GoPro's Hero 11 Black Mini fills a small niche

GoPro’s annual Hero Black update came with a small surprise this year. Instead of just the usual flagship camera, a “Mini” version was also unveiled. Alas, only the regular Hero Black was available when they were announced, so if the diminutive version caught your eye you had to wait until Oct 25th. And then you had to wait just a little bit longer. But finally it’s here and it’s an interesting proposition.

Of course, the pitch is simple: A Hero 11 Black but smaller. The Mini is about 3/4 of an inch narrower than the regular Hero 11 Black when you look at it head on. But it’s also a teensy bit taller and about 5mm deeper. It’s obviously smaller overall, but there’s much less of a difference than there was with the Session cameras and the flagship of the time. As with that camera, though, the main trade off is the lack of viewfinder/displays. That’s a big deal, so that reduction in size really has to appeal to your use case. And I can say right up top here, for most people, it likely doesn’t.

To put things in perspective, at the time of writing, the Mini sells for $299.98 with a GoPro subscription, while the regular Hero 11 Black is listed for $349.98 with the same deal ($449.98 / $549.98 respectively if for some reason you can’t take the subscription offer). That’s either a $50 or $100 difference, depending, for the overall compromises and relatively minor difference in size. And there are additional differences beyond the lack of screen that you’ll want to consider. For example, there's no photo mode this time around.