Insta360 Ace Pro Comparison vs. Osmo Action 4 and GoPro Hero 12

good day folks Sean here from Air photography so I've been asked by some of my regular viewers to make a comparison of all three action cameras the new insta 3608 Pro the GoPro Hero 12 black and the osmo action 4 all these cameras were released earlier this year the first one we got was the action 4 back in the summertime then of course we got the hero 12 black in September and just most recently last week we got the insta 3608 Pro now in this comparison video I'm going to be showing you some side by-side footage of all the cameras and uh we're just going to do one at a time just so you can get a bigger view of it and we're basically going to be comparing it against the insta 360 Ace Pro because I've already done comparisons against these two cameras I've also done a full review of each camera the action 4 the hero 12 and the Ace Pro so you can go back and watch them as well to kind of get a good in-depth look at my thoughts on them but on top of the footage the side-by-side footage comparisons we're going to be doing we're going to be talking about features and comparing features of each camera because the features and what they offer can be a deciding factor on which camera you choose as well and I just want to mention that no matter what camera you choose you're going to be happy with your purchase all the cameras are pretty solid and I'm not going to force my opinion down your throat you know we all have different needs and what we like in an action camera however at the end of this video I will offer my opinion on which one I think is most exciting so let's start with some of the physical aspects of the cameras and uh size and weight when it comes to size the action 4 is the smallest of all the cameras now they're all nice and compact so I don't know if I would base a decision solely on that but let's do a reading of the weight of each one just for those who are curious you can see the ice Pro is 179 G the hero 12 is 152 G and the action 4 is 146 G now moving on to the physical capabilities of the cameras let's talk about mounting both the action 4 and the Ace Pro offer magnetic mounting and for the most part both actually work quite well I'm actually quite pleased with both the way they work unfortunately for the GoPro it still just features a traditional finger Mount which works just fine and uh magnetic mounting is not going to be important for everybody it's not going to be a deciding factor for me it's very important just because I am moving my cameras around quite a bit when I'm out with filming so when it comes to mounting versatility I would have to say that the action 4 and the Ace Pro have the [Applause] advantage now I'm going to turn each camera on here and we're going to talk about front-facing screens all cameras are capable of having a front-facing screen but you'll notice a big difference here with the Ace Pro with the action 4 the hero 12 we have a small screen on the front the screen on the front of the Ace Pro just displays data if you want a front-facing screen you have to fold the back out and and to me that is absolutely brilliant because you get a nice big preview it's much easier to line up your shot and more importantly it's easier to make sure you have good exposure and everything looks good sometimes on these small screens it's really hard to tell if the exposure is okay but with the Ace Pro as you can see there you can get a nice big view of what you're filming but the really good thing about the way that this is designed is that you can get a nice preview even when the camera is mounted in an awkward position if you've got this mounted down you can just have the screen folded up and still get a preview of your shot whereas with the action 4 and the GoPro you just can't do that there's no really easy way to get a preview to frame your shot when you're mounting it in certain scenarios so I would definitely say that the Ace Pro has the advantage when it comes to previewing and framing shots GoPros are also a little bit behind in the fact that that front screen is not touchable you can't change any settings from that front screen and now that's not going to be important for every scenario uh but quite often whereas with the action 4 you can and of course with the Ace Pro you can now that's not important for every scenario but there are times with the way your camera is mounted being able to adjust a setting or change modes quickly from a front-facing screen it can be very important so the next thing let's talk about here is resolutions all these cameras are capable of capturing different types of resolutions the max resolution on the action 4 is 4K the GoPro Hero 12 black is 5.3k and the Ace Pro can capture all the way up to 8K at 24 frames per second of course it can capture at 4K as well that's going to be the most common resolution that you're going to be capturing in AK is not really something you'll probably be using a lot because it's going to be very taxing on your system trying to edit the footage and the file sizes are going to be just massive but if you are looking for the highest resolution that you can get on an action camera the Ace Pro is definitely the choice for you when it comes to slow motion video they all do an excellent job I wouldn't say one has better quality than the other you know they all do a really nice job with slow motion the only difference is the GoPro Hero 12 black can do a little bit higher resolution when it comes to eight times slow motion all cameras do 4K at 120 frames per second which in my opinion is probably the most common that's what I like to film in I think it looks natural if you want to go to eight times slow motion with the Ace Pro and the action 4 you have to film at 1080 however with the GoPro Hero 12 black you can film at 8 times slow motion in 2.7k now if you take a look at this 2.7k 8 times slow motion it looks decent but you can see the quality is really degraded and that's where I say that the 4K 120 frames per second slow motion just looks the best it's still nice and clear now a really nice feature that the Ace Pro has is something called Clarity Zoom so with Clarity Zoom you can zoom in up to two times without losing Anye quality if we take a look at this footage here you can see we're filming here at one times and then of course now we're going to zoom in to two times