I'm in Las Vegas!
And you've probably heard,
there's a new camera that's just been released
and it's called the Insta360 ONE R.
In this video, I'm going to give you my first impressions,
as well as 40 things you need to know
about this potentially game-changing camera.
Number one, is it's modular,
which means you can disassemble the individual components
and reassemble them as a completely different camera
with a different purpose.
So, you're not obligated to keep it as a 360 camera,
but you can also turn it into a GoPro-type camera.
There are currently three different builds of the ONE R:
the 360 build, the 4K build, and the 1-Inch build.
The 360 build is for shooting 360 photos and videos,
the 4K build is a cheaper option
for shooting regular flat photos and videos,
and the 1-Inch build is a much higher resolution
and better quality camera.
They call it the 1-Inch build
because it has an in-built one inch sensor.
That is pretty incredible for something this size.
I don't own it yet, but I've seen some footage from it,
and it looks really, really good.
And just to clarify, the 1-Inch build
is only for flat photos and videos,
it's not a 360 one-inch sensor.
The main body of the camera
has a relatively bright touch screen,
and this is also a 360-type screen,
so you can preview your live images
as well as your recorded images in 360,
and pan all the way around with your finger.
So, the way it works
is you connect the body bit to the lens bit,
and the bottom red bit is the battery.
And if you take that out, the camera won't work.
At first, I thought this was just
to connect the two together,
but actually, this is a battery
and that means you can have lots of batteries on hand,
and they also have an extended battery
that is double the size of this one.
That's pretty cool, I've never seen a 360 camera
with different sizes of battery, because hypothetically,
you could make this three or four or five times as long,
and it will still be in the blind spot of the 360 camera.
So, I think that is potentially a really good feature.
By the way, without the battery,
you can't use these two on their own.
You can't take them apart and use this
and you can't use this on its own.
There's no battery in either of them.
Now, you're probably wondering
how they achieve those really cool drone effects
from their teaser videos.
Well, here's how: they use one 360 camera on the top,
they use one 360 camera on the bottom of a drone,
and there's this special drone mount they've used
to hold them together in place at the exact right angle,
and then they've stitched the footage together later
to totally eliminate the drone,
creating the most mesmerizing effects.
I even saw a mock-up design
for using the ONE R as a stereoscopic VR180 camera.
So, there you go, that's modularity for you.
You can disassemble the individual components
and reassemble them according to the type of content
you wanna create, whether it's flat video,
whether it's 360 video, or stereoscopic 3D 180.
Woo-hoo! Geez, this is getting complicated.
I just want something simple
and there's like 10,000 options.
Is this too complicated?
Could be.
It seems to give you more choice to do more things.
Is it too many things? Probably.
But, better too much than too little, right?
Another good feature is the camera comes
with protective lenses for all three builds of the camera.
Just click them onto the camera cage
and you are ready to go.
To be honest, I found this to be a bit clunky
when you're trying to change lenses
and you only have 60 seconds to do so.
It doesn't always come apart easily,
and I found myself with sore fingers
trying to do it quickly.
Now, let's get to the specs,
and the ONE R has the same specs as the INSTA 360 ONE X,
they haven't even gone up one pixel
with their 360 build of the camera.
Yes, I know we were all expecting it,
but they haven't done it.
They focused on improving other features of the camera
over the resolution, and to be honest with you,
I think there are enough improvements with other things
that this isn't as important,
and I've noticed the photos and videos
are of slightly better quality anyway over the ONE X.
Here are the specs in 360 mode,
you'll notice their basically the same
with their resolutions and frame rates,
but what stands out to me is with the 1-Inch edition,
they're offering 5.3K video from an action camera.
This has never been done before, this is the first time
an action camera that fits in your pocket
can shoot 5.3K video.
Do we need 5.3K video for action-type footage?
I don't know, probably not,
but you've got it if you want it.
By the way, the ONE R is waterproof
straight out of the box with all three builds.
You still will need to use some kind of underwater housing
to get your footage to stitch properly,
but at least it'll be water-resistant now
if you're out shooting in the rain
or putting your camera near the water.
You don't need to worry about it being ruined.
It also has a USB-C mic adaptor
if you want to attach an external mic, a lapel,
or any kind of sound recording device.
This is really cool, and it makes me think
why hasn't someone done this before?
It seems so simple, just have a USB-C mic adaptor
and plug it into camera, and there you go,
you've got properly recorded sound.
The ONE R also has voice control,
and if you want to control it in another way,
it connects to Apple watches,
as well as having a GPS Smart Remote
that you can click, and it will start recording.
