Insta360 Ace Pro - The KING of Action Cams! [Big Sensor + Flip-Out Screen]
The Insta 360 Ace Pro: A Revolutionary Action Camera
When it comes to action cameras, there are several options available on the market, each with its own unique features and benefits. In this article, we'll take a closer look at the Insta 360 Ace Pro, a camera that is sure to turn heads due to its impressive specs and advanced features.
One of the standout features of the Insta 360 Ace Pro is its stabilization system, which provides smooth and seamless footage even in extreme conditions. This feature is particularly useful for content creators and videographers who need high-quality video without the hassle of stabilizing it themselves. The camera's ability to track movement with ease makes it ideal for capturing stunning footage of landscapes, sports, and other action-packed activities.
Another notable feature of the Insta 360 Ace Pro is its active HDR mode, which allows for better dynamic range and more detail in shadows. This feature is particularly useful for recording video in bright environments, where traditional HDR modes can sometimes result in blown-out highlights. The camera's active HDR mode also includes a range of other modes to play with, including options for capturing photos and creating stunning highlight reels.
In addition to its impressive stabilization and HDR capabilities, the Insta 360 Ace Pro also features advanced AI-powered editing tools. These tools include an AI Warp option that can stylize video footage using generative AI, as well as an AI Highlight Assistant that creates highlight montages of clips recorded on the camera. The AI Highlight Assistant is particularly useful for capturing long clips like time-lapses or loop recordings, as it can help identify key moments and add them to the highlight reel.
One area where the Insta 360 Ace Pro shines is in its battery life. Unlike some other action cameras on the market, which can be prone to overheating and shutting down due to battery drain, the Ace Pro lasted for an impressive hour and 15 minutes of continuous recording at 4K 60fps. This makes it ideal for extended shoots or adventures where you need to capture hours of footage without interruptions.
In contrast, the GoPro camera, which is a popular alternative to the Insta 360 Ace Pro, experienced overheating issues when testing battery life. While both cameras were set to record at 4K 60fps and timed out after approximately 29 minutes, the GoPro shut down due to overheating, while the Ace Pro continued running smoothly.
The Insta 360 Ace Pro also features faster charging than its competitors, with a 0-80% charge time of just 22 minutes. This makes it ideal for content creators who need to quickly edit and upload their footage.
However, there are some potential drawbacks to consider when using the Insta 360 Ace Pro. For example, wearing polarized sunglasses can sometimes cause issues with the camera's screen visibility, while the lens cover is not replaceable - if you break it, you'll need to replace the whole thing or opt for the Insta 360 Care Plan.
The camera also comes in a pre-production model form and has pre-release software running on it. Also, it has some physical differences compared to other action cameras like GoPro. However, these minor issues do not detract from its overall capabilities and performance.
Overall, the Insta 360 Ace Pro is an impressive action camera that offers advanced features, stunning image quality, and a user-friendly interface. Its ability to track movement with ease, capture high-quality video without stabilization, and provide faster charging make it an ideal choice for content creators, videographers, and adventure-seekers alike.
