Here are some battery saving tips & tricks for the GoPro Hero 5 Black. The battery on the Hero 5 is not horrible but it is not fantastic either. Luckily there are some easy settings you can adjust in your GoPro Hero 5 settings menu that will dramatically improve the life of the battery both while powered off and while recording.
Battery Tip 1: Turn down the brightness of the of the back LCD screen. The default for brightness on the Hero 5 is set at 100%. This allows for easy viewing on bright and sunny days. This, however, can drain the battery very quickly if the screen is used frequently while recording or playback. Bumping the brightness level down to 50% can save a lot of battery life. You can always turn it back up if needed.
Battery Tip 2: Disable GPS. When GPS is enabled on the GoPro Hero 5 Black it saves all the telemetry and location data to your recorded media. This can come in handy for placing information overlays on top of your videos. However, if it is not needed you can disable it via the options menu to save a bit of battery life.
Battery Tip 3: Disable WiFi. This has to be one of the biggest drains of the GoPro Hero 5’s battery, especially when the camera is powered off. In my tests, I found that having WiFi enable can drain the battery 5% to 8% every 24 hours while the camera is powered off. This can be an issue if you don’t use your camera for a week and you grab it to record something last minute only to find your Hero 5 battery is almost dead. Now WiFi is very useful especially if you want to use the Smart Remote or the GoPro Capture App on your smartphone. It can be turned on and off fairly easy. You will just have to decide what is best for you.
Battery Tip 4: Disable voice commands. This is not a huge battery saver but it does help and many small savings can add up to significant savings.
Battery Tip 5: Disable Quick Capture. This feature allows you to record on the fly when your camera is powered off by a single press of the shutter button. If this is not a feature that you use on a regular basis you can disable it in the settings menu to help conserve some of you precious GoPro Hero 5 battery.
Battery Tip 6: Turn of Camera LED’s and Beeps! In the settings menu, there is an option to lower the volume or turn off beeps altogether. In addition, you can disable the red recording notification LED’s. This won’t save a lot of power but again it all adds up. This can also come in handy if your recording in a situation where you don’t want your cameras notifications to be a distraction.
Watch our video for step by step instructions on how to easily change all the settings and more to maximize and extend your GoPro Hero 5 Black’s battery life.
Other Tips: EXTRA BATTERIES internal and external! Having spare Hero 5 batteries is a must. This includes Hero 5 internal batteries and external batteries such as power banks. I am partial to Anker power banks to keep my GoPro charged on the Go. There is also a really neat power bank grip that can charge you GoPro while recording, after all quite often when we are recording we have our GoPro’s mounted on some form of Grip. Check out the links below for more details and where to purchase extra batteries and power/charging accessories.
Anker Power Bank (Portable Charging)