and the footage still looks really good the action for is capable of two time zoom I'll just show you a side by side here on the left hand side is from the Ace Pro at two times and on the right hand side is from the action 4 at two times so you can see that the Ace Pro footage looks a little bit better and it still maintains a lot of its detail now the hero 12 black is a little bit different in the fact that it can only zoom up to 1.4 times so you can't get in quite as far and the other big difference is you have to commit to that Zoom before you start recording both the action 4 and the Ace Pro you can zoom while you're recording whereas the hero2 black once you start recording you can no longer Zoom now one of the big differences of these cameras is the low light capabilities of the Ace Pro I've already done a comparison of that but I'll just show you the footage here again on both cameras now although the action 4 and the Ace Pro have the exact same sensor size due to the five nanom chip that's included with the Ace Pro it can process that low light footage in real time the action 4 and the hero 12 just cannot do that and that makes all the difference let's start with the hero 12 black you can see on the left hand side I have the Ace Pro and on the right hand side is the GoPro Hero 12 black you can see the GoPro is struggling there's a lot of smearing and blurring and of course the stabilization is just non-existent GoPros have never really done well in low light in order order for stabilization to work properly you need a lot of light and a very fast shutter speed so you can see when comparing these two cameras just how much better the Ace Pro is now when we compare the Ace Pro to the action 4 it's not quite as drastic the action 4 actually does a pretty good job in low light but you will notice from time to time the stabilization kind of falls apart a little bit on the action 4 again that's to do with the processing of the Ace Pro the Ace Pro is far superior when it comes to low light for both stabilization and quality when you're filming it's buttery smooth you have good stabilization still which is actually pretty incredible for an action camera at night it almost looks like this is mounted in a handheld gimbal when filming at night now low light is not important for everybody cuz quite often people aren't filming in the middle of the night with their action camera however that also translates to other scenarios as well that low light capability if you're filming on an overcast day in a tree canopy you know the light reaching where you're filming is very limited so having good low light capability can be very important it's going to keep your footage looking nice and smooth and prevent blurring and smearing so in that aspect the Ace Pro definitely has the advantage now when it comes to capturing GPS and Telemetry data none of these cameras can capture GPS on camera however there are some key differences that might be important to some users with the GoPro Hero 12 black this is the first year that GoPro has removed GPS from the camera you used to be able to capture GP PS and put overlays on your videos if needed but that's not possible anymore now in all fairness like I said none of these cameras can do that however the key difference is at the current time there is no way to do that with a GoPro they may sell an accessory down the road that allows you to do that but currently there is no way to capture GPS and Telemetry data so if that is something that is important to you this camera just will not work for you with both the action 4 and the Ace Pro they sell accessories that allow you to still capture data if you need to to add Telemetry to your videos with the action 4 DJI sells a remote that you can use that will capture the GPS data you can then bring it into the mimo app and overlay it on your videos however the insta 360 Ace Pro takes it a step further and in fact if you already own an Apple Watch or a Garmin you don't need to purchase any additional equipment your Apple watch can record all the GPS data and then you can bring it into the insta 360 app and add your overlays on top of that insta 360 sells this really nice GPS unit what's nice about it not only will it capture the GPS data you can also get a preview of what you're filming as you can see I do have it here I am going to be making a separate video about this device so if you are interested in it keep an eye on my Channel with this you can wear it like a wristwatch or it even comes with a little handlebar mount so you can strap it to a bike if you just want it for preview purposes you can always just stick it in your pocket and pull it out when you need to get a preview so I would have to say when it comes to GPS and Telemetry data insta 360 definitely has the advantage as mentioned you don't even have to spend any money if you already own an Apple Watch and while we're talking about Apple watches the insta 3608 Pro is the only camera that offers an app for the Apple watch with their app you can launch it I don't have it connected right now but you can get a live preview right on your watch you can use your watch as a remote to stop and start recording and that is actually a very useful feature especially if you have your camera mounted aways from you and you can't see the preview screen you can always just look at your watch and know that your shot is lined up correctly irly so that is definitely a huge Advantage for some people now when it comes to stabilization I would have to say that all cameras are equal they all do a really good job at stabilizing footage all cameras have different levels of stabilization so you can go in and adjust it to whatever the scenario calls for I've done a lot of looking at footage I've done a lot of comparisons and I can't really say that one is better than the other I'll show you some side by sides of both the GoPro and the action 4 and you can decide for yourself what you think looks better [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah and when it comes to stabilization and third-party apps all three cameras are supported in gyro flow now when it comes to connecting a microphone because you're going to do some vlogging or you just want really good audio I would have to say the action 4 has the advantage and the reason I say that is because with it you can connect a microphone directly you can plug any