 That was one of the craziest shots I've ever gotten with the drone. That was insane. I thought the farm is gonna get the drone. All right, what's up guys? Welcome to Rotorite. I'm Alex Vandover. I'm Let's Flayr C. And Sean, you know, every time I come to Orlando, I really want to wakeboard. It's all about wakeboarding. We gotta go wakeboarding. So where are we at right now? We're at Noda Adventure Park, guys. And we're gonna try to figure out what we're gonna do about an episode. I was gonna say, Drew told me I had to shoot an episode, you know, every day while I was here. And so we can't just take a full day off to go wakeboard. So I had an idea in my mind. We've been talking a lot recently about is the O3 camera on the drone really comparable enough to the GoPro to where you don't even really need the GoPro anymore. And you and I have been debating this a little bit. So I figured let's go out here, wakeboard. We have a pro wakeboarder and Isaac. He's a world champion. I think we might even get out there and wakeboard a little bit. Let's see which one is better or is the O3 good enough? Let's see if the O3 can take the place of a GoPro. Yeah, let's go do it, guys. Let's do it. Let's do it. I used to wakeboard, so I'm gonna pretend like I know what I'm doing. Yeah, Shawn, let's go. All right, so Shawn got to fly. I got to fly, but now it's my time to ride. So you guys are going to see just how much I've improved in the last couple of years. A little bit. Here we go. This is it. Yeah, we just got back from wakeboarding like five seconds ago. Five seconds ago. It's not the next day or anything. No, definitely not the next day. We have not looked at the footage yet. We intentionally didn't want to do that until we got back to the studio. The only thing I've done to some of the clips is I've applied real stage to some of the GoPro clips. And I've just gotten a couple organized that I think we can show side by side. But I haven't even formulated an opinion to be honest. Okay. But from what I've seen, just like little tiny glimpses, I'm like, oh, you guys be able to tell the difference if we put them up on screen. Okay, so let's check them out. I want to start just with one clip. And I'm gonna play two clips total. And I want you guys to guess which one is GoPro, which one is O3. We're just gonna play a couple seconds. And I'm gonna cut just like the good stuff because we're with the kid. Yeah. And this kid is so good. Yeah, Isaac is awesome. I mean, right off the bat, it looks great. Yeah. I mean, really, really good. There's, I don't think I'd turn stabilization on. Okay. For either of these clips just to show, just like make them fair. All right. Well, it looks good. I don't see a whole lot of anything. I don't see any Jell-O or, yep, no Jell-O, no shaky. I mean, the shakiness is all Alex on the sticks, but. He's doing flips and rolls. Okay. So I don't even want to hear an opinion. I would say what looking at this one seems a little bit brighter to me. Like, I don't know, seems like a little sunnier to me. Like the other one seemed like it was overcast when I was watching it. It might have been overcast. Yeah. But this one definitely seems like the sun is out. And the other one kind of seemed a little gloomy to me. Well, and to be honest, that's kind of what I took from it a little bit as well. Now we were trying, I tried to match on my end. And I don't know what you did on your end, but I tried to match the settings to the best of my abilities. But one thing that's worth noting is when you're flying the O3 camera, what you set the goggle like your recording settings to is what you're flying with. So for example, normally we'd want to fly the highest frame rate possible, like let's say 100, 120 frames. But I was flying in basically 60 frames. So that way I could like get a true 60 FPS. Technically, I could have, I guess done 100, but then you get 2.7K. And I wanted to match the 4K to 4K. Yeah. And it is worth noting too that the GoPro 11 mini at least, and I think the full size 11 as well, they can shoot 5.3K 30 frames a second. 4K like 60. So they're honestly in terms of frame rate, what they can do. They're pretty comparable, but obviously the GoPro has more resolution. Right. Yeah, it has more capability in every area. But the whole idea for me is to try to figure out whether or not I can eliminate the GoPro so that I can save the weight. So I built this frame to try to save some weight and see if I can get a better flying drone by saving some weight. So I wanted to see just by playing with this for a few months to see if it could take the place of the GoPro for me. It would be great if it could. And then I wouldn't have to worry about having this extra expense on my drone with the GoPro. And I wouldn't have to worry about remembering to bring SD cards because there's onboard storage. I mean, there's so many pluses to this system if I could eliminate the GoPro. And like just doing tricks, like I found that doing trippy spins and matty flips was just so