the best-reviewed gopro ever isn't an action camera. it's an 8k cinema camera you can take to 20 metres

GoPro announced the MISSION 1 Series at the NAB Show in April, and put it on retail shelves worldwide on May 28. The launch is the company's biggest product swing since the original Hero: an entry into "the premium end of the digital imaging market," in the words of SVP of Product Pablo Lema, priced from $599 against cinema tools costing multiples more. The engineering receipts are specific. The new 50MP 1-inch sensor carries larger 1.6µm native pixels and 3.2µm fused pixels for up to 14 stops of dynamic range at the sensor, and the flagship MISSION 1 PRO shoots 8K60 and 4K240 in 16:9, 8K30 and 4K120 in Open Gate 4:3, plus 50MP RAW stills. It is also the only cinema-grade camera you can drown. The MISSION 1 is waterproof to 66ft — 20 metres — with no housing, 60 metres with one, and it's the first GoPro with fast charging, taking the battery from near-empty to 80% in about 30 minutes. "The MISSION 1 Series is the pinnacle of performance for low-cost, compact cinema cameras," said founder and CEO Nick Woodman at launch. "Our most demanding, pro-minded customers have asked us for years to make this very line of cameras, and we've finally delivered. The MISSION 1 Series is designed to go to hell and back." The reviews arrived and did something GoPro reviews haven't done in years — escalated. Engadget: 8.7, the best action camera video quality on the market. Tom's Guide: Editor's Choice — "the first GoPro I've been excited about in years," with best-in-class battery life by a strong margin. SlashGear called it "absolutely the generational leap that GoPro needed" — the first GoPro delivering decent results after sunset, capable of shooting starlapses through most of a night on one battery. The professional press noticed the category shift. RedShark News — which covers professional filmmaking, not gadgets — concluded GoPro set out to address every criticism it has faced in recent years and surpassed expectations, calling it the camera the professional community has been asking GoPro to make for years. Camera Jabber placed it in Blackmagic territory: high bitrates, 10-bit colour, GP-Log2, HLG HDR and Timecode Sync, with GoPro's reviewer guide mapping its 240Mbps mode against published Netflix capture requirements. It is not a replacement for a full cinema rig. It is the camera that goes where the rig can't — "shot in GP-Log2 with a bit of grading, the results can look truly cinematic," per Trusted Reviews, the best-looking footage the reviewer had ever captured on a GoPro. The next chapter completes a two-year march. The Hero 13 Black introduced the HB-Series — smart, auto-detecting lens mods GoPro itself calls "a suite of interchangeable lenses." Arriving in Q3, the MISSION 1 PRO ILS goes all the way: a standard Micro Four Thirds lens mount, compatible with an even broader array of lenses via adapters — the first GoPro in the company's history built around a real lens mount.