USBC microphone directly into the USBC Port you don't need any adapters you can plug in a USBC lavalier or a USBC wireless microphone and it's just going to work with both the Ace Pro and the hero 12 black you do need to purchase adapters with the hero 12 black you can get their media mod or the microphone adapter and then use whatever microphone you wish to use with the Ace Pro you do have to purchase their microphone adapter and then again you can go ahead and choose any microphone that you want now with that said they all work well they all do the job properly but the action 4 is just a little more convenient because you don't need an adapter and you don't have to spend the money to purchase one now when it comes to shooting vertical video all cameras are capable of it but I would have to say that GoPro has the advantage and that's for a couple different reasons with the action 4 in order to shoot vertical video you actually have to mount the camera vertically and you have to use that frame that came with it now it's quick and simple and it works very well but there is that step you do have to take the camera off the current Mount and rotate it manually and when you're filming in vertical that's what you have there's no switching back and forth of course you can crop the video but then you're going to be losing a lot of resolution however with the hero 12 black and the Ace Pro they give you some really interesting tools for shooting vertically if you're going to be uploading to social media and not only for shooting vertical but you can film once and then crop easily and post now the reason I say the GoPro has the advantage is because we can shoot in a 16x9 and that's your traditional aspect your horizontal or we can switch it over over to Vertical so you can see there in the preview we're now filming in vertical so you don't have to rotate the camera you don't have to do anything you can just simply go into your settings and change the aspect on top of that we can shoot at an 8x7 and that's nice because then you can go in later and post and either crop it to a vertical or a horizontal with losing very minimal resolution because it's almost a complete Square now with the Ace Pro here it's a little bit different they actually have a mode it's called free frame mode and when you're in it again it's in a 4x3 so it's not quite square but it's close and we can actually enable a preview and it's going to show us how it's going to be framed for both vertical and horizontal so we can film once in this mode then in post we can either crop it to a vertical or a horizontal video and that is really important because if you're going to be uploading to multiple platforms either YouTube or YouTube shorts you just have to film once and then you can export your video in whatever format or aspect you want now the the action 4 has some unique features that aren't available on the hero 12 black or the action 4 so I'm just going to start recording here and show you some of these cuz they're actually quite interesting uh first off down in the bottom left hand side you can see we have a button if we press that while we're recording it's going to capture a snapshot as well so you can take a photo while you're recording now you can do that on a GoPro but it requires you to do that later on in post you have to bring the video into the app and then of course you can extract a photo but with the Pro you can do it while you're recording in real time the other really interesting thing and this is a huge feature for some people is we can pause recording so you can see we're recording we're at 31 32 seconds there I can hit that pause button and the recording has now paused once we're pause that shutter button becomes a pause and unpause button so I can press that and it's going to continue recording when you're done you just press that button there at the side and that's now going to save the video and it's also processing the photo that we took in there as well being able to pause recording is a really unique feature that's just not available on these other action cameras but it's even more interesting because we can go into our Gallery here and pick any video so let's do uh this one here you can see we're in the preview and it could be a video that you shot 3 or 4 days ago or a week ago but we can press that button down there in the corner now when I hit record we are now adding to a video that we shot previously so if you have a video from a week ago that you just want to add to the end of it you can do so very easily now when it comes to battery performance all the cameras perform fairly decently there's been a lot of technology and changes to batteries over the last couple years however when it comes to charging both the Ace Pro and the osmo action 4 support fast charging with the osmo action 4 you can charge a battery from 0 to 80% in 18 minutes or so it's rated I've never actually timed it and and the Ace Pro can charge a battery from 0 to 80% in 22 minutes or so it's rated the GoPro Hero 12 black is quite lacking in that department according to their website their stats it takes 2 hours to go from 0 to 80% so that can be important if you're out in the field and your batteries die you could plug your action camera your Ace Pro or your osmo action 4 into a power bank and in 20 minutes it's going to give you over an hour's worth of recording now when it comes to Auto editing all cameras are capable of Auto editing within the app all cameras can add highlights while you're recording and that makes finding your footage good moments later on while editing a little easier however the insta 3608 Pro does take it a step further with it we have a feature called AI highlight assistant you can see we just turned it on there and what that's going to do is while we're recording it's going to automatically add highlights when the AI detects that something interesting is happening with the GoPro and the action 4 we have to manually add those highlight tags and that can be super important because if you've been out for the day you might have hours worth of footage that you have to sift through letting the AI help you decide where some good moments are happening can save you a lot of time but what's really interesting is you can export just the highlights unlike a GoPro in the action 4 you have to unload all your footage to your smartphone or computer to edit