much easier with a lighter drone. With all that extra weight on the top, it makes it harder to do those tricks that are upside down. Right. So anyway, in my experience, and you'll have to show a couple of clips from my flying to see this stuff, even in the most recent RotorWrite Rampage video where we were doing the inspection, I could see some Jell-O coming from my O3 system, unfortunately. And that's pretty much the only deciding factor, I think, besides the low light performance that was going to make it to where I don't think I'm going to be able to replace my GoPro with an O3. Interesting. So because the Jell-O... Because the GoPro does a much, much better job of eliminating the Jell-O and eliminating any kind of vibrations I get from props that are perfect. Right. For me, I would say that I've been very thankful. I haven't had really many Jell-O issues. I think maybe one time I use a TPU print amount on the standoff. So maybe yours is TPU as well. Oh, mine's all TPU. Yours is all TPU. Oh, thanks, TPU. I don't know. I also obviously do spend a lot of time, as you know, tuning my quads. I think if you're going to fly the O3, you're going to need to probably go the extra step in those areas, whereas normally like you wouldn't have to necessarily because the GoPro, you know, on a separate TPU mount and everything just seems to handle those vibrations pretty well. Yeah. I mean, you're a big, you're a big, you're opposed to things like hypersmooth. You really like to see the raw footage. Except for a cinema. Even then, I don't mind. I think we should break down to kind of like conclude this a little bit into three different categories. I want to talk like from a cinema standpoint, is this a good enough replacement for the GoPro? Okay. Let's talk freestyle and then let's kind of wrap it up with what we think is good for you guys just overall. So let's start with the cinema. I definitely think there are certain areas where that could be a viable replacement for a GoPro. Absolutely. I mean, look at this. The footage just looks really good. If I didn't tell you that this was from the O3, you would probably assume this is a GoPro, right? Yeah. I wouldn't be able to tell. I mean, it's 16 by 9. Yeah. It looks beautiful. 4K 60. I mean, I can kind of tell like it's got that typical like if I'm looking for it. It's got that DJI sky look or kind of like does this weird thing with the sky and like that makes the blue very blue, but I mean, honestly, this is the sick clip. So this is the one where he does the flip. Oh, you almost touched the touch the board. Oh, yeah, that was sick. And what I didn't like about this compared to the GoPro, which we'll show on the screen right now is what I found with this because my camera was lower, I ended up actually like because this is what I'm seeing. I'm reacting to what I'm seeing, right? I found that I actually like the framing a bit better from just being that little tiny bit lower. Just that inch and a half, two inches. So like, I mean, I still think it looks great from the GoPro. But I think when you really look at this frame by frame. Yeah. So like if you go over an object where you like you actually you actually bonged the water bottle on the yes on the slider at one point. And you know, if you didn't have the water ball down, you could have gotten even closer to the slider with the camera if it was lower, right? Exactly. Now you did a different approach though. You put your camera up really high. Right. Why did you do that? So I needed to do this on my design because I was trying to get props out of view. I made a dead cat like you did there. Dead cat. And so I'm still debating on whether to make that a product and we might actually sell the dead cat arms coming soon. But when I put the dead cat arms on, they put them farther back and my frame stuck out really far. And now these aluminum bars, which were very strong, were exposed as the first thing that hits everything, especially if you don't have a GoPro on top. So I was trying to make the O3 fit my frame really well, get props out of view, get arms out of view. So I have nothing but beautiful image like you got over there. This silly little looking, this silly looking turtle head right here is so durable because when it crashes, it just bends out of the way. Right. Instead of like getting dented, like the aluminum. So yeah, I mean I think for cinema flying when you compare the GoPro to the O3, the GoPro is definitely the winner. That being said, I feel like if you're someone who is on a budget, maybe you don't want to fly GoPro, or maybe you're flying over water and there's a lot of risk, it might not be worth putting the GoPro on. I mean it really just depends. I think that unless you're doing pretty high-end GoPro shoots, which is not that many people, I think the O3 with the right tune and setup is fine, but you might also be like me where I like flying like this. Like when I'm on set flying with the GoPro, I have the O3 recording as well because it's actually