Is this the best budget virtual tour camera in 2022?
Meet the Trisio 2 Lite.
A kind of 360 camera that gives its closest competitors
a serious run for their money,
including the Insta360 One X2
and even the brand new Ricoh Theta X.
But, just how good is it? And should you buy it?
You'll find out by the end of this video.
So let's start with the price.
It's 399 US dollars, which I would say is the high end
of the budget category of virtual tour cameras.
And the cool thing is,
the shots you can get from this camera are so good
that you could instantly make your money back
on your very first shoot
because of the very impressive image quality
that comes outta the camera even without editing.
If you wanna learn how to do that by the way,
I'd strongly suggest enrolling
in my virtual tour masterclass, which I'll link below.
So as you'll notice, the Trisio only has one lens.
There's nothing on the back.
And this is because it's got an inbuilt rotator.
So you put it on a monopod or light stand.
And after activating it,
it surveys the scene to gauge the proper exposure,
then it captures four photos in all four directions,
stitching them together
into a fully spherical 360 degree photo.
A photo that looks identical,
if not better than many of the top 360 cameras
available right now.
Capturing said photos is extremely easy.
There are two buttons on and capture and that's about it.
You can connect to your phone if you want,
but you don't have to.
The process of capturing photos with the Trisio
takes about 10 to 15 seconds,
and all the stitching is done automatically inside the app.
Some downsides are; it only shoots in JPEG
with auto exposure, which obviously isn't ideal.
However, just like the Theta X
the JPEGs out of the Trisio are actually good enough.
The photos from the Trisio are 32 megapixels,
which is higher than most 360 cameras right now.
And as a result, these shots look seriously sharp.
At least for a 360 camera.
Stitching with the Trisio is generally very good.
As you can see in this shot,
there are no noticeable stitch lines
even though you'd think there would be
because it's capturing four different photos,
all with slightly different levels of light
in different parts of the room,
yet it blends them together seamlessly.
Even the nadir, aka the bottom,
is captured pretty flawlessly.
Now, because of the way this camera shoots,
I wouldn't advise capturing any kind of movement
in your 360 photos,
Because there's likely to be motion blur
and stitching issues.
I probably also wouldn't shoot outside
because it's a rotator.
And imagine if it was a windy day,
the camera might move slightly
and that will obviously affect the stitching.
So it will be riskier shooting outside.
It's not to say you can't,
but this won't be a label camera outside.
Now to show you how good the images are from the Trisio,
I want to compare it against two of its closest competitors.
We've got the Insta360 One X2, which is the same price
and currently the best 360 camera in that price range.
And we've got the newly released Recoh Theta X
at 799 US dollars,
which is my 360 camera of choice for photography right now.
Okay, so here I captured my new office
using the inbuilt HDR functions
of all three of these cameras.
They all capture high dynamic range shots extremely well.
And to keep it fair,
I'm comparing the final results straight out of the camera
without doing any colour correction.
So let's do some zooming.
And take a look at that.
Wow. Okay.
So we've got the Theta X on the left,
the Trisio in the middle and the One X2 on the right.
There's no question, the two on the left look the best.
But hang on a second.
The Theta X is 60 megapixels and the Trisio is 30.
I'd even go as far to say
as the Trisio looks slightly sharper than the Theta X.
That is very interesting.
Okay, zooming in some more,
and it looks like things have shifted back to the Theta X.
It's sharper here on this object,
which is slightly closer to the camera than the rooftop was.
Down here I can actually read "YouTube" on the Theta X
and it's a bit of a blur with both of the others.
I'd say my ZZ plant probably looks better
also with the Theta X, marginally.
My right speaker next to my computer,
it's looking best on the Trisio.
That is very interesting.
So we're getting different levels of clarity
in different parts of the image.
But so far you definitely say
that the Theta X and the Trisio are extremely close.
Take a look at the textures on the back corner of my wall,
and I'm gonna give it to the Theta X.
I've noticed consistently the Theta X
has produced less noise overall than the average 360 camera,
and it's doing really well there.
Both the Trisio and the One X2 are a bit too blotchy
at this extreme level of zoom.
But still, all in all, I think this is a really close race
between the Theta X and the Trisio.
Next up with the three cameras side by side
in a really tricky mixed lighting situation.
Here in my en suite bathroom,
the light coming through the window was so bright
that even my iPhone 13 Pro Max struggled to pick it up.
Then inside the rest of the bathroom,
it was relatively dark creating a high level of contrast.
This would be hard for any camera to capture perfectly.
So let's see how these three cameras go.
Now, here they are from the widest perspective,
and the first thing I'm noticing
is that the Trisio, unfortunately,
is struggling with that light.
