Insta 360 One X2 review. Worth the money? Things to know before you buy! (Go pro killer)

what up y'all welcome back to the channel today we're looking at the insta360 one x2 i'm gonna take a look at the pros the cons what it does best what it sucks at and should you buy it let's get into it so i've had this camera now for a couple of months since the release date and i've done extensive testing and i've used it a ton so i do feel like i have a good grasp of what this thing does really well and what it does poorly first of all the biggest upgrade i think for the one x mark ii versus the original is that it now is waterproof that's a really big upgrade for any type of action cam i think it's kind of a necessity now this thing is waterproof down to about 10 meters or about 33 feet so let's run through some of the specs obviously a dual 90 degree camera on either side that's picking up a full 360 video it shoots in about 5.7 k stitched more on that later in 24 25 and 30 frames per second the sensor is a one over 2.3 inch sensor cmos sensor it does look really nice kind of has that same action cam type look that the gopro and other insta360 has so it's a very saturated processed image coming out of it but again more on that later when we talk about pros and cons the effective focal length is 7.2 millimeters on either side and again you could punch in in software and change all sorts of things but it basically collects all the data from 360 degrees all around you and then in post gives you the ability and flexibility to do so many different things the circular touch screen is really interesting it's a 1.3 inch touchscreen display and i both love it and hate it um but i think it's really nice that you have that touch screen display where you can really get into features and playback and settings and it's all just very intuitive and kind of nice to use it's weird i don't really love the circular display but in this 360 setting it actually works quite well so i don't know there's that record button underneath power button on the side and that's pretty much it it's got a little small waterproof speaker on the side for playback which i actually like the micro sd card is built inside the battery pack so the slot is in there for you to be able to access the micro sd card slot on the go but keep it waterproof and then you have a usb c port with a waterproof latch on the side now when talking about the overall design for it at first the length and size of it kind of bugged me but that's because i was comparing it to something like the dji action or the normal gopro but this length really has to do with the size of the battery the battery takes up about two-thirds the size of this camera and although it is an annoyance i think it's a huge pro because i love the battery life it has an estimated run time of about 85 minutes and about 80 minutes to fully charge so it does take a little bit of time to charge but overall the battery life lasted a really long time for me and i noticed that throughout my daily use i didn't run out of battery quite often i only have one battery pack and i haven't found need to really get another one so that is a big problem some other notable features to talk about so this does have the ability to pair with your air pods for built-in audio uh to record from your airpods i found those to be not very good so i didn't like that feature it also has the ability to pair with your smart watch for smart watch controls again i found that glitchy and annoying and not very well done the interface isn't really smooth yet so i also found that to be kind of a con so both of those i don't really like the thing i do really like is the voice control features on this they work really well and they're actually really really useful especially if you're on the end of like the invisible 360 stick the invisible stick that has it's pretty long right so if you're not close to the camera if you have it extended fully out you don't want to be able to have to reach to turn it on every time then reach and pull it back but really the voice control works really well you could say start recording and boom it fires up and starts recording and does a really good job with that so i highly recommend the voice control features on this unit talking about this invisible 360 stick the selfie stick it works really well it's really cool it's stitched out in camera so i don't ever have to worry about going into post and stitching out it truly is invisible because the cameras don't pick up this little area right underneath it so this is a really cool accessory it's a must buy it's not like you want to get one of these and then not have these sticks this is a must purchase so i just include it as the price of the camera provided links to everything below but i really really like this accessory the thing i don't really like is the bullet time it's basically just a cord that you swing this thing around it's kind of a gimmicky type look and i've used it once or twice and then just returned the accessory because i didn't really use it another new feature for this unit is it has a four mic 360 audio recording abilities that's supposed to be some new technology we're going to take a look at that in some of the test footage to look at how good the onboard audio is in the mark 1 and a lot of these 360 and action cameras the onboard audio is not very good so i really want to talk about the 360 cam in general and what you guys would use it for what i would use it for first of all let's just have an idea of what a 360 camera can do there's not a lot of tricks that this hardware does it basically is just two cameras recording everything in front of it and then pushing all that data to you in post and post is where all the magic happens the software is what sets the 360 camera apart because it allows for unique movements and focusing on one thing and having gimbal super smooth footage that's all done in post in software so really the hardware doesn't do much it's just two cameras built into one small unit and recording everything so if you have