If you're considering purchasing the Insta 360 Ace Pro, we'd love to hear from you! What features do you think are most important in an action camera? Have you had any experience with similar cameras or equipment? Let us know in the comments below.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe problem with almost all action cameras are the sensors are just too small right so low light nighttime footage looks pretty rubbish also the screens are just too small I know we've got the one the front and the back but once you change this to the aspect ratio that you actually want to use like 16x9 916 it's tiny it's like a postage stamp size so let me introduce you to this guy this is the new insta 360 Ace Pro it's their new flagship action camera which firstly has a much bigger sensor secondly secondly secondly has a flip out screen and together with some very impressive AI magic and a whole bunch of other features I'm going to walk you through this is one of the most impressive action cameras I've used in a long time and a big thank you to Ino 360 for sending this out for me to have a play with and also partnering with me on this video over the past couple of weeks I've been testing the Ace Pro on a boat hurling down the river temps in London which was a lot of fun for a bit until I felt incredibly seasick but hey do it for the content right I mounted it to my car both inside and outside as I regularly use action cameras to shoot car videos and while exterior shots like this are always pretty good the lower light interior shots have often been a bit tricky so I was Keen to see how this fed I got on my bike well I didn't my buddy and videographer James did because I actually can't ride a bike and we got some glorious 4K 120 slow motion video riding through a puddle properly tested in the rain and the mud ready for a good hosing down afterwards all very action Mar I'm sure you'd agree but I also took it on a night out with me in SoHo partly because I can't switch off and my work is my entire life and I have a problem but also because I wanted to see just how good that bigger sensor is and to give you a taste if I bring in the latest GoPro Hero 12 both shooting at 4K 30 just look at the difference so let me give you a walkthrough show you what this can do and how it compares to the GoPro to see if it's worth the price because at £ 449 same in dollars this is actually 5050 quid more than the GoPro but I would argue you are getting more for your money but let's see what you think so this is the insta 360 Ace Pro and on the face of it a pretty typical looking action camera but peeling off the plastic you can see we've got that liyer branding as they've co-engineered the camera and we've also got that one over 1.3 in sensor and for context the GoPro 12 has a 1 over 1.9 in sensor meaning this captures a lot more light which is particularly useful as I'm sure you can imagine in lower light scenarios so for shooting indoors or at night which here in the UK means anytime after like half 3 in the afternoon we have this small little screen on the front showing you recording and Battery information but then the best bit is back here with this 2.4 in flip screen this shows me my full 16x9 video or if I'm holding it sideways 9 by 16 and it means I can see how much battery I have the timer just make sure you are looking at the lens and not the screen so for being able to frame your shots or just for vlogging so you can see yourself as I'm being attacked by pigeons ah oh my goodness I really am being attacked by pigeons however you can also use the app on your phone or even your Apple watch as a remote viewfinder or you could buy this optional GPS preview remote which gives you a Life preview and control of the camera on your wrist or say the handlebars of your bike while also recording GPS and other data which you can add in poed now as well as the camera itself in the box we have their standard magnetic Mount which is very similar to the GoPro and so it'll work with all their accessories as well and the advantage with this being magnetic is you can then quickly Mount or Dismount the camera which is very handy if you're in a rush but I would suggest also getting this quick release Mount as it includes the folding two prong Mount and also a screw hole which is very useful but there's plenty of other mounting and accessory options as well as they continue to build their ecosystem so up front we have this little light bar which goes between different colors you can see it's red when I'm recording and it also goes red when it's charging as well we have the small screen for some at a glance information but mostly I find myself obviously using the flip screen uh on this side we have the battery and just the battery because on the other side we have the the micro SD card slot and also the USBC Port then above that power button at the top we have the shutter recording button so one press uh to St or stop recording you've also got gesture and voice control I'll show you in a second and also at the back here either side of the screen you can pinch in and then it unlocks the screen and I do really appreciate how durable this hinge is because obviously if you're going to have this on your bike or your boat or whatever is you're doing it's going to have a lot of movement and obviously you don't want that screen to move from where you want it so it stays nice and St but at the same time it's not too hard to move up and down either really nice hinge design I think and the whole thing obviously fits in palm