It's here!
I'm here in Berlin today and look what I've got: it's the Insta360 ONE X
the brand-new 360 camera that has just been released.
Hey, this isn't an official review, it's more of a first impressions.
Part two will be coming within the next few weeks, once I've had more time to play with it
and get more of a feel, but for now I can tell you all the key features
what they do and I'm gonna go out and shoot with it right now.
To see part two of this video, make sure you hit that subscribe button
and it will be showing up in your news feed very, very soon.
The design is so much better.
This is quite a slim 360 camera
and it seems to be made of a tough plastic material.
It feels like you could knock it around and it wouldn't damage it too badly.
We have two buttons on the front.
We have an LCD screen this time, which is very rare for 360 cameras.
Look what it is...
It's a battery compartment.
We have a micro USB port on the side
a microphone on the top
on the bottom is a 1/4 inch tripod thread and
it's not plastic this time, feels like some kind of metal material.
I think they learned their lesson from last time.
Look even closer and there is the microSD slot.
This is going to be one of the best cards you can get for the ONE X
because of the almighty V30.
This is a 5.7K camera so you will need a card that is this fast.
As someone that has used a lot of 360 cameras in their time
to me it feels like the Insta360 ONE X has improved upon
a lot of the issues we've had in the past and I've got to say this starts with the design.
This design is so, so good and I can't believe that I'm saying that from Insta360 because
in the past I have really not liked the design of their cameras
but this one I can barely fault. It's slim, it's light, it's easy to use
and it has an LCD screen, yay! To begin with, let's talk memory.
At the moment, the ONE X can use up to a 128GB card
which at 5.7K will last about two and a bit hours.
They're advertising the battery as lasting about one hour at 5.7K
and that's a pretty average for a 360 camera
they all last about an hour when shooting at max resolution
so the ONE X is giving us more of the same thing.
The good thing about this though is you can get replaceable batteries, so you could shoot
all day long basically and just replace the battery so
good feature with the replaceable batteries.
The photo resolution of the ONE X is 18 megapixels
down from 24.
No!
You're probably thinking:
"this does seem like a really strange move, right, to go down in resolution?"
However, I've talked to the Insta360 team and they explained to me that
they're now using bigger pixels that look more or less as sharp as it did before.
I know this seems like a downgrade, but after looking at some of the photos
to be honest, it looks exactly the same as the 24 megapixels.
It seems like they have made a few improvements in terms of photo quality.
The camera does have a HDR mode, you can shoot RAW with the ONE X.
Something I've always noticed with Insta360 cameras is
the colours are always a little bit lighter than you see them in real life
and the contrast isn't as strong.
This does make the images look a little bit washed out
so you will probably have to colour correct your photos.
After watching back some of the 5.7K video
I'm really impressed with how sharp it looks.
No question it blows all the 4K cameras out of the water
and it's definitely the best 5.7K camera under $500 right now.
As much as I say resolution isn't that important, with video, it kind of is
especially when people are watching it back as a 360 video
5.7K means it looks more like HD when looking around.
4K 360 video has left a lot to be desired.
Whenever you're watching back in 360
and you look around, it looks more like 720p or less.
With 5.7K from any camera
it looks more like HD, and I can truly say that the ONE X does look like HD.
I think it's really cool that Insta360 are making 5.7K accessible to consumers because
over the last year or two, it's been something only for the pros.
I think it's going to bring 5.7K into 2019 as the standard for 360 video.
The next feature to mention is bullet time.
You could do this with ONE before and now you can do it with the ONE X
and I gave it a go and I've got some good results.
Because it now shoots a full 360 at 100 frames a second
you have more ability to reframe and
choose exactly what you're seeing with the bullet time movement.
Do I think bullet time is cool?
No, I still think it's really gimmicky and I'm probably never going to use it.
However, I would say this is the best slow-motion I've seen
from a point-and-shoot 360 camera yet.
No question, Insta360 have awesome 6-axis stabilisation with their cameras.
You can shake it around, you can do whatever you want with it
and the horizon is gonna be
basically dead smooth.
Going back to the design real quick, while I really love it in basically every way
now that the lenses are protruding a lot more than their previous camera
it is causing the red dot of doom
that we know from the Theta cameras
and haven't really noticed it as a big issue but I have started noticing lens flare.
