The GoPro HERO4 range is hitting our shelves on October 5, so we teamed up with the adventure camera specialists to put their new release to the test.

But just how do you put a new action sports cam through its paces? Well, take one insane freerunner, Jason Paul, one trials genius, Danny MacAskill, then tear about London on a series of ridiculous tasks…

To start the testing, we followed the awesome Alternative London tour crew to some of the sickest street art spots in Shoreditch. There, we got Jason and Danny to do some mad shit while we got our hands on the shiny new gear.

As you can see from the end results, the quality of the still shot on a GoPro is a hell of a lot better than it often gets credit for.

Admittedly, Jason and Danny are fairly photogenic, but these shots were mostly just point and click efforts, with us lot leaving short timers on cameras or taking quick burst shots of the action insanity.

The ideal photo setting was never more than a few clicks away, and the new preview screen on the Silver makes a world of different when you’re sorting your shot.

Nevertheless, video footage will always be the focal point of any GoPro purchase. And the extra camera stability and crazy high processing power of the new Hero Black is what everyone has been talking about in the past few days.

Despite Danny regularly wondering off mid-sentence to go bunny hop a skyscraper, and Jason attracting police attention on more than one occasion, we did manage to capture some pretty awesome footage of them doing their thing.

We didn’t film in 4K30 much, as we have no particular need for cinematic footage that makes our computers implode, but have a look at these short clips and draw your own conclusions.

We’ve left the footage raw here so you can get a feel for the improved sound quality as well as the image:

But what about the claims that the camera can perform just as well in low lighting? Well, we went on a go-karting trip to find out just that. Obviously.

The place was pretty dark, so we did have our doubts at first, but after getting the GoPro set up by the men behind the camera, it went pretty damn well.

In fact, I would’ve been tempted to say that it went perfectly had my kart not ended up around two to three centimetres from a competitor’s head…

Before you ask, MacAskill took the race champagne. Of course.

And the camera did do the job in the low light as well. The image was clear and the dark didn’t disturb the quality. Would that change when we tried in out in the dark  of London’s night, though?

We were informed by the GoPro team that if you get some LED lights or glow sticks out, wave them around, then turn on your Night Photo setting, the end results can be pretty sick.

So, we tried just this for a good while, Jason waving glowsticks around while Danny sat patiently as the model. In the end, a couple of cool shots came out of it, but it seemed like a lot of effort for unreliable results.

When you do get it right though, you can get some cool stuff, but it is a feature suited more to the countryside than to a city packed with light pollution.

The HERO4 Black boasts the highest quality possible, but with its touch screen and still impressive processor, the Silver may well prove the public’s choice.

One thing that did prove true though was that the Night Photo feature could turn the darkest of nights into an awesome photo shoot.

This fact will no doubt form the basis of a shitload of edits, particularly in the hiking and biking world, in the future, and you can see from the clip below, taken in near enough complete darkness, that the camera reacts surprisingly well in low light…

Over the course of the day then, it’s safe to say that the new range of GoPros had more than proven their worth.

There were some downsides – the high quality of the filming drains the battery, and the thing heats pretty fast – but there can be no debate about the quality of the image capture.

The HERO4 Black is perfect for the shredder looking to capture the highest quality possible, but with its touch screen and still impressive processor, the Silver may prove the public’s choice.

Stay tuned to Mpora for more on the cameras and for some insane edits from the GoPro team to drop in the not so distant future….

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