Depending on the type of build of the ONE R you want to buy,
it will come at a few different price points.
The cheapest one is the 4K build,
then the 360 build, then the 1-Inch build.
And, of course, they package them together and individually,
and there's like 1,000 packages on the website,
so you'll need to spend a bit of time
figuring out exactly whatever it is that you need.
Regardless, though, it seems you can get
around two different builds of this camera for under $500,
and I think that's a very reasonable price.
Now, let's talk about the photos, the videos,
and the image quality.
And it's still really early days with the ONE R,
it was literally released today, and the software
is still about a week away from being able
to stitch the 360 videos and photos properly.
So, INSTA360 have put an embargo
on releasing footage from the ONE R, so for now,
I'm gonna show you some of their samples,
and in my next video next week,
I'll show you some of my samples.
So, despite the 360 build of the ONE R having
the same image quality and video quality as the ONE X,
I have actually noticed an improvement
in the way the photos and videos look,
they do look sharper, even though they're probably not.
Their dynamic range is better, and overall,
I found I've been getting sharper-looking images and videos
from the ONE R.
Because sharpness doesn't always come purely
from increasing resolution,
sometimes it comes from an improvement in dynamic range,
so you can see more detail in the shadow,
and the highlight areas.
It can also mean less noise and motion blur,
so you can see the details
that should've been there to begin with,
but because the camera wasn't set exactly perfectly,
you're getting those kinds of issues.
Well, I've noticed with the ONE R,
a lot of those things have been fixed in the camera,
and that's why the exact same specs are looking better.
Personally, I've noticed a drastic improvement
in the raw quality of the camera.
It shoots really good raw, I've been inseeing it
and getting some really, really impressive results with it.
I don't know if it's quite on the level of the THETA Z1,
but it's getting close.
Now, get this: the ONE R
has HDR Raw bracketing with nine photos.
That's like nine extremely high-quality raw photos
blended together into one really impressive photo
with good dynamic range.
Normally, with most cameras, in-built HDR
would mean three photos, and that's it,
whereas they've gone up to nine.
I mean, you can change so many settings within this camera
to get your taste of HDR,
but this is a massive improvement
in the image quality from these cameras,
because INSTA360 have focused themselves
more on video in the past,
but now, it seems like they're also
drastically improving the photo quality
with features like this bracketing/raw/HDR.
It also has DNG stacking, like the KanDao Qoocam,
where it takes a whole bunch of raw photos
and combines them together
to make the overall image quality better,
reducing the amount of noise
and other imperfections in the image
by blending them all together and removing the bad ones
and only including the good areas of the good photos.
This is especially noticeable at nighttime,
they have a feature called night mode, where you turn it on,
and it optimizes the camera settings for shooting at night,
so you're getting a lot less noise and motion blur.
And when you're shooting 360 video or even regular video,
with the ONE R, you'll notice a lot less motion blur
if you're running at nighttime,
it's not going to wobble and be blurry
all the way around the horizon.
And it seems like the best build of camera
for shooting at night is going to be the 1-Inch edition,
because it has a one-inch sensor,
and it's gonna be so much better
to shoot at night with it because of that.
Speaking of night, they've added a Starlapse mode,
Whoo!
Have you ever seen one of those time-lapses at nighttime
where the stars move around magically
like they're shooting stars?
Well, you can do that with the ONE R.
I haven't used it yet, but I've seen a sample,
and that looks amazing,
so I'm definitely going to try that out as soon as I can.
Moving on to video features, and it seems like
they have been working on their stabilization.
It's always been really good with the ONE X,
but it seems to be slightly better with the ONE R.
They're also bringing over a few recent updates
to the ONE X to the ONE R, like Color Plus,
which boosts the saturation, as well as HDR video.
They've also now added H.265 compression to the 360 videos,
and that means they're going to be sharper
than their previous videos,
because it's a better type of compression
that results in better image quality and sharper videos.
They've added this cool motion detection feature,
which can basically tell where the person is in the frame
and orient the type of video you're shooting
or the type of effect you're going for towards the person.
No more spending hours manually keyframing where you are,
if you're doing a bullet-time
and having to turn the screen, "I'm there",
turn the screen, "I'm there",
turn the screen, "I'm there".
No, you don't have to do that.
Now it detects that and it does it for you,
so you can do a bullet-time
and it'll automatically frame you in the middle
and create the bullet-time effect
with much fewer steps in the workflow.
They also have this cool stop motion effect.
