This ‘myth’ is asked in the GoPro forums so often it requires a separate story (although I have covered it in other stories about using GoPros).
The question asked is about GoPro cameras ‘zooming’
Simple answer. They don’t. End of.
The lens in a GoPro is of the fixed type, designed so that everything possible in the field of view stays in focus. When you invoke the so-called ‘Zoom’ on a GoPro, what it does is electronically blow up the picture size (and therefore the individual pixels) and then crop the image, again electronically, to give the ILLUSION of a zoom.
What it does in simple terms is distort the original image.
Very ugly, very ugly indeed.
So if you want to ‘zoom’ in on a subject, either move closer to it, or better, get a camera with an lens that has that function optically, NOT electronically.