KnowledgeIsPower
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Just bought a Hero 4 Silver that I plan to take on diving trips. I was worried about the LCD because with the auto-off feature, the only way to re-enable it underwater is to stop recording and re-record which is annoying. But they do have an always on feature that I was a bit hesitant about because I felt it would guzzle up the battery.
To my surprise, the always on for the LCD is NOT a battery guzzler.
The Hero 4 Silver comes with an auto-off of 1 minute and can be set at either 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, or always on. The LCD brightness can also be set at high, medium, and low.
My first test was with the LCD always on, brightness set to high, recording 2.7k 30 FPS. I was able to get 1 hour and 26 minutes out of the battery! Compare this to what GoPro claims would be 1 hour and 50 minutes with the LCD off! That is pretty amazing as I did not expect that with the high brightness setting. I am going to repeat the test with medium and low brightness to see if there is much benefit to those settings in terms of battery life. I will update the post when I do those tests.
But for now I am very satisfied as that is more than what I need. With 1 spare battery I can probably easily get 3 dives/day out of this with the LCD always on and that is superb!
Edit:I did the test again at 2.7k 30 FPS with brightness set to low and got 1 hour and 32 minutes. So it's up to you how important those 6 minutes are, but for me I'd rather have the full brightness.
Edit 2: Interesting, I did the test with the LCD off with the same frame rate and got 1 hour and 31 minutes. I am not sure how that's possible but I am going to repeat the test to see if this holds. If so it may mean the LCD draws very little power (which is good) but I feel 1 hour and 31 minutes is on the low side of what I should be getting without the LCD.
---------- Post added October 11th, 2014 at 03:19 PM ----------
Repeated the test again with the LCD off and got 1 hour and 35 minutes. So given these results I feel that the LCD is definitely worth keeping on while scuba diving (always on) as it has very little impact to the battery.
To my surprise, the always on for the LCD is NOT a battery guzzler.
The Hero 4 Silver comes with an auto-off of 1 minute and can be set at either 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, or always on. The LCD brightness can also be set at high, medium, and low.
My first test was with the LCD always on, brightness set to high, recording 2.7k 30 FPS. I was able to get 1 hour and 26 minutes out of the battery! Compare this to what GoPro claims would be 1 hour and 50 minutes with the LCD off! That is pretty amazing as I did not expect that with the high brightness setting. I am going to repeat the test with medium and low brightness to see if there is much benefit to those settings in terms of battery life. I will update the post when I do those tests.
But for now I am very satisfied as that is more than what I need. With 1 spare battery I can probably easily get 3 dives/day out of this with the LCD always on and that is superb!
Edit:I did the test again at 2.7k 30 FPS with brightness set to low and got 1 hour and 32 minutes. So it's up to you how important those 6 minutes are, but for me I'd rather have the full brightness.
Edit 2: Interesting, I did the test with the LCD off with the same frame rate and got 1 hour and 31 minutes. I am not sure how that's possible but I am going to repeat the test to see if this holds. If so it may mean the LCD draws very little power (which is good) but I feel 1 hour and 31 minutes is on the low side of what I should be getting without the LCD.
---------- Post added October 11th, 2014 at 03:19 PM ----------
Repeated the test again with the LCD off and got 1 hour and 35 minutes. So given these results I feel that the LCD is definitely worth keeping on while scuba diving (always on) as it has very little impact to the battery.
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