That's pretty good.
Another decent-sounding feature they've added
is Point to Track, where you hold your camera
and selfie stick towards your subject,
and basically follow them with the camera pointed at them,
and it will automatically track them,
and later on, the video will follow their movement.
Now, really quick, I want to address the non-360 mode,
which is 4K mode right now and is also the 1-Inch mode.
I've taken some samples with it, and it looks good.
It looks really good.
The dynamic range is good, and this is a camera
that can easily compete with the GoPro HERO8.
As you can see, it looks identical to it,
and they're clearly trying to give GoPro
a run for their money,
and I think they'll be able to do it.
So, already, from the footage I've taken in GoPro mode,
which is what I'm gonna call it,
in GoPro mode, it looks the same the GoPro.
So, if you're someone that likes shooting regular video
as well as 360 video,
this will mean you can have two cameras in one.
So, if that's something that excites you, then,
there you go, it's got it.
I found the stabilization in non-360 mode
to be extremely impressive.
I can shake the camera around like crazy,
and you see almost no shake,
so this is going to be a camera that is also
going to be a really good option for extreme sports
or any type of action camera-type situation.
Something else I noticed is when built like this,
it can shoot in 200 frames per second,
that is like, ultra slow motion, so if you like slow-mo,
then this is going to be a good camera for that.
Now, really quickly, I wanna cover the app.
The first thing I noticed when I was using the app
is it has a live histogram,
which shows you your shadows and your highlights,
and the balance of your images and videos straightaway.
That's gonna be a really good feature,
because sometimes, when you're shooting in bright sunlight,
you can't always see if your image is overexposed,
whereas, the histogram helps you with that,
it tells you, "Hey buddy, turn down your ISO".
It also has lots of manual control in the app for all modes.
You can set your exposure within 1/3 of the stop
using so many different variables.
For me, what impresses me the most
is the HDR mode and the amount of control you can have
on bracketing your photos.
It also has background download and no transfer editing,
which means you can use your phone
and go off and do other things
while your footage is downloading.
That's something that has always annoyed me
about all 360 cameras is I can't use my phone
while I'm waiting ten minutes for my footage to download.
It's kind of limiting, I like doing stuff
outside of just watching the loading bar go from 0 to 100.
It also has some cool editing features, like auto editing,
where it helps you take several different shots
from your 360 video and turn them into
a sequence of locked-off 16x9 shots
that play one after another.
It's got a few other AI-focus editing features,
such as Auto Frame and auto TimeShift,
which basically helps you get the cool effects
you may have already been getting with the ONE X,
but much faster and easier,
and it just picks it up a lot faster.
Another good one is Deep Track,
if you wanna track a subject
and they go in and out of the shot,
say, they're covered by a tree or wall
but then they come back into frame,
it will keep the movement smooth
and focus on them even with visual distractions in the way.
The final thing to know is,
do we really need this?
A GoPro/360 camera isn't necessary.
Well, at first, when I heard about the ONE R,
I thought, hell no, what a stupid idea.
It just didn't make sense to me
why they weren't going for a pure spec upgrade
and they were trying to make some fancy camera
with a thousand different uses.
But then, I actually used it
and saw some of the awesome stuff it could do,
as well as the improved video and image quality
I was getting over the ONE X
and over some of my other point-and-shoot 360 cameras,
and now, I'm actually really excited about using this.
Yes, there are way too many features
and I'm not even going to use 1/3 of them,
but for the 1/3 of them that I do use,
I going to get a lot of value from it
and shoot some really good 360 photo and video content.
Look, I may even use this as a vlogging camera
while I'm traveling.
I think this could be a really good option
for shooting locked-off 16x9 video at 4K
or even 5.3K with the 1-Inch build.
So, I guess maybe, I would call the ONE R
the 360 camera for minimalists
who don't wanna take around ten cameras
while they're traveling and going about their day.
You just want one and you just wanna replace a single unit,
it's still early days,
so who knows what the future holds for the ONE R.
What do you think?
Let me know down in the comments.
Is this going to be a useful camera for you?
Or is it overkill?
Is it just way too many features?
Actually, I'm going to call this
the 360 camera for content creators on steroids
who wanna shoot a million different things
in a million different ways, this is the right camera.
And if your main focus is social media-type content,
then you will not be disappointed by the ONE R.
I put a link to the ONE R down there
so you can check it out for yourself
on the INSTA360 website.
And I'm extremely late for CES,
so I better get moving.
Later.
(grunting)
(sighing)
(snoring)