Extending the life of your GoPro batteries?

Is there a way to make your batteries last longer? Is your camera dying faster than usual? The following tips can help!

Making your camera last an extra 30 minutes is possible. Although I don’t have any scientific data to prove my results my cameras seem to last longer than expected. My suggestions are solely my suggestions from my experiences and feel free to try them if you wish. The first 3 tips are commonsense tips. Tips 4 and 5 are a bit technical but easy to follow.

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Tip 1. Don’t use it if you don’t need it.

Try to not use an LCD Back Pack when you don’t really need it. Using an extension such as the LCD back pack is great for seeing or reviewing what you film on the scene but considering the gopro is a wide angle HD camera, you don’t really need it. I have an LCD BackPack and only use it when I absolutely have to make sure I have everything on film.

Tip 2. Set it Up!

Do you really need to have that red light to blink every time you film? No. The lights are actually helpful on the GoPro 2 because it has a rear indicator light but for the GoPro 1, I can’t see the light from behind.  But do you really need the light to be on all the time? NO! So turn it off in your settings. Go to Set> hit the “on” button 8 times> Change BLO to BLF. Not only do you save some juice on your batteries, you become stealthy. Some people tell me they need the lights to know if they are filming or not but I use my ears. 3 beeps for on… 1 beep for recording… three beeps for when it stops recording, and 7 beeps when the go pro turns off.

Tip 3. Use Auto Power Off Setting

This relates to both tip 1 and tip 2. If I don’t need my camera on, I turn it off manually. If for some reason, I forget to turn it off, I make sure it’s set to turn off at a desirable time after being idle.  To me, I set my “auto power off settings” to the minimal time of 1 minute (60). 1 minute to me is long enough for my camera to be idle. To do this, go to settings, push the on button 13 times until you go to OFF, and choose a desired number (60, 120, 300).

Tip 4. Take care of your batteries!

This tip isn’t only helpful for GoPro cameras, it’s actually helpful for all kinds devices that use rechargeable batteries such as the iPhone and Android devices.

So how do we take care of our rechargeable batteries? We “cycle them”! What does cycle mean? Cycle means, using the batteries up completely or until they fall down to 10% or lower so that they can undergo a full charge cycle. Having rechargeable batteries undergo a full charging cycle helps the battery maximize it’s lifetime as well making it last longer during usage. In short… “Full cycling” helps your battery last longer and it saves you cash!

The good news is that for many gopro users out there who focus on their activities and fly away like me just naturally use up all the power especially when using a 32GB SD card!  Just remember to not use your batteries again until it is FULLY charged.

Can’t wait for your batteries to fully charge? Carry a spare! Besides, it’s only 20 bucks. Remember, a dead battery takes about 2 hours to charge fully from an electrical outlet and 4 hours from a USB port. I would definitely buy one from GoPro

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Tip 5. If you’re not going to use the battery for a while… Keep it on half and store it away.

Self explanatory. Again, I have no scientific data to prove tip number 5 but it does make me wonder why it is that that every time I buy a laptop, smart phone, tablet, camera, or a go pro, I always have to charge my battery when I open it out of the box…

The reason: Rechargeable batteries should be kept semi-charged because it actually helps maximize the health of the battery during long times in storage. It’s the only reason I can come up with to why my brand new batteries always need to be charged.

My gopro cameras have been serving me well and I use them a lot. It’s great to have this little bad boy everywhere I go not matter how extreme it can be!

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