How the GoPro hero 10 stacks up against knock offs in 30 seconds
Comparing the GoPro Hero 10 Black to the Akaso V50 Elite and the OCLU action camera.
All these shots were shot handheld on a rig, with no stabilisation applied in post, they were all filmed in their flattest profiles.. which for the OCLU and Akaso.. doesn’t exist, and all shots were colour corrected as much as I could. The reason im actually editing this footage is because I want to see how good each of these cameras are should I want to use them in a film or an edit.
Our first shot is a sunrise, which is really going to test their low light ability, and their dynamic range. And as someone who films a lot of sunrises, this is pretty important to me.
Starting off we have the GoPro. And for a handheld walking shot the stabilisation here is incredible. The colours while not perfect, are still pretty good, the highlights aren’t clipping and there’s still quite a bit of detail in the shadows. Overall it’s a pretty decent image.
Comparing this to the Akaso the cheapest of the bunch, its.. umm yeah. I’ve actually increased the shadows here quite a lot but I couldn’t recover any detail in those darker areas.
Moving onto the OCLU, the colours and shadows are a lot nicer here, I’d say possibly that the colour in the shadows are nicer than the GoPro, but the highlights are destroyed. That big white ball in the sky looks really bad.
This is a huge win for the GoPro here, the dynamic range is just so much better. Also with the shots side by side the GoPro’s linear lens option looks so much better than the cheaper two that still have that ultra wide fish eye look. And obviously, the stabilisation is a huge difference, the GoPro hardly moves, where the other two are pretty jerky even with their stabilisation maxed out.
Our next shot pretty much replicates the exact same thing here, with the GoPro Hero 10 having by far the best dynamic range, and overall cleanest most stable image, the Akaso V50 Elite really struggling with the darker parts of the image, and the OCLU having the most vibrant colours but having a really blown out sky and some dodgy red colours in the shadows.
Side by side, the lens on the GoPro just looks way better and far less like an action camera, its also so much smoother. Towards the end of that shot you can actually see how crooked my shot became by looking at the horizon, and with GoPro’s horizon levelling mode the shot is still perfectly flat and level.
So off the bat for our sunrise, high dynamic range shots, the GoPro has a far superior image quality, and loads of improvements like the tighter lens, gimbal like stabilisation and horizon levelling that all make it look far more cinematic and much less like an action camera.
Moving to some waterfall shots, the GoPro looks really natural here, the colours are nice, the detail is really clean, it is slightly overexposed, but overall it’s a good image. Moving to the OCLU, and the colours are super wacky, the highlights are really bad, and it looks very warped with its fish eye lens. The cheaper Akaso does a much better job with both it’s colour, highlights and the lens warping.
Side by side, the GoPro again does still have the best image and perspective out of the three, leaving comments on the OCLU out of this, the skin tones are more natural than the Akaso, and the darker parts of the image look much more crisp and detailed. The AKASO is also more far pixilated, but for it’s price… it’s doing a great job.
