The ONE X2 is here! ... ...finally. Many were
expecting it to be released at the start of the year,
but we got the ONE R instead. Which was end is a good 360 an
action action camera hybrid. But with the release is the ONE X2 just nine months later,
is this really a step up? Or, is it just another step sideways? Or sideways and up or
sideways and up and then down? I'll give you my initial thoughts on this, how it compares to the ONE R
and 21 things you need to know about the ONE X2 by the end of this video. The first thing I want to share
is that, unfortunately this is not a major, major update
like we were all expecting, I think many people were hoping for an 8K 360 video camera. Well, unfortunately we don't have that. In fact so many things are
similar with this camera and even this camera that I just want you to manage your expectations a bit, 'cause this isn't going to be
a big upgrade, frowny face. But, there are some cool new things and improvements that the ONE X needed. When it was first released, there were so many things
we didn't like about it. Well, we're actually getting
them now with a ONE X2. Let's start with the
design, as you can see they're very similar, they're basically the
same height and width, and it's a really good
camera design to begin with. So I'm actually kinda happy
that they've gone back to the original ONE X design, for people that like a handheld vertical
camera like the ONE X was. And then what they've
done is, improved on some of the things people
were complaining about. The first one being the
tiny little LED screen, that was hard to read in bright sunlight. Well with the ONE X2, there's
now a much bigger colour screen, that is much more
visible in bright sunlight and it's relatively easy to navigate around with your finger. I will stress relatively,
sometimes it's easy sometimes it's really hard. How cool is it though? It's like a little submarine window and you can basically control the camera change the settings and whatnot by swiping in the various directions. Is this screen usable without a phone? No, but it is a step up from the ONE R this tiny little square screen is really difficult to use. So yeah, overall I think
the screen is definitely an improvement from the
ONE R and the ONE X. Something else exciting is
that the ONE X2 is waterproof, without needing any housing. It's got rubber around the sides and everything seems pretty air
tight, including the button. So the on button is here on the side and the main control button
is down the bottom here. And these are rubber buttons. And I'd say that these work even better than the standard non waterproof ones. Cheese! I don't know they just feel
more satisfying to press. But yeah, it's waterproof to 10 minutes, without the need for an external housing, Which is cool and all, but
it still will need a housing, if you wanna stitch 360 video and photos properly underwater, which is a problem that
all 360 cameras face. So I would only really
take this into account, if you're shooting near the
water or above the water, or if you're only
shooting in one direction, when you're underneath the water. Something that people didn't like about the original ONE X,
myself included, is the battery. It's kinda hard to take out and I feel like this could
break if you pulled it too hard. Well, with the ONE X2 it's much easier. You just pull it out like this and it's a much bigger battery as well. This holds about 30% more
charge, than the original ONE X. And it goes back in like this, and now the camera is waterproof again. Another thing people didn't
like about the original ONE X, is it's micro USB charging, whereas with the ONE X2, it's USB-C. Welcome to 2020, as much
as it pains me to say that. And for anyone who's had
experience with the latch of the ONE R, this one is
nowhere near as annoying. The final thing to point out
is, it has four microphones, one on each side of the camera, which means it captures
full 360 spatial audio. And it's supposed to have better audio than the previous Insta360 cameras. I haven't tested this fully yet. But, I could say with confidence
that it's not going to be on the level of a GoPro camera. I tested the ONE R side by
side with the Hero 9 Black and the GoPro came out
head and shoulders above the ONE R when it came to sound quality. And I can't really see too
much changing with this. It should be pretty decent though, so I will have to test this further. And now for the specs,
and I'm sorry to say, but there has been no upgrade at all since the ONE R or ONE X was released. We've got exactly the same resolutions and frame rates for all three cameras. W T F, yeah I know right! Like why? That's what we all wanted. We wanted an 8K camera or not even 8K, that's a lot of resolution. What about 7K or 6K or even 5.8 K? Just 0.1 of a K more, no. we've got the exact same
resolutions for photo and video. I can't quite grasp why exactly,
maybe there's limitations with having a camera this small. But I really was expecting
some kind of upgrade, when it came to the overall
photo and video resolutions, and while, image and video
size isn't everything, there are other things
that can override that like good dynamic range,