just a great backup to have. Oh, it's a great backup. Absolutely, yeah. It's a fantastic backup. If you're GoPro, you forgot to hit record. Oh no, if things starts recording automatically when you hit the arm switch on your drone. Another really good use of the O3 would be where you need an ultralight quad, like a 3-inch or a 2-inch or something like that. Something really small. Yeah, so a GoPro is going to weigh it down and make it not perform well. Right. An O3 is great because it's a lot lighter. Let's talk about ND filters real quick because I don't have any ND filters on or neither do you, but I was running ND filters with the GoPro yesterday. Did you run the ND on the O3? I did not run the ND on the O3 and it actually looks pretty good, but I know that there are some, I think camera butter makes them. They make these like filters for the O3. Yes, you know. The downside ultimately to me with flying the O3 and this is not just for cinema but for freestyle which we're about to get into is that if you get it exposed just right, that's what you're flying with. So you go into like a shady spot where we were freestyle yesterday and you were watching me like I literally hit a tree because it just, the exposure was just not there. And so like with the GoPro that's fine because you're not flying with that camera. So when you're flying with the O3 you just kind of have to keep that in mind. The benefit being though is you're seeing exactly what you're shooting. Yes. Let's talk about freestyle real quick and I want to bring back to this just a little bit more. You talked a bit about like you wanted this to be durable. How durable has that been for you? Because I feel like in, I mean, I know you and you make things that are very strong but I also just feel like this is just begging to get this destroyed. The funny thing is that I got, I put this on Facebook and I showed people it and they just said, oh, that's going to be broken the first time you fly it. And I'm like, you'll see, you'll see. I'm an engineer. I went to school for this stuff, right? Not only that, but I've been flying drones for 15 years. This is insanely durable. You'd be surprised. I have not broken a camera. I've scratched a lens but only if I landed in gravel and no matter what you land in gravel, you're going to scratch the lens. But I mean, this has been so durable. It's ridiculous how durable it is. Right. Do you have props in view? It depends. If I have ultra wide, ultra stabilization, ultra everything, you know, then I might see a tiny prop every now and then when I make a turn. But for the most part, no, they're out of view. Everything's out of view. It's great. We went out yesterday and we were filming another video for Road to Riot, which you guys might have seen. And I was just running the O3 all day because with my new O3 plates, I could just, you know, not have any of the carbon in view. There are props in view, which I don't personally mind props in view. So this one, your props are in view? Not with this one, but with my Truex, the props are in view or my Squish Deck still. But you know, I was looking at some of the footage and I was genuinely like, okay, like I could definitely see this. The thing for me though is it just doesn't look as good as a GoPro. So there's really not a whole lot to talk about with freestyle, I think. It's kind of the same points as with cinema. It's like, if you don't want to spend the money on a GoPro, then you probably don't need to if you're flying the O3. The biggest drawback though for me again is just that I would want to set the O3 to 30 frames a second because I don't like shooting in 60 and then rendering in 30. It's just not the same thing as actually shooting in the frame rate that you're going to export in. And then with the frame rate, then you lose latency. Yeah, exactly. So like flying around in 30 frames a second is just not enjoyable. If there was somehow a way where you could be like flying in 100 frames, but recording in 30, I would actually strongly consider flying the O3 for freestyle because I mean, I flew a session five for years. So like I did not care that much about my quality. It was just like good enough to see and capture the flight that I was enjoying. And you know, another benefit too if you're not using a GoPro on a quad like this is you save a ton of weight. That's 117 grams and this is the smallest GoPro that you can buy right now. With all the pieces removed. With all the pieces removed as well. And then you remove this, you know, 20 gram TPU mount. I'm all about weight savings too. So for me, I really wanted when I started flying the O3 for it to be my dedicated set. I mean, you know how much I care about weight. And I just, so the fact for me is it's just not quite there. It's ironic though, because I think it's better quality than the action too. It is. Which is just weird. The low light quality of the action too is just black and white when it goes dark. And this isn't that bad. It's much better. I just noticed