that understanding you kind of have a grasp of what 360 cameras are this 360 camera although it is a really good unit i will say a con right off the bat is they didn't up the resolution the resolution is still 5.7 k stitched between the two so what does that mean if you're looking at a 360 degree image in like a headset or on your computer and you're moving the camera around that's not 5.7 k in that window 5.7 k is the whole image recording everything that this can record but the effective resolution that you would actually view these videos in especially with any type of gimbal movements or on a vr headset is really more like 2.7 k or closer to like a little bit under 1080p and that's because it's pushing in on that stitched image and only using a small piece of it and that's the biggest flaw of this mark ii i really wish they would have upped the stitched resolution so that the effective release resolution is something more like 4k it would make this a lot more clean a lot more crisp of an image and a lot more usable for anyone really pixel peeping or zooming in at all you're going to really notice that the details are crushed by the resolution so that's the biggest ceiling that this camera has but let's jump into the pros from the pros and cons after some extensive use and see what i loved most live stream 360 feature now i'm not a live streamer but i did test this out a little bit and it works really well something i've seen not a lot on the 360 cameras and this just does a very good job with it again it's a big software feature the insta 360 app on ios and android is really not actually i haven't tested on android but i'm assuming it's the same as on ios it's just a really great app it's really easy to use it's intuitive uh i can do all my edits in there so that's another huge pro once you get the hang of how to edit 360 video you can do it really easily and intuitively in the ios app so that is a huge plus i love the app overall there's so many different movements you can do and so many different gimbal type things which really is like they tried to make it as much as possible like having a one-man band and a camera crew just in your pocket because of all the unique movements that this thing can do another thing i really love it has a feature to go into an action cam mode so it really just switches over to only using one lens instead of the 360 footage so you do get a little bit more memory space on your cards and it has really good flow state stabilization which i think outperforms even the gopro which has phenomenal symbolization but this is a really cool versatile way to have a built-in 360 cam and an action cam just by turning off one of those cameras and software doing its thing so i do really like that as well and really that's kind of my point overall the biggest pro to this camera and what i love the most is it's super versatile you can use it for so many different things you can use it as an action cam you can use it as a vr 360 cam you can use it to do time lapses and interesting vr movements and gimbal type movements that you can't do on any other camera and that's what really sets this camera apart is the ability to do so many different things in one small and efficient path now speaking of versatility can we use it as a vlogging well let's jump into some vlog test footage right now all right so we're in the dugout i'm at the local baseball field and this is the vlogging test for the insta 360 one x2 now is this a viable option for a vlogging rig i don't know but here i'm going to test it out now here are some pros to this rig it's lightweight it's small it's compact and it's easy to use it's all automated so i really just have automatic settings on i don't need to worry about manual settings or what the picture looks like because i know overall it's going to be that gopro looking you know over saturated type look and that's okay with me because really that's not what this is for now for audio i have the synovia adapter linked up to some rode wireless go mics and that synovia adapter has worked really well for my main vlogging ridge which is the dji osmo action so i really like that i know i'm going to get good quality audio and i don't really need to worry about it some things i don't like about that synovia adapter is it does protrude out of the side so on a 360 camera like this when i flip the camera around i may have that so you can kind of see here i think you can see on the side that you're that's sticking out a little bit so it gets in the frame which i don't really like so i kind of have to keep that towards the back i think but in judging when framing up and looking some of my test shots i noticed that that did get in the way so that's kind of annoying all right so now we're going to take a listen to what it sounds like with just the onboard mics i'm going to take out the synovia adapter here is that footage so this is just the onboard audio and how does this sound in comparison to having the wireless go system on there uh there might be a little bit of wind noise it's not really windy today it's a little bit i guess not really but let's hear do you hear any wind noise what does it sound like does it sound tinny a lot of onboard mics especially in action cameras are actually trash but they claim that these are new improved uh multi-direction onboard audio so what does it sound like do you guys like it is it usable one thing to note is that when you do have the synovia adapter on and you do have the rode wireless go or any other mic on for that point uh you do lose the weatherproofing so you do lose the waterproof it's waterproof up to i think 30 feet so you do lose that because you do have to pop open the cover and use the usbc adapter to get the synovia adapter in there so that's one thing that kind of sucks but i do think that if you're vlogging you're probably not needing the weatherproofing so much unless you're in the rain or heavy snow or something like that but another idea is having one of these this is the saramonic mics that you could plug in straight to the synovia