The good: Handy underwater enclosure; low distortion; good white balance; and takes stills plus videos.

The bad: Sluggish; takes very soft images; quality only for internet/ computer viewing.

The Action Cameras bottom line: The GoPro Digital Hero 3 is a cool idea that could be fun if you’re swimming or any other time you need to dunk a camera underwater

The tiny, 3-megapixel Digital Hero 3 fits inside a waterproof enclosure mounted on a wristband. It’s purportedly a wrist-mounted camera for action sports such as snowboarding.
Barely larger than a pair of AAA batteries, the camera body consists of a tiny, grey box. It has just two buttons and a monochrome status display, making it one of the simplest cameras to operate. The clear plastic case is quite well made and hooks onto a foam-rubber-and-velcro wristband. Tight seals make sure the box stays waterproof so the camera inside doesn’t drown, while two buttons connect to cameras’ buttons.

Because of its simple design, there are very few settings to deal with on the camera. The power button toggles through Single-shot, Timed-shot, Burst-shot, and Movie modes. Other than those settings, you can’t really tweak your images. Also, since the camera has a fixed-focus lens, your shooting options are limited.

Images from the Digital Hero 3 impressed us in two areas of image quality. The fixed-focus lens produced surprisingly little distortion, and the camera’s automatic white balance worked very well, reproducing accurate whites under both fluorescent and incandescent lighting. These two features are great features if you decide to take the Digital Hero 3 underwater, where accurate colour and low distortion become quite valuable. GoPro rates the camera for underwater operation down to 30 meters, but since we at www.actioncameras.co.uk live in London and we’re reluctant to dive 30 meters down in the Thames River, we settled for dunking it in our fish tank. It survived.
The GoPro Digital Hero 3 is a cool idea for a camera and the wrist-mounted, underwater housing is a great feature, and it might prove a fun, inexpensive alternative to swimmers and other water-dwellers who want a camera they can submerge.

One of our customers has this to say about the Digital Hero 3:

Out of the box this camera better than I thought. It sits comfortably on my wrist when I am performing any outdoor activity. Its light enough where you don’t notice it.

I have taken some great photos and videos with this camera. It’s SO easy to use, point and shoot. Imagine a 12 foot wave coming at you, stopping and taking a photo of your friend dropping down the face of it. YES, this camera enables that type of photo in that extreme of a situation and it’s effortless. Same goes for my snowboarding/skiing experiences. I get great shot that everyone is really excited about because prior to this camera… these shot were never taken unless you went out specifically to photograph. This camera enables you to stay in the game or activity and get great shots! LOVE IT.