you’re going to want to watch this video right here. I’ll see you over there. As always, if you have questions, ask me in the comments below or join my live stream, which happens most Wednesday nights at 4:00 p.m. Alaska time, 8:00 p.m. Eastern, where we can have a little more of a conversation or I can answer questions maybe I can’t get to in this video. Hold up, I’ll see you again soon in the next one.