of your hand it is waterproof to 10 m or 33 ft although you can buy a separate dive case if you want to go deeper yeah it's an action camera so the eth pro is their Flagship model with the bigger sensor and all the bells and whistles but they are also launching this inst 360 Ace which is a slightly more affordable option although for this video I'm focusing on the pro okay so once you've got it up and running and you've connected the device to your phone via the in 360 app which you can download for free on Android and iOS and I would definitely recommend the app because firstly it can transfer wirelessly your uh photos and videos and actually you can do it in the background so you don't actually have to have the app open you can also create videos youve got the AI quick edit and also some of these very cool AI features which I'll come back to in a second so definitely worth getting the insta 360 app but swiping around and navigating the UI on this rear flip screen is all very fast and nice and intuitive and I do like that we have all these different modes that you can play around with or you can just switch to one of the prese sets if you just want to keep it simple you've got voice and gesture control where a pie sign snaps a photo and a palm stops or starts a recording although you can turn this off if you do like to wave at your camera a lot and don't want to keep start and stopping it you can shoot up to 4K at 120 frames per second although most of the time I find myself recording at 4K 60 or 4K 30 now technically this will also support 8K footage although it will be coming via an update after launch so I can't test that just yet you can also change the aspect ratio between 16 by9 or 4x3 and actually if you switch to the free frame video mode which shoots in 4x3 it gives you these handy horizontal and vertical guidelines to help you frame your shots and then you can switch between the aspect ratios in post via the app but most of the time you'll be shooting in 16x9 and if you're thinking well how am I going to get good quality vertical footage then well you do that obviously the GoPro is a little bit different it's got a different 8 by7 sensor so it's sort of more tuned to both horizontal and vertical but there are pros and cons for that as well this is a more traditional aspect ratio uh but of course you can just change the way you mount it or shoot in that Free Fall mode and change the aspect after at the bottom right we've got our different feel of view options including a horizon lock which keeps the image nice and level even if the camera rotates a little bit tapping this double arrow icon Zooms in or what they're calling Clarity Zoom as it actually uses a crop of the 8K sensor meaning you're still getting good quality 4K footage but you know Zoomed In And as you would expect for any action camera worth its salt inst 360's Flow State stabilization does a fantastic job of smoothing out your video it's flawlessly smooth mounted to the side of my car it handles The Bumps and Jumps and humps of the 10 speedboat and james' off-road biking as well as any other action camera I've tested but what truly makes this stand out from the competition is how well it performs in low light swipe over to the pure view mode AKA n mode and the combination of the bigger sensor and the camera's processing and AI power that gives us improved de noising a better stabilization dynamic range pcture quality means the difference between usable footage and well not so usable well we've got the GoPro we've got the 3608 Pro in its pure video mode which is meant for low light and it uses the chip the AI and it does some de noising and some other fancy stuff obviously combined with a bigger sensor to hopefully give us better low light footage well night footage in fact although it is only like 6:00 at night but it's pit black here in the UK and it won't be till like April anyway this is Soho in London a great little place to show off the cameras every kind of RGB neon street light everything going on here so hopefully as you watch this back you'll get a sense of how they compare in terms of stabilization video quality what do we think the Ace Pro also introduces active HDR for video shot add up to 4K 30 now it's not recording in like HDR 10 or Doby Vision or anything but you do get better dynamic range with the brightest areas being less blown out and you get more detail in the shadows there's plenty of other modes to play with and of course you can take photos as well but there's also a couple of of cool AI tricks of the Ace Pro sleeve that I want to show you including this now in the insta 360 app there's this new AI warp option that uploads your footage and uses generative AI to stylize your video from either one of their presets or from your own imagination as you can write your own prompts it does only work on clips that are a few seconds long and the results can vary in quality but it is quite fun to share them we also have the AI highlight assistant which creates a highlight Montage of Clips recorded on the camera and it's particularly useful if you have a really long clip like a time-lapse or Loop recording because it can help identify where the action happens and then add it to your highlights now you can add markers Yourself by tapping this little flag icon on the screen although the advanced AI on the chip powering the camera does a great job of highlighting well the highlights automatically using AI Machine Vision to identify Targets in real time and this also makes creating memory Clips