GoPro battery life?

I have a $85 crosstour action cam.  It takes really good video up to 4K, but 1080p @60fps is the sweet spot and super clear.  It will run 2 hours continuous on a battery if you just let it record with the screen off and don't turn it on and off.  It's the screen that kills the battery.  2 spare batteries with a charger are $13 which will give you 8 hours of video.  A 128gb card holds about that much video at 1080. I'm happy with it and the fact that I'm not risking a $400 camera every time I go out.

While risking a $300 camera (they're discounted right now) is a concern, one of the things that's important to me is recording voices which I could not do with my HERO4's because they're only waterproof when they're inside their watertight (and pretty much soundproof) housings.  It looks to me that's the same with the Crosstour?

The HERO5 and up don't need a housing to be waterproof and can record sound and voices.  Is that worth $215?  Personal preference, I guess.

But thanks.  I can see a way to use a Contour as the second camera and splice a GoPro soundtrack to those clips.  That's $215 I can use to buy lunches for that fellow I fish with most often.

My crosstour does an ok job of catching my voice if it's close to me, like in my hat   I will try to dig up something and put it on YouTube so you can get an example.
To be balanced, my biggest gripe about the camera is that it loses the date and time when you change the battery. That makes it a pain to edit everything together if you are using multiple cameras. 

Hero 7 Black here. The mic is excellent with the skeleton "case" (which is plenty waterproof for anything except diving - I submerse mine all the time). If you bang on your kayak it will transmit to the recording but it's nothing like the waterproof housing for the 3 where you were straining to hear voices but the slightest bump of the kayak sounded like thunder.

As far as battery life it's not great, honestly. If you just turn it on now and then it lasts a lot longer than if you let it run continuously. My recommendation is to get a good charger and multiple batteries and just plan on swapping them out (easier said than done on the kayak, I know).

The size of the card isn't as much of an issue as the quality of the card. You really do need a fast, high-quality card, especially if you are recording in higher than 1080p x 30fps. The card I bought is labeled as "SanDisk 128GB Ultra microSDXC UHS-I " and it has worked great. It's $20 on Amazon Prime. The length of footage you can take will vary a lot depending on your settings, but I've found that my batteries run out faster than my memory card does 100% of the time.

Best of luck! Looking forward to seeing what you end up producing!

EDIT: Another thing I really like about the 7 is it's amazing ability to get your voice right even if there is wind or engine noise around you. It does an amazing job of real-time processing to isolate your voice pretty well. It's not perfect, of course, but it's pretty impressive.

Last time I drained my Hero5 from a full charge it lasted ~1.5 hours. I bought some generic brand backup batteries for it, but I don't expect them to last for more than 20-30 mins. The GoPro batteries are much better. Also, this camera Bluetooth links to a phone to be operated remotely and I find that if I let it sit powered off with or without my phone nearby the battery will drain. I usually end up taking the battery out of the camera until I know I want to use it. Would love to hear what other guys have experienced with this and if they have a workaround as I wasn't able to find any after searching around.

I have had good luck with aftermarket batteries for my GoPro Hero 3+ and my various digital cameras. They tend to have less of a lifespan (like if you use them all the time they may only last a year) but I haven't had charge issues with them. On my Hero 7 I've stuck with GoPro batteries even though they're expensive and they've been fine. I mostly stuck with them because they have the quick charge feature.

Thanks, Cap'n.  The HERO7 Black is in my Amazon cart waiting for me to figure out what else to add, and now I know.  I have large enough/fast enough memory cards from a Black Friday sale in a drawer somewhere around here, so all I need is batteries.

I used to keep 4 batteries fully charged for the HERO4 Black and like you suggested, my experience with off-brand batteries was that they'd hold a charge for as long as the genuine GoPro batteries would when new, but both of mine started to wear out more quickly and were pretty much useless at around 18 months.

Changing batteries will be a trick since fly-fishing keeps my hands constantly wet and immersion gear is notoriously non-absorbent, but I'll figure something out.

On your Columbia River video, being able to hear (and understand) what Ms. Redbeard was saying when she was a ways away from you caught my attention right off.  That's important.  I'm not much of a talker, but that guy I fish with more than makes up for my reticence.

I truly appreciate this information, Captain.  Thank you.

My crosstour does an ok job of catching my voice if it's close to me, like in my hat   I will try to dig up something and put it on YouTube so you can get an example.
To be balanced, my biggest gripe about the camera is that it loses the date and time when you change the battery. That makes it a pain to edit everything together if you are using multiple cameras.

I've seen a couple of videos from a Crosstour and they're pretty nice (assuming they weren't made by professionals) but image quality seems seem to fall off in lower light - but so did my old HERO4's.  And I'm one of those folks who pulls pictures and videos off the camera onto a computer as soon as I get home, so holding a date really isn't a selling point or a deal breaker.

A video or two would be valuable to those of us looking for a new/first camera.  Thanks, and let us know.

Changing batteries will be a trick since fly-fishing keeps my hands constantly wet and immersion gear is notoriously non-absorbent, but I'll figure something out.

On your Columbia River video, being able to hear (and understand) what Ms. Redbeard was saying when she was a ways away from you caught my attention right off.  That's important.  I'm not much of a talker, but that guy I fish with more than makes up for my reticence.

I truly appreciate this information, Captain.  Thank you.

Glad to help! I'm looking forward to hearing "that guy you fish with" 

I try to keep a dry rag in my hatch that I only use for wiping my camera and my phone. Of course if conditions are nasty or it's raining everything goes out the window.

Sorry it took so long.  Here a couple videos I took with my crosstour set on 1080p

Don't apologize.  Thanks for dong this for us.  It always helps to see an amateur's video when trying to get an idea of how good a job a camera does.  I appreciate it.