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If your GoPro HERO11’s battery doesn’t seem to be lasting as long as it should, the first thing to check is the battery’s health.
This applies to the HERO11 Black but not the HERO11 Black Mini. The Mini has a built-in battery that can’t be removed from the camera.
By battery health, I don’t mean the standard battery charge indicator that you see all the time on the screen. That indicator tells you how much charge is left in the battery and gives you an idea of how long you can keep shooting or how long until you need to recharge the battery.
The battery health check does something different. It assesses how well the battery is able to hold a charge.
In recent models, GoPro has built in a battery health check feature, and that feature is included on the HERO11 Black.
Where to Find the Battery Health Check on the HERO11 Black
With the battery charged, turn the camera on and go to:
Preferences > About > Battery InfoThis will show you two fields. The first is battery health. With a new or relatively new battery, it should show “Excellent” along with a green circle with a heart.
The second is a Battery Type. This is designed as a compatibility check. This should differentiate between an official GoPro-branded battery and third-party batteries. It should show “Compatible” for an official battery and “N/A” for a non-GoPro battery.
It’s not telling you when you should charge the battery. It’s telling you when you should replace the battery.
Why it Matters: Lithium Battery Capacity Fade
Modern lithium-ion batteries are much better in terms of recharge cycles than old nickel-cadmium or nickel-metal-hydride rechargeable batteries. Those have a memory effect issue that has a strong impact on how you charge and discharge the battery.
Lithium batteries generally don’t suffer from the same kind of memory effect issues and don’t require the same kind of careful discharging/charging routines. 1
But lithium-ion batteries still have a finite lifespan, and the more charge-discharge cycles they go through, the more their ability to hold a charge will fade. You might have noticed on your old phone or laptop that you can no longer charge the battery to more than, say 85%. That’s a symptom of the battery’s capacity fade.
And it’s that issue that the HERO11’s battery health check is aimed at. It’s not telling you when you should charge the battery. It tells you when you should replace the battery.
Replacement Batteries
If the health indicator suggests you need a new battery, there are technically two official GoPro models to choose from for the HERO11 Black.
The HERO11 Black comes standard with GoPro’s newer Enduro battery. You can tell it apart form the standard battery because it has white trim (the standard battery has blue trim). The Enduro gives improved performance, especially in cold shooting conditions.
GoPro officially recommends using the Enduro in the HERO11 Black. This is what they say in the manual:
Be sure to use a GoPro Enduro Battery. Using an older GoPro battery or non-GoPro battery could greatly limit your camera’s performance.
- Advanced 1720mAh lithium-ion battery boosts camera performance over standard GoPro batteries across a...
- Increases recording time for HERO12 Black, HERO11 Black, HERO10 Black, and HERO9 Black with up to 40%...
You can also use the standard battery, which is the same one for the HERO10 and HERO9. But expect performance below the level of the Enduro. I have not tested extensively with a HERO11 using the standard battery, and it’s quite possible that you’ll see particularly marked performance hit, especially when shooting high-bitrate video.
The standard battery is model ADBAT-001.
- Conveniently charges 2 GoPro HERO10 Black/HERO9 Black batteries simultaneously
- Optimizes charging so you’ll get a fully charged battery as quickly as possible
I much prefer the Enduro in the HERO11 (and the HERO10, for that matter), but if you have a stack of standard batteries already on hand, they should work well.
Aftermarket Batteries
As far as I’m aware, there are not yet any aftermarket versions of the Enduro battery readily available. There are, however, plenty of aftermarket versions of the standard battery.
GoPro doesn’t recommend aftermarket batteries from other manufacturers and will actually warn you in the camera if you try to use one. You’ll see a warning screen like this:
And you might get some unexpected behavior. I get a warning that the battery is cold, for instance.
Despite these warnings, the camera has run and functioned with aftermarket batteries I’ve tried (I’ve not tested performance extensively with these because I tend to use the Enduro batteries, anyway). But I still recommend sticking with the Enduro batteries with the HERO11.
Things Worth Knowing
This is the warning that GoPro includes in the HERO11 Black’s manual:
Be sure to use a GoPro Enduro Battery. Using an older GoPro battery or non-GoPro battery could greatly limit your camera’s performance.
When disposing of old lithium-ion batteries, they shouldn’t just go in the trash or standard recycling. They should be taken to a separate household hazardous waste collection point–many local communities have them.
Related Posts
- Some types of lithium-ion batteries have been found to suffer from memory effect, but it’s not the prominent problem it is with those older types of battery technologies.[↩]
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