having a better sensor, better raw capabilities and
a whole bunch of other stuff. But it would have been nice
to see the resolutions go up, even just a little bit to see that things are improving over the past two years, but we're still at the
same resolutions we were at when the original ONE X came
out in 2018, and I can't help but being a little bit
disappointed by that. They are saying though that the ONE X2 has better quality video
than the ONE R and ONE X. And from the tests I've done so far, I can't say it's a night
and day difference. Maybe it's tiny bit better,
but it's nothing noticeable. I did play around with the
HDR video mode of the ONE X2 however, and that was
extremely impressive, and so much better than
shooting standard video in the standard video mode. It is best however, when
you're using the camera on a tripod or monopod, when there's too much shake, it struggles shooting HDR video cause when you think about
it, it's doing a lot. When it's taking a HDR video, it's basically combining three
different video exposures together simultaneously,
while you're shooting. And that is really complicated to do, even with high-end cinema cameras. But yeah, on a tripod, this
video footage looks really really good, especially in the context of pointing and shoot 360 cameras, and how those have looked over the years. Insta360 are also saying that
the colours have been enhanced with the ONE X2 and maybe
it's a slight improvement. I still, wouldn't say that the colours are 100% accurate to real life. They just look a little bit off. It feels like the camera
still doesn't have the bit depth to fully capture
all the colours, it needs to to represent colour accurately. But you know what? It's good enough, and it's a
slight improvement overall. Okay, on a more serious note, you're probably wondering
how the ONE X2 compares to the most recent Insta360
release, which is the ONE R. Well, I put them side by side here next to this giant wooden thing. And, as you can see the
footage looks really similar. Maybe there's more contrast and saturation on the right hand side,
but that is pretty easy to add in colour
correction with the ONE R, and at 500% zoom, I'm also
not seeing any differences when it comes to sharpness and clarity. Here's the HDR video side by side. They both look really good. Their dynamic range is very impressive. Maybe it's slightly
better with the ONE X2, I'd say my face is probably
a bit brighter there, so okay, I'm gonna give it to the ONE X2, but overall I think they're
both doing a really good job. And the reason I didn't
include the original ONE X in this comparison is, that
in previous comparisons, I determined that the ONE R and ONE X look pretty much identical. Here's something that's completely unique to the ONE X2, they've added their Pureshot mode, which was previously only available with the ONE R one inch edition. And what that does, is it basically takes a nine shot bracketed HDR Raw
Shot, combines it all together into one ultra high dynamic range photo. It's all done in the camera
and you don't have to edit it, that much later on. Pureshot is now the default photo mode, when shooting 360 photos with a ONE X2, and I think this is an excellent thing, and it really takes Insta360
photos to the next level. Is that on the level of the Theta Z1? No, the Z1 is still the
King of 360 photography in late 2020, early 2021. But what this pureshot mode does, is, it really does help you
get the best results possible for 360 photos within this camera. Now I wouldn't choose this
as a virtual tour camera, unless you're only
shooting for small clients, or if your focus is video
and you just need a bit of photo on the side, then it's okay. But, if you really are going
to start targeting virtual tour clients and you wanna scale
up a virtual tour business, this won't be the camera to do it. Now there's no question, Insta360
are very good at marketing and they can make a very
basic and common feature seem like a groundbreaking new
addition to their new camera. And I just want to warn you about that. They've added a bunch of
new things "new things" to the ONE X2, that really aren't new. And they're older things
that we could do before, but they've just repackaged them and made them a bit simpler
to do within the app, but they aren't actually new. One of them is called
InstaPano where they say that the 360 camera
takes a panoramic image, that isn't a 360 photo, but more in line with what a traditional
panorama would look like. Well, all they did; was just crop in on the equirectangular image, that's it. I don't think that's a
groundbreaking feature. And I can't imagine who
would use this mode. Another one is their steady cam feature, where they're pushing the
fact that a 360 camera can shoot a video that looks like it was taken on a steady cam. And while that's true,
this is nothing new. Maybe they're making a
shortcut, to do it in their app, but this is something you
can do with all 360 cameras, including all of their
previous 360 cameras. It's just the basic concept of reframing 360 video in one direction. Another one that has really
annoyed me over the years, is the invisible selfie stick. Oh my God, it's invisible!