in the app afterwards faster as it doesn't have to reanalyze the clips now one issue I've had particularly with GoPros in the past is overheating and so while I'm trying to test battery life for example it will actually just not run out the battery it'll overheat and shut off before it even runs out so I got them both recording at 4K 60 timed how long it took to either a run out of battery or B turn off due to overheating and at 4K 60 as I say the hero 12 lasts about 29 minutes and that same sort of room temperature you know no wind blowing no cooler conditions so it obviously will last longer if you're going down a mountain on skis but for General use like if you're shooting in your car 29 minutes at 4K 60 although much longer at 4K 30 the Ace Pro didn't shut off at all no overheating issues whatsoever in like the hour and 15 and I kept testing until I eventually filled up the storage and ran out of battery so however they do it whether it's a more efficient chip or just better thermals this doesn't overheat and turn off anywhere near as quickly or at all to be honest compared to the GoPro so good job insta 360 oh and also faster charging 0 to 80% in just 22 minutes and it will take over twice as long on the GoPro so that is the insta 360 Ace Pro which is upside down now as to say that I've only had it for a couple of weeks this isn't like an extended review or anything like that but I do have a couple other notes I want to share with you firstly when I was wearing polarized sunglasses I actually couldn't see the screen I'm not sure if it's like a layer or a filter or something they do but that was a little bit annoying cuz I couldn't see how to sort of raise my sunglasses for po iung glasses also the lens cover here the uh camera cover is not replaceable you can't take that off so if you break it if you scratch it you'll have to replace the whole thing or you know get the insta 360 care plan so that it will replace it for you also on the GPS preview remote the video doesn't fill the whole screen it's quite small I should also say this is a pre-production model and also running pre-release software it is also a little bit sort of chunkier and a little bit heavier and also 50 Quid more than the GoPro so of course there are pros and cons for all the action cam was out there it's great that we have lots of competition but certainly the biggest sensor the Fantastic stabilization the flip out screen the AI extras and just the image quality generally makes the Ace Pro definitely worth considering whether you're a content creator a videographer you go on adventures you travel around the world but what do you reckon would you be tempted to buy one of these and if you did have an N 360 Ace Pro what's the first thing you do with it thank you so much for watching guys as I say Link in the description let me know if you've got any questions and I'll see you next time right here on the tech chatthe problem with almost all action cameras are the sensors are just too small right so low light nighttime footage looks pretty rubbish also the screens are just too small I know we've got the one the front and the back but once you change this to the aspect ratio that you actually want to use like 16x9 916 it's tiny it's like a postage stamp size so let me introduce you to this guy this is the new insta 360 Ace Pro it's their new flagship action camera which firstly has a much bigger sensor secondly secondly secondly has a flip out screen and together with some very impressive AI magic and a whole bunch of other features I'm going to walk you through this is one of the most impressive action cameras I've used in a long time and a big thank you to Ino 360 for sending this out for me to have a play with and also partnering with me on this video over the past couple of weeks I've been testing the Ace Pro on a boat hurling down the river temps in London which was a lot of fun for a bit until I felt incredibly seasick but hey do it for the content right I mounted it to my car both inside and outside as I regularly use action cameras to shoot car videos and while exterior shots like this are always pretty good the lower light interior shots have often been a bit tricky so I was Keen to see how this fed I got on my bike well I didn't my buddy and videographer James did because I actually can't ride a bike and we got some glorious 4K 120 slow motion video riding through a puddle properly tested in the rain and the mud ready for a good hosing down afterwards all very action Mar I'm sure you'd agree but I also took it on a night out with me in SoHo partly because I can't switch off and my work is my entire life and I have a problem but also because I wanted to see just how good that bigger sensor is and to give you a taste if I bring in the latest GoPro Hero 12 both shooting at 4K 30 just look at the difference so let me give you a walkthrough show you what this can do and how it compares to the GoPro to see if it's worth the price because at £ 449 same in dollars this is actually 5050 quid more than the GoPro but I would argue you are getting more for your money but let's see what you think so this is the insta 360 Ace Pro and on the face of it a pretty typical looking action camera but peeling off the plastic you can see we've got that liyer branding as they've co-engineered the camera and we've also got that one over 1.3 in sensor and for context the GoPro 12 has a 1 over 1.9 in sensor meaning this captures a lot more light which is particularly useful as I'm sure you can imagine in lower light scenarios