GoPro Karma: GoPro Goes Head-to-Head with DJI

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SEPTEMBER, 2016

GoPro Karma:
GoPro Goes Head-to-Head with DJI

So last week GoPro released their long-awaited drone; The GoPro Karma.

A clear sign that GoPro intends to go head-to-head with DJI when it comes to small, portable drones.

It’s funny how relationships turn. It wasn’t that long ago that DJI and GoPro were helping each other out, with DJI designing their drones to carry GoPros and encouraging their users to use them to capture the footage. GoPro would even showcase the best videos on there website to help sell their cameras. There were even rumors of the two companies collaborating to produce a GoPro branded drone, but that never materialized. Now you’ve got DJI making their own action cameras and GoPro producing their first drone.

“A drone is the ultimate GoPro accessory, and GoPro has just realised that.”

GoPro’s new Karma drone certainly looks the part. The tech specs are all in line with what you would expect from a small portable drone. But it addresses a lot of things that people don’t like about other portable drones. One example being the actual portability itself.

Even DJI’s Phantom models can still be a bit of a mission to take with you. Speaking from personal experience, even if you buy a peli-case to carry the drone in, these can often be large, heavy and impractical. GoPro addressed this by making the legs and the props fold in, making it possible for the drone to fit in a backpack. So it’s no longer a case of “shall I take my drone today?”, it’s now a case of “why wouldn’t I take my drone today?!”.

But it appears that drones aren’t the only thing that GoPro are competing with DJI for. They also appear to have their answer to the DJI Osmo; The Karma Grip.

Stabilisation was a big part of GoPro’s latest launch. They announced that the new Hero 5 and Hero Session 5 cameras would feature built-in image stabilization. GoPro users rejoiced at this news, as shaky footage was often one of the pet hates of GoPro users.

But GoPro took this one step further by releasing the Karma Grip, which is a handheld stabilization grip allowing you to capture beautifully smooth video.

It’s fair to say that GoPro are pretty late to the party when it comes to drones and stabilization equipment. So it will be interesting to see how their new recruits fair up against its already tried-and-trusted counterparts from DJI.

While we expect DJI to win the aerial battle, we think it’s safe to say that GoPro will always be kings of the ground.