I captured these photos with the GoPro Mission 1 Pro vs iPhone 17 Pro — here’s the winner
I captured these photos with the GoPro Mission 1 Pro vs iPhone 17 Pro — here’s the winner
Publish Date: 2026-05-27 03:30:00
Source Domain: www.tomsguide.com
It’s a cliché for good reason, but the best camera is the one you have on you. The GoPro Mission 1 Pro launches in a couple of days, and this $599 action camera on steroids intends to shake things up. Now, as much as it’s a video-first camera in my opinion, I’m eager to see how it handles photography against the camera that’s always on me: the iPhone 17 Pro.
That’s why over this past weekend, I captured the same set of photos with both the GoPro Mission 1 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro to see which delivers the better results. Action cameras have never won me over with their still-shot performance, but the Mission 1 Pro’s 50MP 1-inch sensor isn’t ordinary.
In order to make this photo shootout as fair as possible, I’m going to compare its shots against the 48MP ultrawide camera of the iPhone 17 Pro — simply because it’s the lens that best matches the GoPro’s sweeping perspective. However, the iPhone 17 Pro’s ultrawide shooter has a 120-degree field of view, which is narrower than the GoPro’s native 159-degree view. Despite this, the iPhone 17 Pro holds an inherent utility advantage thanks to its triple-camera setup.
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After pixel-peeping the results side-by-side on a monitor, I’ve broken down exactly how they differ — and which one I’d trust for photography.
Backyard tree
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GoPro Mission 1 Pro.(Image credit: Tom’s Guide / John Velasco)
Apple iPhone 17 Pro.(Image credit: Tom’s Guide / John Velasco)
My go-to shot for testing just about everything is this tree in my backyard, simply because of the contrast in the scene. Right away, I’m drawn to the GoPro Mission 1 Pro’s superior dynamic range — mainly due to how it boosts the shadows to balance out the exposure across the entire shot. In comparison, those same shadow areas look underexposed on the iPhone 17 Pro.
Upon closer inspection, neither one has the sharp details to win over my attention, but the iPhone 17 Pro’s…