so for shooting indoors or at night which here in the UK means anytime after like half 3 in the afternoon we have this small little screen on the front showing you recording and Battery information but then the best bit is back here with this 2.4 in flip screen this shows me my full 16x9 video or if I'm holding it sideways 9 by 16 and it means I can see how much battery I have the timer just make sure you are looking at the lens and not the screen so for being able to frame your shots or just for vlogging so you can see yourself as I'm being attacked by pigeons ah oh my goodness I really am being attacked by pigeons however you can also use the app on your phone or even your Apple watch as a remote viewfinder or you could buy this optional GPS preview remote which gives you a Life preview and control of the camera on your wrist or say the handlebars of your bike while also recording GPS and other data which you can add in poed now as well as the camera itself in the box we have their standard magnetic Mount which is very similar to the GoPro and so it'll work with all their accessories as well and the advantage with this being magnetic is you can then quickly Mount or Dismount the camera which is very handy if you're in a rush but I would suggest also getting this quick release Mount as it includes the folding two prong Mount and also a screw hole which is very useful but there's plenty of other mounting and accessory options as well as they continue to build their ecosystem so up front we have this little light bar which goes between different colors you can see it's red when I'm recording and it also goes red when it's charging as well we have the small screen for some at a glance information but mostly I find myself obviously using the flip screen uh on this side we have the battery and just the battery because on the other side we have the the micro SD card slot and also the USBC Port then above that power button at the top we have the shutter recording button so one press uh to St or stop recording you've also got gesture and voice control I'll show you in a second and also at the back here either side of the screen you can pinch in and then it unlocks the screen and I do really appreciate how durable this hinge is because obviously if you're going to have this on your bike or your boat or whatever is you're doing it's going to have a lot of movement and obviously you don't want that screen to move from where you want it so it stays nice and St but at the same time it's not too hard to move up and down either really nice hinge design I think and the whole thing obviously fits in palm of your hand it is waterproof to 10 m or 33 ft although you can buy a separate dive case if you want to go deeper yeah it's an action camera so the eth pro is their Flagship model with the bigger sensor and all the bells and whistles but they are also launching this inst 360 Ace which is a slightly more affordable option although for this video I'm focusing on the pro okay so once you've got it up and running and you've connected the device to your phone via the in 360 app which you can download for free on Android and iOS and I would definitely recommend the app because firstly it can transfer wirelessly your uh photos and videos and actually you can do it in the background so you don't actually have to have the app open you can also create videos youve got the AI quick edit and also some of these very cool AI features which I'll come back to in a second so definitely worth getting the insta 360 app but swiping around and navigating the UI on this rear flip screen is all very fast and nice and intuitive and I do like that we have all these different modes that you can play around with or you can just switch to one of the prese sets if you just want to keep it simple you've got voice and gesture control where a pie sign snaps a photo and a palm stops or starts a recording although you can turn this off if you do like to wave at your camera a lot and don't want to keep start and stopping it you can shoot up to 4K at 120 frames per second although most of the time I find myself recording at 4K 60 or 4K 30 now technically this will also support 8K footage although it will be coming via an update after launch so I can't test that just yet you can also change the aspect ratio between 16 by9 or 4x3 and actually if you switch to the free frame video mode which shoots in 4x3 it gives you these handy horizontal and vertical guidelines to help you frame your shots and then you can switch between the aspect ratios in post via the app but most of the time you'll be shooting in 16x9 and if you're thinking well how am I going to get good quality vertical footage then well you do that obviously the GoPro is a little bit different it's got a different 8 by7 sensor so it's sort of more tuned to both horizontal and vertical but there are pros and cons for that as well this is a more traditional aspect ratio uh but of course you can just change the way you mount it or shoot in that Free Fall mode and change the aspect after at the bottom right we've got our different feel of view options including a horizon lock which keeps the image nice and level even if the camera rotates a little bit tapping this double arrow icon Zooms in or what they're calling Clarity Zoom as it actually uses a crop of the 8K sensor meaning you're still getting good quality 4K footage but you know Zoomed In And as you would expect for any action camera worth its salt inst 360's Flow State stabilization does a fantastic job of smoothing