that whenever I fly into a really dark location it's harder to see than it would be with the FPV systems I'm used to in the past. Exactly. So what we need is some way to be able to fly with like 6,400 ISO in 100 frames a second. But be shooting in like 200 ISO at 30. Because if you're in broad daylight you can get away with the ISO but you can't get away with the frame rate. And flying in 30 frames a second is unfortunately not enjoyable. So I think a very similar conclusion is just hopefully those are some things that if you guys haven't thought about and you're considering, you know, the O3 has been out for probably six months now almost. So definitely something to think about. Yeah. I think a conclusion too, we've hinted at, but I think prices is a big deal because the GoPro is not cheap. There's two ways to think about price. When you buy the O3 you have to buy one for every quad. So if you have six quads, you can buy six O3s. Six O3s. That's six times 200 dollars. That's 1200 bucks. Where you can buy one GoPro for 500 bucks and switch it from quad to quad to quad. So there's different ways to think about price. Depending on how many drones you need to put it on. I think it's also too worth mentioning that like if you're going to fly O3, like I fly O3 in most of my quads I would say. So for me, it's not fun, you know, buying the bullet down 230 dollars for VTX and camera. But thankfully for me, like I haven't scratched a lens yet. I haven't killed a VTX. DJI's made very, very durable VTXs. I mean, we've dumped our air units underwater and stuff like that. Yeah, I did with this one actually. Yeah, you did that with that one. You know, with GoPro like the first day out with the, this is not specifically review about the 11 mini, but I got two of these for this trip and I had a straight on hit with the tree. I broke an arm on my quad, but I killed the GoPro. And then, you know, I've had a lot of crashes with the second one and it's been fine. But that's just something to think about and the difference too is you got to take it to Best Buy. If you get the warranty and now they don't usually exchange them right away. So I don't know. I think this whole subject I'm very torn about because you know, I'm very opinionated. You know, I have strong conclusions on things and I don't necessarily think I can with confidence tell you like one is better than the other overall. I just think that if you're a professional FBB pilot, you are trying to get the best content possible than use a GoPro. Absolutely. That's going to give you the best footage regardless, one way or the other. Yeah. It's always going to give you the best. Whether or not you can live with the footage that comes off the O3 is up to you. Exactly. And I think that if you're just getting into the hobby, I don't think it's really worth getting a GoPro if you're planning on flying the O3 system. But again, it just really depends. Like if you are willing to spend that money, you're willing to take that risk, it's great. But I think what's exciting about the fact that we're sitting here in 2023, we're even having a discussion about an action that we're flying with that can replace it. I think for me, if they tomorrow came out with an update that had at least 100 frames a second, maybe even 60, but I would say 100 with full confidence, 100 frames a second. And then yet I could somehow still be recording 30 and recording in a lower ISO. I would probably, because for me, like I would much rather save the weight, run a bigger battery because I still want some weight. I still like my quad to be about 600 grams. When I went from the session to the 11 mini, that was like a 50 gram increase. And I felt that of course, weight stickler. So I would love to be able to get rid of that weight. Also, a lighter quad too is going to, with this five and a half millimeter arms. Like imagine, I'm sure like your frame doesn't break anyway with a GoPro, but it's going to be more durable, considering how well built it is with it being lighter. Just going to be able to thrash it more. So if you guys have any questions about this too, leave them in the comments down below and maybe we can do a follow-up video down the road. And I also want to know personally, like, are you guys fly O3 just using that as your recording camera or are you guys still sticking with the GoPro and why? Let us know down below. I'm going to be very curious to see your opinions. Yeah, let us know which way you want to go down the comments, which one is for you, GoPro or O3. Can you live with the O3 footage? Are you just flying O3? Not everybody's as picky as us. That's all I have to say, guys. I really enjoyed going out there wakeboarding. I'm feeling very, very sore today. But I was a lot of fun. If you guys liked this video, be sure just to give it a quick like because it really does help the YouTube algorithm. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel. Check out Rotorite.com and we'll see you next time on Rotorite. We'll see you guys. Woo!