It seems to be blowing out the entire room
and it's lacking the contrast
that was naturally there in real life.
I can see the One X2 is doing better here,
but it's not as good as the Theta X.
Zooming in quite a bit
and I think I'm seeing the cleanest lines
around the window frame in the Theta X,
but also the Trisio is pretty clean as well.
It's just unfortunate that it's lacking the contrast
in the black areas.
Looking outside at the top of my neighbour's house
and it's just like before.
The Trisio and the Theta X look pretty much identical.
In fact, those little beads of rain on the window.
It could even be sharper with the Trisio.
Yeah, I think they are.
Let's take a look around at some other things,
and here is my toilet roll, in case you were wondering.
Okay, there's no debating.
It looks the best by far with the Theta X.
That's a good looking toilet roll.
And notice the Trisio is also prone to chromatic aberration
more so than the Theta X.
And again, I'm seeing the cleanest most consistent texture
on the left with the Theta X.
This tissue box, again, looks best on the left.
When I move across to a less intensely bright area
of the image, again, I'd say this Theta X has it here.
I think it's because it handles
those smooth services so well
and the dynamic ranges there
that it makes it feel slightly sharper.
So in conclusion of this experiment,
in average lighting and high contrast lighting,
I think we can safely say
the Trisio is on par with the Theta X,
except when it comes to dynamic range.
The superior dynamic range of the Theta X
not only makes surfaces smoother,
but it adds the natural contrast of the scene
that should be there in the final photo.
It's seriously blowing my mind though
how these two cameras are so similar
despite this one being double the resolution of this one.
Something's not right there.
Maybe someone in the comments can explain that to me.
Okay, so I'm up to this point in the video edit
and I have a theory about why that is,
because the Trisio is facing the center of the lens
towards all four directions.
It's capturing the whole 360
with the most amount of clarity.
Whereas with the Theta X,
it's capturing the clearest part of the image
at the front and back, but not the sides.
I suspect it might be slightly soft on the sides.
Whereas the Trisio benefits
from having the center of the lens facing all directions.
This has been Mr. Ben's Editing Theories.
Another thing you need to know about the Trisio
is it shoots photos only.
Obviously, it can't shoot 360 video if it has to rotate
and things don't sync up, that would just be a nightmare.
So it's photo only.
Also, it has eight gigabytes of inbuilt storage
which is not much at all.
However, I have noticed on average
the file sizes are four megabytes
and they claim that you can shoot 1200 photos
with the Trisio before you have to wipe the memory.
But I probably still would consider this
a flaw of the Trisio.
It has a battery life of up to three hours,
which is quite impressive
and above of average for a 360 camera this size.
Something else I do like about the Trisio
is it's got a really fast workflow.
Because you're shooting in inbuilt HDR,
JPEGs with auto exposure,
you simply download the photos to your phone,
then you can AirDrop them to your computer
or just upload them from there.
Even though they do have a desktop software,
you don't need to use it.
Everything is done in the camera, in the app,
and you're good to go.
Of course, you're not going to get the same results
as if you were to shoot manually with bracketing.
But again, I don't really think
that's for the target demographic of this camera.
The final thing I'm going to add,
and this one's gonna be an obvious one,
is that Trisio is not a well known company.
Generally, when you buy from companies like this,
you're not going to get the customer service,
the app updates, the firmware updates
as you would with a bigger company like Insta360.
That said, I think this camera is good to go
if you were to buy it right now
and would be a really good investment
even if it stayed exactly the way it is right now.
So with that said, I'm going to officially declare this
as the best budget virtual tour camera as of early 2022.
You saw those results against the Theta X
and they were seriously good.
And to be able to achieve that
with a camera that comes in at under $500 is pretty cool.
So if you're starting to shoot virtual tours professionally
and you're looking a trustee,
but not too expensive 360 camera,
360 camera to get started with,
then I think the trio is the perfect camera.
It delivers the goods,
it's easy to use, and it's affordable.
Now there will be other 360 cameras coming out this year
that may take the Trisio's title
as the best low budget virtual tour camera,
but I don't know of any
and I think it's probably unlikely.
But if there is Mr. Ben is going to let you know,
so don't forget to hit that subscribe button
to find out whatever that camera is.
So that's it for my review of the Trisio.
If you're looking for something interesting
to watch after this video,
then I've got a free training
called "My Top 10 Tips for Starting a Virtual Tour Business"
which are linked down below,
and it will help you get up and running
with a virtual tour business like that.
Comment below your thoughts on the Trisio Lite 2,
and I'll see you next time.