adapter and then you wouldn't even have to worry about clipping on these external audio devices so that's the onboard mic right here let's hear what it sounds like and let's go back to the world wireless go another thing that kind of sucks about this setup is how wide of a shot it is it's kind of a pro and a con some bloggers really like that wide angle shot i personally don't like it super wide like the action cam wide for vlogging because if you're doing long form video it's just a little bit difficult to see and to watch for long periods of time when it's super super wide so that ultra wide is kind of a blessing and a curse so that's that let's run these bases let's check out how stable this footage is are you ready let's go okay first base oh my god i am not as fast as i could there's not even a freaking base there third base i'm running all out you can see how smooth that is that is some smooth footage i think i'm cramping i pulled a muscle that smooth footage is definitely probably the biggest pro to having this as your go-to vlogging set that's about it for this vlogging test let's get back in the studio and wrap up the review so that is the vlog test footage and a couple of things i want to touch on after looking at the footage first of all man that flow state stabilization is so sweet i love it so much and i love the the fact that you really never have to worry about framing up your shot i never once thought when i was shooting that footage or any other footage about what am i getting am i in the shot do i need to look at the screen do i need to frame up properly i never even thought about that because i knew i could just frame it up in post the vlog footage looked really good for stabilization i love that the exposure looked really good it was a little bit oversaturated for my liking but that's just kind of to be expected with the action cam what i was really blown away with was the internal built-in audio i was expecting it to be way worse but that sounded really good right i didn't catch much wind noise i had wind noise reduction on in camera and overall i didn't notice a huge difference between having external audio and the internal audio so i was really blown away with that now i have done some testing with this underwater and again of course internal audio underwater is crap but that's with everything there's no real fix for that because you're underwater so everything sounds muffled i think for vlogging this is a under appreciated tool thus far i think i'm gonna be using it for some vlogging because it's just so easy to keep in my bag and super convenient now some flaws with it is my whole setup it's nice on paper but i didn't really love it in actual use the synovia adapter it's a little bit of a pain because it sticks out on the side so it does interfere with the shot as you can see so unless you punch in or hold it at an angle where the adapter is on the back side so that everything facing forward is kind of a way or on the other side of the synovia adapter then you can really get away with it and using it with the videomic go made it really convenient and a nice package i still always trust external audio more especially in like super windy situations or when you're holding it really far away maybe you're walking away from the camera or doing anything where this is on a tripod it's something to think of too having that external audio built in on you is always just better but i was just so blown away with the internal audio that i think it's a really great vlogging device alright so the reason i bought this camera was not just for this review for you guys i'm actually starting up a business doing matterport real estate tours if you don't know what that is i'll create a whole other video on tutorials and how to use this for matterport matterport is the leader in that virtual tour space so you have to use that software to be able to get good quality mls listings for real estate photography now i'm currently in the process of launching a real estate photography business because i'm trying to transition out of weddings because the sickness kind of crushed my business so i bought this for that reason and it just does a really really good job shoots a really high quality virtual tour so if you are into real estate photography and want to get into matterport tours and don't want to drop five grand on a matterport camera then this is definitely your answer and stay tuned for more videos on that but of course it isn't perfect now let's get into some of the cons and there are some pretty big cons number one being i really hate the computer desktop software the non-ios version of the 360 software i hate it so much it was so frustrating i just didn't like it and i use final cut and premiere pro so i'm really versed and i've used davinci resolve a little bit so i'm really versed in editing software but this software just was finicky was buggy was slow it was really annoying so many little bugs that freaking annoyed the hell out of me so the desktop software it's not there yet it needs a lot of work but a pro is they did do a good job giving you plug-ins for whatever editing software you use so you can have a plug-in to go into premiere pro or final cut pro and be able to edit the 360 footage there now those plugins are cool on paper but again they're not as useful and they're a little bit more glitchy than using an ios device really that's the best way to edit these videos and photos is on an ios device which is kind of weird and counter-intuitive to any other video editing so i would consider that a con but i hope in future software updates they upped their game for the desktop software i think that would be a huge pro because right now i don't really love it some other cons the screen is a little bit weird to use in real world use because the screen moves around a lot and doesn't give you a locked frame and can't like lock onto your face if you're vlogging and so you're constantly having to move around in the little frame to 360 spin your image around to find the angle that you want to