Followed by some outdoor testing. These started outside on a table and then went for my morning commute both inside and outside the cargo bike. Ultimately, I do wish these batteries charged faster. If I look at batteries across the landscape of devices I own, I can’t think of a battery that charges slower than that (ok, actually, the new Whoop 4.0 band does, barely does – but using wireless, which is to be expected). This just seems super slow for 2021 (going on 2022). Anyway, here’s some data GoPro sent over that I’ve Excellified with the spec times for these different scenarios: My charging results when single-charging a battery seem to match those estimates. But now that I’m armed with that chart, I’m going to do some unnecessary testing with my incoming fleet of batteries and the couple of dual-battery chargers I have to validate that. Followed by some ‘normal temp’ testing (trying to emulate the spring weather conditions GoPro outlined). In this case, I also used a fan on low barely moving the air around, since I didn’t want to do overheating testing. GoPro’s wording specifically noted during activity, which implies airflow (and again, I dove deep into the importance of airflow previously, and will again soon).

Dual Battery Charger + Battery (HERO10 Black/HERO9 Black Dual Battery Charger + Battery (HERO10 Black/HERO9 Black

As you can see, it’s exactly the same size as the Hero 9/10 battery, which makes sense given it has to fit in the same hole as that battery. Equally, since the Hero 9/10 battery is physically bigger than previous GoPro batteries, the Enduro battery won’t fit in the Hero 6/7/8 (or any other GoPro). Starting with the first time, just putting the camera in the freezer at various resolutions I found: However, the most interesting test I did was when I left fully charged batteries inside three cameras overnight in the freezer for 7 hours. The cameras were powered off (using the button) and left there. So the exact same scenario as walking out of a ski lodge with a helmet camera or such. I wanted to see how well they handled after being in the cold for extended periods of time before needing them for recording. Each battery slot has its own LED indicator for charging status. When the slot's LED is orange, it means the battery is still charging. Once the LED is green, the battery is charged. This can take around two to four hours but can be 13% faster for Enduro batteries. Anyway, in addition to the cold-weather performance, there’s ‘regular’ weather performance, which is outlined here:

In any event, for the ice-cream level cold testing, I used three different freezers. Two at home and one at the DCR Cave. All of which hovered at roughly –4°F/-20°C to 0°F/-18°C. I validated that with my nifty pizza oven laser thermometer. I mean, I use it for official things like measuring overheating action cams, but like any true Alton Brown kitchen tool, it’s a multitasker. The company has laid out a slew of claims around Enduro battery performance (such as lasting 40% longer), and as usual, if there’s anything I’m good at, it’s repetitively testing something to the point of stupidity. Fear not, with the assistance of beer, Ben & Jerry’s, and (more) batteries – I think I’ve figured this thing out. And more importantly, figured out whether or not you should buy one (spoiler: yes). Now, my hope is that come September 2022, when GoPro will undoubtedly announce a GoPro Hero 11 (as per their normal annual release cycle), one would hope this is the defacto/standard battery. Partially because that’d be the right thing to do, and partially because it’d be the smart business thing to do. From a marketing standpoint, they’d literally be able to claim these 40% battery increases immediately on a Hero 11 camera. Plus any other battery savings that may or may not happen. At a time when their competitors are announcing worse battery performance, this would be doubling down. And I’m sure they could asterisk those battery increases nine ways to Sunday, to be transparent of course. And what I found was fascinating when I went to power them on in the morning (7 hours later at 0°F/-18°C):

Dual Battery Charger + Enduro Battery (MAX Camera) | GoPro

For cold-weather sports especially, not just the battery duration extensions, but arguably more important the standby/off performance is even more key. To know that even in some of the coldest weather the GoPro will just turn on and record without fuss is a big deal for a lot of people spending time in the mountains (or, just Finland). And to save you trying to decode a bunch of lines of tests, here’s my nifty Excel chart. Basically, the Enduro battery performed almost precisely on-spec (usually +/- 1 minute). Note though that GoPro’s temperatures didn’t exactly match mine. In fact, mine were harder (colder). But hey, I’m all about making this difficult.