Insta360 One X2: Overview
Insta360 has launched the new Insta360 One X2, a pocket-sized and lightweight camera with stunning image stabilization, the successor to the Insta360 One X, launched two years ago.
A successor to the One X, this new Insta360 One X2 is featured with improved battery capacity, a much upgraded mobile app, and other creative features.
Insta360 One X2 is compiled with the best set of features, a new waterproof camera with 5.7K recording stabilization.
The real question is whether the 429 dollars they ask for the One X2 are well justified, so let’s dive into an in-depth review.
You can buy it right now for $429.99 from Amazon
Short Overview
Pros:
- Big battery room
- Ambisonic microphones
- Its now waterproof to 10 meters
- Colorful touch display to configure
Cons:
- No good 360 Slow-mo
- HDR only upto 25fps
- No lens protectors
- Requires post production
- Costly accessories
First Impressions
Insta360 One X2 comes with the beautifully crafted charging cable, some papers-including the start guide, and the carrying pouch. Insta360 one X2 comes with excellent packing, up to the high standards of the company. The overall presentation feels good. You can also upgrade the usability a lot with an invisible selfie stick with the addon for bullet time is one of my favourites (well – to be honest, I lost my bullet time stick), There also are ways to mount it on a drone, or other crazy places. The actual question is whether this stunning presentation is well justified, so let’s dive into the complete Insta360 One X2 review.
Insta360 One X2: Design
The overall look of the insta360 one x2 is the same as its predecessor one X, but there are multiple significant changes.
The significant change is the room for a larger swappable battery cell that lets you enjoy 1,630mAh battery power. The Insta360 One X2 weighs 149 grams and is slightly larger than the previous generation.
Insta360 one X2 is featured with a small round colourful touchscreen, which lets you quickly see what’s in the frame and adjusting your shooting mode with greater ease. The touch display helps you shoot videos in Steadicam and other modes and allows you to position yourself in the frame correctly.
The most crucial change is that the Insta360 One X2 has Top-rated waterproofing, so finally you can enjoy windsurfing and diving-but not deeper than 10 meters without the case.
The Insta360 One X2 is designed to shoot from crazy angles, lenses used are very wide, protected with good glass but any impact with the ground or any hard surface can leave your Insta360 One X2 with fat scratches, so make sure to get these lens protectors. I was hoping for the protectors with Insta360 for these wide lenses as GoPro offered for free with their Hero Max model.
Insta360 One X2: Key features and Performance
The Insta360 one X2 is powered with the same processor as it had with the first generation. GoPro, the only competitor, uses their home-made GP1 processor for four generations already, so that’s not too uncommon.
Comparing with the previous generation, the insta360 One X2 is more interesting in setup and features. For instance, It’s much easier to adjust with configuration with the pretty round colourful touchscreen, the slow-motion supported in the latest Insta360 one X2 is 100 FPS, no change from the previous generation. Also, Insta360 one X2 has no considerable advancement in supported resolutions; it supports up to 5.7k 30fps.
You can record videos in multiple shooting modes, for instance, Steadicam mode that lets you shoot digitally stabilized videos and Instapano, a regular recording mode which will capture the footage in insv format – this is the proprietary isnta360 format.
Insta360 is supporting multiple shooting modes for creators.
The easy to access Pureshot feature, switch to photo mode, and the option is at the top are of the display. Best practice – in my opinion – is setting the timer to 3 seconds at least so that you can lift the camera and make sure you are not going to be part of the photo if you don’t want to. Gives you the time to position and standstill. Low light images with the same mode are unique and stunning. It extracts info from DNG files and brings the benefits of HDR with one single shot.
There’s also the popular panorama mode, the weirdly popular these days cloning options – called shadow clone. I’ve recently tested such feature with the latest Mi10T Pro flagship, but with the One X2, it’s the 360-variation.
Must try features:
1.Flylapse
2.Multiview (seeing the footage of front lens and back lens)
3.PureShot
4.Deeptrack2.0
5.Shadow Clone (Shotlab)
6.Steady cam mode: Pro mode. Horizon levelling and the ability to change ratios in post-production
Insta360 One X2: Software
Insta360 One X2 is of very little value without its stunning software. It lets you pass your video footage, and you will see excellent image stabilization with advanced flow state technology. The AI-supported app supports fantastic features, including subject tracking. You can select any object to be tracked, add effects, play with stunning colors, apply filters, and adjust the audio.
The most significant change about features in the Insta360 app, is SHOT LAB, a collection of unique templates and effects applied to different footages. There are multiple templates you can enjoy from Shadow cloning to Fly lapse.
The fly lapse is also incredible – feels like you are flying with FPV drone and that’s crazy good! If you want to track something or someone in the footage, all you have to do is highlight the object and the software automatically for you.
Using the app, you can also have the camera for a web camera even for live-streaming, so that’s quite an exciting opportunity and will attract gamers, casters, and so on. To be fair – the real deal about the X2 is the software.
The smartphone app has gone a long way, and there are lots of awesome predefined templates that make the footage so exciting and fun to watch and is way more potent than the macOS or the Windows PC software.
In fact, With One X2 it is super easy to make the picture in the picture now whereas you can frame yourself and something in front of you, and you can adjust it in real-time using the tiny screen on the camera itself – and it’s just a tap away.
What we’d like to see improved
I appreciate the new advancements in Insta360 one X2, including the brilliant life battery of 1630 MAH, enabling you to shoot 80-minute longer videos of highest possible resolution. Comparing Insta360, one X2 battery, shooting is better and longer than the newest action cams.
One thing that disappointed me about the Insta360 one X2 is not having an excellent slow motion. X2 only supports slow motion up 100 FPS. Also, X2 only supports HDR up to 25FPS, that is again disappointing. It should get better at least up to 30 FPS.
On the hardware end, I dislike the lack of lenses protectors, insta360 should consider including these protectors for the lenses that deserve to be well-protected.
Insta360 One X2 Review: Summary
There has been a lot of improvements in X2 after their previous generation. Comparatively, X2 has better image quality, coloring, audio quality, and panoramic audio. It has improved and longer battery life, increased by 50 percent compared with their previous model. X2 also supports waterproofing without the case and is capable of Shotlab and robust software support.
In my opinion, Insta360 one X2 is a meaningful replacement of its predecessor one X in terms of advancements. Costs almost the same as the One X, X2 has better build quality, larger battery, colourful display for reference, the new ambisonic microphone setup.
Again, The Insta360 one X2 is of no value without the software that allows you to unleash your mind’s creativity. One X2 is a fantastic camera to shoot creatively and to capture footage from insane angles. One X2, the best looking camera and generally – the most advanced panoramic action camera ever designed. And no, I’m not neglecting the GoPro max, which is, of course, a great device, but in a slightly different category, in my opinion.
It would be a mistake to ignore the complete and detailed review in this Insta360 ONE X2 Panoramic Action Camera: The Best Just got (a Little) Better Video