Garmin has stopped trying. Meet the company’s new action camera: A clone of a GoPro. The company that innovated in the personal navigator space just announced the second generation of its action camera and it looks exactly like a GoPro.
The new Virb Ultra 30 packs the goods to record at 4k and allows the user to control its functions through voice commands. Just say “Okay Garmin” to have the camera start or stop recording or mark important events.
Like its predecessors, the Virb Ultra 30 packs an array of sensors that records data during the video recording. The info collected by the barometer, an accelerometer, a compass, a gyroscope, and GPS is then available to be overlaid on the recorded video so users can, you know, prove they were going as fast as they said they were. The performance data includes: speed, pace, altitude, G-forces, hang time, jump height, distance, grade, elevation, pitch, roll, course, bearing, and GPS coordinates
The camera is housed in a package that looks and feels just like a GoPro camera. It appears, like the previous generation, the housing even shares the same the same mounting configuration, which likely means Virb owners can buy and use GoPro accessories.
The Virb Ultra 30 is now available and retails for $500 — the same price as the 2-year old GoPro Hero 4 Black.
It’s hard to blame Garmin for lifting GoPro’s iconic design. GoPro’s overwhelming market domination forced the rest of the industry to follow its design cues. Spend a couple of minutes on Amazon, or worse, Alibaba. The market is flooded with cheap GoPro clones. I expected more from Garmin, though.