So that's something you get when you have big lenses that stick out
the sun is going to hit them and cause those red dots.
Due to the thinner design, the stitching is really good with the ONE X.
I haven't noticed any issues yet
sometimes when you preview it, it can look pretty shocking
but with stitching optimisation on both mobile and desktop
it fixes basically all stitching issues.
I mean get too close to any 360 camera
and there's going to be stitching issues
but I found staying about a foot away, there's been no issue whatsoever.
This is the best Insta360 camera I've seen so far in low light.
It actually does a really decent job for both photo and video.
Yeah you do get a bit of grain
but it's significantly improved.
For videos, it's actually usable
in the past it hasn't been - it's just been so blurry and grainy
but now you can use it even with really basic ambient light at night time.
And because the camera has manual controls, with photos
you can adjust your shutter speed and capture basically anything, no matter how dark it is.
I will do some more in-depth tests at night time but for now I give it a pass.
Next let's talk about compatibility
and the ONE X is compatible with both iPhone and Android this time.
Yeah!
Again, I feel like this is Insta360 realising all the times they've messed up
all the bad features of their previous cameras and they're fixing them.
That was probably one of the biggest complaints of the ONE is
it's just not really compatible with Android and so many people are on Android.
The next cool thing they've added
is you can choose whether you want to download your footage via Wi-Fi or via cable.
I know it sounds totally lame downloading with a cable but it's so much faster.
And talking about Wi-Fi downloads, the ONE X downloads super fast.
I was genuinely surprised at how fast it can download
5.7K video and photos as well.
This is how long it takes to download a photo.
Yeah, that's fast, isn't it?
It actually kind of does make a 5.7k workflow work on mobile.
Most phones, if not all phones, can't handle 5.7K video yet
so you're stuck using OverCapture
which is all I use basically anyway
but if you want 5.7K 360 video, you will have to go to your computer.
As usual, Insta360 have the best app for a 360 camera
it's so intuitive and easy to use and you can do so much.
There's only a few things really that you would need to go to your computer for
that's 5.7 K video
if you want to use features like RAW and bring your photos into photoshop
otherwise you can do basically everything in the app.
The reframing is super easy - you just tap your finger
and it will quickly and easily reframe 5.7K video into a flat 16 by 9 OverCapture video.
Another exciting feature they've added is multi-clip editing.
We've always been stuck with editing just one clip at a time, you can't make a 360 movie.
Now you can combine several clips into the same video and export them all at once.
The next cool feature they've added is called TimeShift and it essentially
allows you to change your frame rate throughout one single clip
so if you want to start at 30 frames a second
you can do that for the first third of your clip
then you can switch to 50
then you can switch to 100.
So you can essentially change the frame rate
if something exciting happens and you want it in slow-motion
you don't have to have the whole clip at 100 frames a second.
The ONE X is $399, making it
not quite a consumer camera, not quite a professional camera.
Would I call it a prosumer camera?
I guess I would for video because it's 5.7K
so few cameras have that and
high resolution is really important for 360 video.
And if this is something that's important to you
this is reason enough to buy the ONE X without necessarily
having to invest all the money into buying something like the Fusion.
This is also one of the best options for those people
that like sticking to mobile and not going to computer.
Personally I love the mobile workflow, so this is a massive value add for me
and I really could see you doing everything on mobile without having to go to computer.
So how would I describe the ONE X?
It's a prosumer camera for consumers.
This is a camera that beginners could use
if they want to get a really professional result straight away.
Would I call this the best 360 camera of 2018?
It's hard to say at this point.
There haven't been a whole lot of 360 camera releases this year.
For me this easily stands out as one of the best, if not the best.
Would you buy this camera?
Yeah, if you consider the features I've talked about
a significant upgrade to the camera that you have now
you should.
If you're still uncertain, wait for my second video
and I'll cover all the things I didn't talk about in this video, in more depth
once I've had more hands-on experience and once we've seen a few firmware updates.
If you have any questions about the ONE X, leave them in the comments below
and I'd be curious to know:
are you considering the ONE X
or are you waiting for something else?
Let me know down there.
Be sure to check out the Insta360 community Facebook as well
if you want to see sample footage and interact with the Insta360 community.
There's heaps of cool posts there.
If you want to see what people are doing, that's the place to be.
So that's it from me
it's time to shoot me some 360.
See you in the next video