I've never had a higher-end camera like this, so my experience with such things at this price level (mid 200's) is limited to this one camera. My previous cameras were all the cheapie 40 and under stuff. So, I have no comparison data to provide vs gopro, dji, etc... .
Setup:
This was a little fiddly. You have to connect your cell phone to the camera to get it to 'register' or unlock or whatever it had to do. This involves installing an app, then configuring your phone's WiFi to find the -camera's- WiFi sub-net it uses in order to establish essentially a tiny VPN between your phone and the camera. Once that gets sorted out, the camera will communicate with the phone over this network to do updates and whatever activation/registration it needs to do.
This took a little doing... there's some timing issues at play here such that if you don't get your phone connx'd to the cam wi-fi in a timely manner, it times-out and you have to start over. If you're not real familiar with how to tell your phone to connect to a specific WiFi network by name, research how to do that first. The camera directions can only assume you know this (b/c it doesn't know what phone you have/OS-level/updates/etc), so it doesn't go into great detail on how this is done for any given phone.
Once that got sorted out, it seemed to work fine. I got the camera activated/setup, and onto using it.
Using the camera:
Its pretty intuitive to use the camera. The back has a small touchscreen that you use to drill around in menus and settings. It takes a little poking around to find stuff, but once you know where various settings are, you can go back to them easily enough. I haven't messed with many camera settings per-se... but it seems to have the gamut like exposure, F-stops, white-balance, whatever.. camera-nerd stuff.
I put a 512G card in it of the exact type the manual calls for. With a full battery, and resolution set to something like 2K, it shows perhaps 2hrs+ of record time. The battery won't last that long, but just saying that the camera does this calc to give you a theoretical max-recording-time value from what I can tell.
At that point, it is a simple operation of pressing the 'record' button (red-ring) and letting the camera do its thing. It beeps when it has to create a new file while recording, so expect that and don't think (like I did) that the camera just had some problem. Watch for the blinking red light (which shows on the back display as well as the front of camera body) to know it is in 'recording' mode.
This brings up my main gripe: the switch-over time to a new file seems excessive... its like 3 seconds.
Again, I have no idea what other cameras do.. but there's this 3-sec gap between videos that are recorded consecutively. This means you'll lose that 'action' when this happens. I'm not making movies, nothing is going to get published on youtube... I use the camera to record dirtbike riding just so I can critique my own riding. However, if I was making stuff for 'consumption', this little issue would irritate me a lot more than it does now.
There might be a way to trim this down in some setting, but I haven't stumbled across it yet. If someone knows, feel free to reply to this and chime in with tips!
Audio quality:
Ehhh.. its good, not great. Some of my cheapie 40 dollar units had arguably better audio. In my case, the primary issue is the wind-noise filter. I have to have that on while riding otherwise it picks up just this roar of wind. So, having the wind-filter on really attenuates the audio. Its not 'nearly silent' by any stretch, but it is noticeably 'turned down'. My ride-time voiceovers are largely inaudible unless I make an effort to speak loudly. The camera is chin-mounted on my helmet, so it's right in front of my mouth where you'd think it would have no issues picking up my voice.
The sound you get is clean though... I don't notice a lot of artifacting, so to speak.
Video/stabilization quality:
For me, again as a 1st-time user of such a camera system... this thing looks amazing. Deep saturation in colors... great detail! The stabilization, whatever the default settings are, is plenty good for me. It isn't overly-stabilized such that it looks like a drone is flying along on a flat trajectory... which, that sort of footage (to me) tends to minimize the 'action' aspect of an 'action camera'. I want to see 'some' camera-bob and so on to know "ok, yeah, this part of this trail is real bumpy", so to speak. To me, watching the videos makes me feel like I'm right there riding the trail. If you think of it like how a bird flies... its head stays relatively stationary in space, but its body rolls up/down with each wing beat. Now, if you had a camera that could see the wings, you'd see them moving around a fair bit, but the overall 'view forward' is pretty stable. Elevation changes are noticeable, but feel natural... i.e, as soon as an elevation change happens, the camera reflects it... it doesn't 'smooth it away' and present this odd transition-phase with a slow panning operation between elevations. Hard to express, I guess.. you have to see it.
I am sure some folks hate any camera movement in their stabilized videos. To each their own, there are probably use-cases where you want that ultra stable performance that dampens out all movement/action. I can just report that what I see with this camera's stabilization seems reasonable and realistic. Maybe folks that get motion sick easily want that ultra-stable smoothing?
Recording duration:
I've recorded video from start to 'battery expired' many times now, and with the stock battery and my video settings (again, like 2K or whatever that comes out to, not 4K), I easily get an hour + 20 or so minutes. No overheating, no interruptions (other than the 3s file swapover time). I had read that battery life was really good on this camera, and that was the primary reason I got it. I did not want to get a camera that could only record 30min before killing the battery. The battery on this camera seems pretty substantial, but its easy to change and 'locks-on' to the camera body.
Form Factor:
This is not a 'small' camera like some of the cube-shaped stuff I've seen out there. I don't think its terribly much bigger than its primary competition though. If an ultra-small camera is your main goal, keep shopping.
Camera Mount/Shell:
I think this mounting system is a positive, but I have read opinions that some folks don't like such a system. To me, the primary benefit is that it is super-easy to 'dismount' the camera.. just pop open the carrier-shell and slide the camera out... vs having to unscrew a mount and potentially upset your 'aiming' of the camera.
I did have one instance where the little 'door' popped open on a ride, I didn't notice it right away, but the camera stayed put until I did notice and was able to close the door. The camera fit in the shell is slightly snug, so I figure that is on purpose in case that door opens up.
Final thought:
I waited a long time to buy a 'better' camera, and suffered with some $40 cheapies for a while... with zero stabilization and 'meh' resolution. I can gladly say that this camera was well worth the purchase. I get way more utility out of re-watching my videos to spot mistakes b/c I can actually see what's going on vs a jarring mish-mash of colors as soon as the trail gets 'interesting'.
Closing:
I knew that Insta360 was going to phase-out this particular camera before I bought it b/c they had a new one to launch. That's fine by me, that's why I waited... I wanted to see the platform mature as much as it could, see what the support looks like (it looks good.. I got very recent updates to firmware immediately). I noticed that they still offer great support for the camera systems that came before this one too. So, what I wanted was to get a 'pretty good' camera at a 'close-out' price. That's what I got.
| Brand Name | Insta360 |
|---|---|
| Item Weight | 4.5 ounces |
| Product Dimensions | 2.76 x 1.97 x 1.57 inches |
| Country of Origin | China |
| Item model number | CINRSGP/E |
| Batteries | 1 Lithium Polymer batteries required. |
| Color Name | Black & Red |
| Special Features | FlowState Image Stabilization, 6K Widescreen Mode, Active HDR, 48MP Photo, Time Lapse |