see so it's kind of annoying there the touch screen is a little bit finicky i found it annoying sometimes i was swiping up you know five six times to get it to actually swipe up to get into settings and playback it's a little bit annoying if you want to skip around i mean the touchscreen is just not perfect it's a little bit gimmicky a pro and a con that i want to touch on is that actually the video format that it shoots in it shoots in a proprietary insta 360 format um so you can't just get this video out put it on your cell phone and press play you have to go into some type of 360 software to be able to do any type of editing convert it out and then to watch it on a device so that is just an extra step in your workflow and it's kind of annoying and adds time overall these lenses and it's just kind of a physics thing where the lenses protrude out on the body but the lenses are really susceptible to scratches and once you scratch these lenses there's no way to repair them so it just kind of destroys your camera and for an action camera especially i found myself having to be really really careful with the lenses and always having you know some type of cover on when it's in your bag you can't just throw it around you can't throw it in your pocket because if it comes in contact with keys and scratches one of these lenses well then you're done that's that scratch is gonna be really prominent and really noticeable in your footage even if you get a raindrop or a water droplet on one of the lenses it kind of ruins the image in the video as a whole because it's so prominent on that video that you got to keep them always clean and clear and it is an annoyance but it's just nothing you could do because it's kind of a physics things with these lenses i mean i guess you could expand the body out and make it a little bit wider to give it some protection then you're dealing with a bigger package overall so i would say that's a con just something you guys should be aware of so should you buy the 360 one x2 so first of all if you have the mark one version yes you should upgrade i don't usually say that in you know new mark ii generation type gear i don't usually say to upgrade from the originals but yes definitely upgrade and that's just because of the waterproofing it makes this so much more of a usable camera overall here are my final thoughts when i purchased this camera i was buying into the marketing that insta360 one is doing in that it's a video production crew in your pocket able to get really cool movements and angles just on yourself that you can't do with any other camera and yes it can do that but it's definitely not a cinematic tool because the quality of the footage is not there yet it is lacking it's disappointing and frustrating for someone who's into video and into cinematic footage and into quality i'm looking at this footage that's coming out of this and it's disappointing the resolution is not good the oversaturated over processed image that coming out of it is more like a gopro more like a cheaper low end camera than a professional camera and i don't know why my mindset was that i think it's because i had such high expectations especially seeing that 5.7 k resolution number i was expecting really high quality chris images coming out of it it just doesn't do that once i got away from that mindset and didn't look at it as a cinematic tool that i can use for professional use and use with you know different quality vid but i was thinking like i could go from a drone to you know a dslr on a gimbal then jump over to this footage and swing it around do some really cool movements get some unique angles then back to a drone and then stitch it all together and put it in a professional package and it's just not there yet it just can't do that so once you switch your mind away from that and look at it more as an action cam as a hobby a toy something to get fun unique footage that's really creative that you would never think to do that nothing else can do well then this has a definite spot and belongs in your camera bag and it's always in mind now and i use it all the time but i just had to get away from you know being disappointed with the quality because it definitely is you know a limiting factor with this now what would you guys use it for that's the real question are using it as an action cam are using it as a 360 cam predominantly are using it for virtual tours and vr type stuff i mean it can do so many different things that i trust that you will be able to find usage for it it's just understanding its limitations understanding its frustrations and understanding that to get that footage in post it's going to take a little bit more time and a little bit more patience and editing abilities so with those extra steps i think that you can get some really really useful fun exciting images and video out of this camera i love it i think it's worth the purchase especially at 429 i trust that in the future 360 footage will continue to improve and get better and better and better to the point where it is cinematic and useful for professional use but right now it's just a fun toy that i really really love so tell me what you guys think what you would use it for are you gonna pick one up i hope this review brought you some value if it did hit me with a thumbs up a like and subscribe for more awesome videos i'm thinking about doing a whole series on these cameras and what i'm doing with them like vr tours and matterport and tutorials and stuff like that if you guys would like that drop me with a comment let me know what you'd like to see i'll see you guys the next one appreciate y'all peace [Music] oh

Channel: DominicPhillip

Views: 23,299

Keywords: Insta360 One X2, Insta360 One X2 review, Insta 360 one x2, insta 360 one x2 review, Insta 360 one x2 vlog footage, insta 360 one x2 vlog setup, insta 360 for vlogging, insta 360 one x2 for vlogging, insta 360 one x2 internal audio test, insta 360 one x2 cynova mic adapter, cynova mic adapter

Id: tX2GCG4W9nM

Length: 21min 9sec (1269 seconds)

Published: Fri May 14 2021