GoPro

GoPro HERO13 Black

The current flagship GoPro action cam, waterproof to 10m on its own and to 60m with the official Protective Housing.

Dive-ready without housing

Rated waterproof to 10m on its own. No separate housing required for recreational depths within that rating.

GoPro HERO13 Black
3.7Comparison Score
$439
Buy on AmazonBuy on Scuba.com
Released2024
Typeaction cam
Resolution27 MP
Max video5.3K60
Sensor size1/1.9"
Native waterproof10m
StabilizationYes
RAW supportYes
Housing depth rating—
Housing material—
Weight154g

Dive housings for this camera

Goes past its 10m native rating with one of these.

FitStill Underwater Diving Housing for GoPro
FitStill
FitStill Underwater Diving Housing for GoPro

Rated to 60m

$19.95
Seafrogs Aluminum Housing for GoPro
Seafrogs
Seafrogs Aluminum Housing for GoPro

Rated to 200m

$249
Pros
  • Native waterproofing to 10m covers snorkeling and shallow reef dives with no housing at all
  • HyperSmooth 6.0 stabilization holds up well on fin kicks and current-heavy swims, reducing the jello effect handheld footage often gets underwater
  • Widest housing ecosystem of any action cam here, from $20 polycarbonate shells to 200m aluminum rigs, so the depth/cost tradeoff is genuinely adjustable
Cons
  • 10m native rating is a hard stop for real scuba diving; anything past snorkel depth needs one of the housings below
  • Small 1/1.9" sensor is the same size across recent GoPro generations, so image quality gains between HERO models are mostly processing, not sensor hardware
  • Touchscreen controls are harder to operate through a thick housing or with gloved hands than a compact camera's physical dials
Diver community sentiment
Mixed opinions

Divers on Scubaboard are split on the HERO13 underwater. Some report the camera overheating within 15-20 minutes of 4K60 recording, a unit that flooded inside the official GoPro dive housing despite following the manual, underwater footage shifting green or blue without manual white balance correction, and a touchscreen that's sluggish and hard to use with wet fingers. More experienced underwater shooters push back on several of these points, noting the touchscreen is largely moot once the camera is sealed in a housing, that reported floods often trace back to a poorly cleaned or greased O-ring rather than a camera defect, and that they've had no overheating issues once shot lengths and settings are dialed in. There's broader agreement that GoPro's own LOG color LUT looks poor on underwater footage straight out of camera and needs real color-grading work in post to look right.

Scubaboard: feedback on the HERO13 Black while divingScubaboard: HERO13 camera and underwater housing review

Summarized from public forum discussion (Scubaboard, Reddit, and similar), not a survey we ran ourselves. See the linked threads for the original conversations.

The GoPro HERO13 Black is GoPro’s current flagship action camera: a 1/1.9“ sensor shooting 5.3K60 video and 27MP photos, with HyperSmooth 6.0 stabilization and support for GoPro’s HB-series magnetic lens mods. Out of the box it’s waterproof to 10m, which covers snorkeling and shallow reef work, but any real scuba dive needs a separate housing. It supports the widest range of third-party housings of any action camera on the market, from inexpensive polycarbonate shells rated to 60m up to aluminum housings rated past 200m, which is the main reason to pick it over a newer but less-supported action cam for diving specifically.