out your video it's flawlessly smooth mounted to the side of my car it handles The Bumps and Jumps and humps of the 10 speedboat and james' off-road biking as well as any other action camera I've tested but what truly makes this stand out from the competition is how well it performs in low light swipe over to the pure view mode AKA n mode and the combination of the bigger sensor and the camera's processing and AI power that gives us improved de noising a better stabilization dynamic range pcture quality means the difference between usable footage and well not so usable well we've got the GoPro we've got the 3608 Pro in its pure video mode which is meant for low light and it uses the chip the AI and it does some de noising and some other fancy stuff obviously combined with a bigger sensor to hopefully give us better low light footage well night footage in fact although it is only like 6:00 at night but it's pit black here in the UK and it won't be till like April anyway this is Soho in London a great little place to show off the cameras every kind of RGB neon street light everything going on here so hopefully as you watch this back you'll get a sense of how they compare in terms of stabilization video quality what do we think the Ace Pro also introduces active HDR for video shot add up to 4K 30 now it's not recording in like HDR 10 or Doby Vision or anything but you do get better dynamic range with the brightest areas being less blown out and you get more detail in the shadows there's plenty of other modes to play with and of course you can take photos as well but there's also a couple of of cool AI tricks of the Ace Pro sleeve that I want to show you including this now in the insta 360 app there's this new AI warp option that uploads your footage and uses generative AI to stylize your video from either one of their presets or from your own imagination as you can write your own prompts it does only work on clips that are a few seconds long and the results can vary in quality but it is quite fun to share them we also have the AI highlight assistant which creates a highlight Montage of Clips recorded on the camera and it's particularly useful if you have a really long clip like a time-lapse or Loop recording because it can help identify where the action happens and then add it to your highlights now you can add markers Yourself by tapping this little flag icon on the screen although the advanced AI on the chip powering the camera does a great job of highlighting well the highlights automatically using AI Machine Vision to identify Targets in real time and this also makes creating memory Clips in the app afterwards faster as it doesn't have to reanalyze the clips now one issue I've had particularly with GoPros in the past is overheating and so while I'm trying to test battery life for example it will actually just not run out the battery it'll overheat and shut off before it even runs out so I got them both recording at 4K 60 timed how long it took to either a run out of battery or B turn off due to overheating and at 4K 60 as I say the hero 12 lasts about 29 minutes and that same sort of room temperature you know no wind blowing no cooler conditions so it obviously will last longer if you're going down a mountain on skis but for General use like if you're shooting in your car 29 minutes at 4K 60 although much longer at 4K 30 the Ace Pro didn't shut off at all no overheating issues whatsoever in like the hour and 15 and I kept testing until I eventually filled up the storage and ran out of battery so however they do it whether it's a more efficient chip or just better thermals this doesn't overheat and turn off anywhere near as quickly or at all to be honest compared to the GoPro so good job insta 360 oh and also faster charging 0 to 80% in just 22 minutes and it will take over twice as long on the GoPro so that is the insta 360 Ace Pro which is upside down now as to say that I've only had it for a couple of weeks this isn't like an extended review or anything like that but I do have a couple other notes I want to share with you firstly when I was wearing polarized sunglasses I actually couldn't see the screen I'm not sure if it's like a layer or a filter or something they do but that was a little bit annoying cuz I couldn't see how to sort of raise my sunglasses for po iung glasses also the lens cover here the uh camera cover is not replaceable you can't take that off so if you break it if you scratch it you'll have to replace the whole thing or you know get the insta 360 care plan so that it will replace it for you also on the GPS preview remote the video doesn't fill the whole screen it's quite small I should also say this is a pre-production model and also running pre-release software it is also a little bit sort of chunkier and a little bit heavier and also 50 Quid more than the GoPro so of course there are pros and cons for all the action cam was out there it's great that we have lots of competition but certainly the biggest sensor the Fantastic stabilization the flip out screen the AI extras and just the image quality generally makes the Ace Pro definitely worth considering whether you're a content creator a videographer you go on adventures you travel around the world but what do you reckon would you be tempted to buy one of these and if you did have an N 360 Ace Pro what's the first thing you do with it thank you so much for watching guys as I say Link in the description let me know if you've got any questions and I'll see you next time right here on the tech chat\n"