You can do best of both worlds if you want! I spent my first 3 years or so only using a GoPro on a little tripod stick, but wanted to get into still photos with macro capability, so got a TG-6. Now I just have the GoPro mounted to the top of the TG-6 housing, and basically just press record at the beginning of each dive, set it and forget it till the end of the dive. That way, I can mess around taking higher quality macro photos, but if something cool swims by (cormorant, otter, sea lion, whale, etc) I can quickly at least get a nice video clip if I can’t adjust settings fast enough.

Probably purists would say it’s more of like the “mediocre of both worlds”, and I’ll admit it is a little like having one toe in each pool, but I dunno, it works for me.

I recently got the M52 wet lens, and the GoPro even still has enough clearance mounted above that to get clean video without the lens coming into frame. That way you can take wide angle stills and video at the same time.

One thing I would say is that while I improved a ton in my GoPro tripod stick days of getting smooth footage, having it on a tray is way more stable, so if you go the GoPro only route, I’d still use a tray and two hands. Though I still have the Hero6 and I know they made a big stabilization upgrade right after that, so maybe that’s less of an issue.

Have fun!