GoPro HERO3 Battery Recommendations | HERO3 and HERO3+ Black

There’s a lot to like about the GoPro cameras. Being small and light has its upsides in being able to put them in places other cameras can’t easily go. But it also has its downside: the battery life of the GoPro HERO3 cameras isn’t what you’d call great. Depending on the settings you use, how fully it’s charged, and how cold it is, you might get up to two hours of filming in before the battery dies, if you’re lucky. More likely, you’ll find yourself getting significantly less than that.

So if you’re doing any kind of serious shooting with the GoPro HERO3, you’ll want to have spare batteries on hand. And you’ll want a way to charge those batteries that doesn’t involve in-camera charging that effectively takes the camera out of action while you’re doing it.

The Official GoPro battery for GoPro HERO3

Further down the page are two good options for battery and charger kits for the GoPro HERO3 and HERO3+.

You can also buy the official GoPro-branded batteries by themselves. It’s a 1180mAh lithium-ion battery with model number AHDBT-302, and it’s a battery specifically used in the HERO3 models (you can’t use batteries from other models).

While the price isn’t exorbitant, GoPro’s MSRP is set higher than many of the third-party aftermarket versions listed below. And with the GoPro-branded versions, you don’t get an external charger as standard, so you’ll probably want to pick up a wall charger separately). What you do get, though, is confidence that they’ll work perfectly with the GoPro HERO3.

You can find them at places like Amazon.

Aftermarket Batteries for GoPro HERO3

Both the kits below include two spare batteries, they’re made in Japan, and they have very similar power specs as the original GoPro batteries. Both kits include an AC charger and a DC car charger. And both are relatively inexpensive.

But there are other differences between these kits that might make the difference for you.

Wasabi Power Charger and Batteries for the GoPro HERO3 and GoPro HERO3+

Wasabi have been around for a while now, and having used quite a few of their camera batteries and chargers, I’ve found their products to be of good quality and cost-effective.

The key difference between this and the one below is in the AC charger. The charger in this kit charges one battery at a time. [UPDATE: Since this was originally posted, Wasabi have released their own dual charger that’s basically identical to the Smatree model.]

What’s in the box:

• 2 x batteries
• AC charger
• DC charger
• European and US adapters

Smatree Battery and Dual Charger Kit for GoPro HERO3 and GoPro HERO3+

Smatree is another after-market brand that I’ve had good experiences with their batteries and chargers.

In addition to charging two batteries at once, this AC charger adds flexibility. It separates out the part that plugs into the wall from the battery cradle. That means that the part that plugs into the wall can be a dual USB charger, so you can also charge your phone or tablet or whatever else you want to charge by USB. It also means that you don’t have to use this as an AC charger.

The battery cradle itself is much smaller than in the Wasabi model above. And the cradle can be attached by USB cable to your computer or DC adapter to charge.

What’s in the box:

• 2 x batteries (1200mAh)
• Dual AC charger using USB
• DC charger using USB
• European and US adapters

NiteCore UGP3 Charger and Batteries for the GoPro HERO3

If you’re looking for a charger with a few extra bells and whistles like an LCD screen with percentage progress indicators and an external USB port, the NiteCore UGP3 is worth a look. It doesn’t come with batteries–it’s just a dual cradle charger–but it works with GoPro-branded batteries as well as the ones above from Wasabi and Smatree. I have a separate detailed review here.

Wrap-Up

I have all three of these kits and have found them all to work as advertised. I’ve not found any functional difference in the batteries–they all seem to perform just as well as the GoPro-branded ones, despite some minor variation in the rated capacities.

But I prefer the dual charger versions for several reasons: they charge two batteries at once (obviously), they’re smaller, they’re more flexible in your power source, and you’re getting a dual AC and DC USB chargers.

I’d read reviews from some users that complained that the batteries didn’t sit snugly in the cradle and fell out easily. I don’t know if Smatree revised the design, but in the version I have the batteries sit tight, even hanging it upside down, so I’ve not found that to be an issue.

Images and product information from Amazon Product Advertising API were last updated on 2019-07-18 at 11:38.