it with the Ace Pro it will automatically choose your highlights you can then go in and preview the highlights right from within the media player within the camera and then you have the option to save the highlights as separate Clips or just merge them together as one the nice thing about that is you can just bring those highlight Clips over to your smartphone so you're not going to be wasting space and time transferring large files so if you're a person who likes to edit quickly on the go it's a great feature again that feature is just not available on the action 4 or the GoPro Hero 12 black all three cameras are capable of capturing HDR with a GoPro Hero 12 black you have to manually turn on that HDR are before you record so you do have to commit to it with both the action 4 and the Ace Pro if you're filming at 4K 30 it's automatically going to turn hdr on so you're going to always be filming in high dynamic range you don't have to make that decision out in the field while you're recording you know that the footage is always going to look good it's always going to be evenly exposed even when the lighting conditions are very complex so we've taken a look at some footage and we've talked about some of the features and some of the differences the most common ones anyways so when deciding what action camera is right for you you just have to look at what features are most important to you when it comes to video quality during good lighting I would say they're all pretty well neck and neck I wouldn't say that one is any better than the other in good lighting conditions except perhaps maybe the insta 360 a pro because they do use Leica Optics they do have a bit of an advantage there especially when it comes to dynamic range just in my opinion I think the insta 360 Ace Pro has a little bit better dynamic range than these other cameras and that includes Clarity and detail if you take a look at this shot here side by side you can see the insta 3608 Pro just offers a little bit more detail in the clouds and sometimes at the end of the day it's just those little differences that make video look really good now at the beginning of this video I told you I would give you my opinion on which camera I was most excited about and I would have to say it's the insta 3608 Pro and that's actually for a couple different reasons and again this is just on how I use my cameras and how I film if you're regular to my channel you know I was doing some vlogging this summer some Outdoor Adventures and it was something I really enjoyed and I want to pursue further next summer I'm going to be opening a dedicated Outdoor Channel I'm going to be doing some vlogging and sharing some of my Outdoor Adventures camping hiking canoeing and kaking and I think the insta 368 Pro is going to be a great camera for me for a couple reasons first of all this fold out screen is going to be super useful for framing shots it's one thing when you're vlogging and you have the camera right in front of you these front-facing screens work well but as soon as you have the camera mounted a little bit away if you got it on a tripod which I'll be doing quite a bit in my outdoor adventure Channel just taking a quick glance at the camera I'll be able to make sure everything is lined up correctly as mentioned it's a little bit easier to check for things like exposure but on top of that being able to get a live preview on my Apple watch or even their GPS unit is going to be very beneficial when I have the camera and I'm getting far away shots of course I will be filming a lot at night around a campfire doing some nigh hikes maybe some riding and having that Superior low light capability is going to be very important on top of that some of the exclusive features it has like being able to pause recording you can cancel recording I think it's something I haven't even talked about so that will save a lot of space on the memory card if you need to restart something you don't have to go in and manually delete it but another really big feature of this camera that I've already talked about which I think is going to be very beneficial for me this summer especially when capturing b-roll is that AI highlight assistant if I'm using my other action cameras I'm going to have to go through through hours worth of footage to find just little moments perhaps little b-roll Clips which can be very timec consuming with the Ace Pro like I said it's going to go through add highlight clips that I can then just bring over into my phone or whatever I'm editing on my iPad it's going to save a lot of space and a lot of time on top of that the insta 360 app supports background downloading and again for me that can be huge if you've spent a Day filming you can start the download process and continue editing or doing whatever you're doing on your smartphone or iPad with the hero 12 black or the action 4 when you're transferring content over you have to keep the app running which can take a long time if you've ever transferred large files you know that sometimes you can spend a good half hour 45 minutes transferring content so that background downloading is also a great feature but as mentioned they are all solid cameras and no matter which one you go with you're going to be happy with your purchase for me I think the insta 3608 Pro just brings a lot of new Innovative features that we haven't seen on an action action camera especially this year the releases were a little bit stale and I did talk about that in my hero 12 black review I was a little disappointed with some of the Innovation that they brought this year it was more just a firmware upgrade they didn't really bring anything new to the table nothing that really excited me anyways or really helped enhance my workflow well folks those are my thoughts on these three cameras and a little bit of a side by-side comparison and feature comparison if you have any questions about any of these cameras feel free to ask down in the comments either myself or somebody else from the community be more than happy to answer them thanks a lot for watching and we'll see you in the next one

Channel: Air Photography

Views: 19,204

Keywords: DJI Osmo Action 4, Insta360 Ace Pro, GoPro Hero 12 Black, Comparison, Feature Comparison, Best Action Camera in 2023, Footage Comparison

Id: VFKLLn69YeQ

Length: 24min 33sec (1473 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 04 2023