Where did it go? Hey, guess what? All 360 cameras have blind
spots directly underneath them, which makes any selfie stick
invisible with any 360 camera. It's not unique to Insta360 cameras, and I really don't think this
should be marketed anymore, as one of the key features. So yeah, just be mindful
that a lot of the things, they're showing with their
marketing videos, can be done with basically any of their cameras, you could do them with the ONE R. You could do them with the original ONE X or even the Insta360 Evo. They can all do many of
the effects that you see in those flashy marketing videos. And look, this is a common
thing that many companies do with the new camera releases, GoPro, I'm looking at you. But, it's just important to recognise that these videos are shot professionally, and the same result could
probably be achieved with the past few
generations of their cameras. Now, Insta360 has also
added some cool new effects to the ONE X2 app, and these
can all be achieved easily within shot lab, within the
app and there's no doubt they're really cool and
it's a really fast process to make these, as you may have seen in one of my previous videos. So, they've added more
of these with the ONE X2. However, this also begs the question - Is what they're doing, ethical? And what they're doing is, coming up with these really
creative and fun effects, but limiting them to certain
cameras, even when all of the cameras are capable of doing them, they'll market them as
exclusive to certain cameras. This happened with the ONE R and ONE X. I released a video to my
channel showing 10 cool effects that were added to the ONE R and at the time I made it, you could also do them with the ONE X. Yes, they weren't officially promoting it. And technically you
weren't supposed to do it. It was more of a workaround
that I found and shared. But it worked, literally
all of the effects worked, as they did with the ONE R, and eventually Insta360 stopped the use of the ONE X inside the ONE R app when they released a unified Insta360 app. And as you can imagine, a
lot of people were upset by this, because this was a
work around that clearly worked with the ONE X and they stopped
the use of that work around. And now it feels like they
might be moving towards the same strategy with
the ONE R and ONE X2. Now firstly, I wanna to say that these cameras have
more in-built effects and cool things you can do, than basically every other
360 camera on the market. So there's no question, Insta360 are clearly over
delivering with their products and they keep continually
releasing new cool updates, that were never there, when
the cameras first arrived. But when you have a certain
effect that can clearly be done, but, they just choose to offer it with one camera and not another. I see that as ethically tricky territory. I mean, I totally understand
if one camera literally wasn't capable of
achieving certain effects, but, it really does seem like all of the recent Insta360
cameras have the same insides, and therefore capable of doing basically the same stuff within the apps. Now, while they're not
consciously taking away features, because as I said, those
features were never offered with the ONE X, it is apparent
that they're being strategic with which affects they allow
with each of their cameras. Just something to think about. Now, I wanna quickly touch on workflows and with ONE X2, it's very
similar to the workflow we've been using with the ONE R and ONE X, where there's a fantastic mobile app, fantastic desktop software,
that allows you to do hundreds of cool effects and reframing
of your 360 videos and photos. It's all quick and easy
and Insta360 are leaders when it comes to work flow. There are also some new
accessories that have come out with the ONE X2; spare
battery, fast charge hub another battery, lens cap,
and a bullet time cord. They used to use a
handle on a selfie stick. So now it's going back to the code. Those are pretty good accessories and, no doubt there'll be more to come. And one of those will be lens guards, which is an important thing for
anyone that owns 360 camera, you always know when you go out shooting with your 360 camera,
that there's a chance it could blow over in the
wind and smash a lens. Ask me how I know. So yeah, it will be interesting
to see how effective the lens guards are and if they lower the quality of the shots at all. Now for the price it's 429 us dollars, which is about the same as the ONE R. I'm trying to make sense of this price I guess it makes sense. I mean, you are getting
that much value for $429. Although, when releasing a
product that is so similar to their last product, you
think they would have used price as another differentiator
but yeah, it is what it is, and I think it's still a
good price for this camera. Now, I can't help but
asking the question of why, why did they release this camera? I mean I think we can all agree that the physical body is much better than the previous ONE X, so
it's an improvement there, but for everything else you just feel like they could have added
those things to the ONE X or the ONE R, I'm not gonna to lie, it was a bit disappointing
seeing so few updates with this camera. The new camera design is
definitely as big as feature. Is it good enough to upgrade
from the ONE X or the ONE R? No, if you own either of these cameras, I'd say don't bother with the ONE X2, because it won't be enough of an upgrade. If you're upgrading from
a much older camera, or perhaps you're thinking about buying your first 360 camera, then the ONE X2 will actually
be a really good option. It's basically the latest and greatest of the ONE X line, which
is clearly going to be a repetitive thing maybe
next year or a year from now, or even two years, we'll see the ONE X3. But for now, this is the latest model and a definite buy for anyone that doesn't have 360
camera of this caliber. Now, I do totally rate the ONE X2. My issue was, as I discussed before, is that it's not that big of an update, from their previous cameras. That doesn't mean it's not a good camera, it just means that you shouldn't upgrade from their recent cameras. And yeah, that's it! Curious
to hear what your thoughts are on the ONE X2. Let me know down below, I see
some complaints coming in. So that's it for my first
impressions of the ONE X2. I will definitely be using this over the next few weeks and months, and I'll definitely release
further thoughts on this camera as it evolves, as it becomes
unique in its own right, and we really understand where it fits in the overall 360 camera hierarchy. So yes, subscribed for those. I hit 100K by the way,
that's pretty exciting. I will make a dedicated video about that. Just been busy making this video and doing a million other things. So yeah, more content on my channel soon. Thanks for watching. Really appreciate all of you guys and I'll see you in the next video.
