With the excitement and buzz of the new Hero 3, some people out there are looking at the Hero 2 for their camera of choice for the price drop potential. I felt it necessary to forewarn those people out there thinking about doing this though.
I've had my Hero 2 now for some time and it is an excellent camera, however, after GoPro produced their latest firmware update adding ProTune to the camera, I've had nothing but problems. If you do a quick google search of "Hero 2 Freezes" you'll see that there are lots of us out there with this problem after the latest firmware update.
I now am unable to change the settings in my camera at all, and it randomly switched from 1080p at 30 frames per second to the 960p or whatever it is at 30 frames per second. It's stuck there, permanently for now. I've tried various things like changing SD cards, pulling batteries and the like, but nothing is allowing me to even access the menus in my camera anymore.
Thankfully I have the camera set up to auto record after turning on, so I can still sometimes record when the camera decides it wants to (often times it just stops within the first 9 seconds of recording and turns off though)
So! If you do get the Hero 2, just don't apply the firmware update. If you already have the firmware update and have escaped problems so far, then lucky you! And I'll happily take your Hero 2 off your hands if you choose to get a Hero 3
I sent GoPro an email about the problem and am waiting for a reply. Hopefully I can just get a hold of the old firmware and get rid of the ProTune update.