After considerable research, I took the plunge and shelled out $500 for what should be considered the next generation of action cameras: Insta360 One X2. So what’s so revolutionary you ask? It is a 360 degree action camera that is water resistant (30′), has a long battery life, and is both rugged and compact. Other useful features include controls that can be used with a glove and a really nice screen for aligning shots; though in 360 mode there isn’t much reason to do so.
I haven’t had a ton of time to play with it yet. This afternoon it was absolutely beautiful weather in Maryland, so I used a Ram clamp mount to attach it to my bike and went for a ride. I haven’t edited the footage, but will update the post when I do.
Overall it was easy to use. However, there are a few nits that I need to address. The 1/4-2″ screw mounting hole is shallow and so the Ram mount screw bottoms out in the hole and doesn’t make a secure connection. It kept unscrewing during the ride and I really didn’t want to use force to jame the screw in. Rather, I will use a cut down nut to create a secure mount.
The second issue was that the voice command; which is a cool feature, kept stopping the recording when I was chatting. I guess it heard me say “stop” or thought it heard the trigger word and stopped. I can probably fix this by learning the trigger words/phrases or simply turning it off when I want to vlog.
Lastly, and this is both the most annoying and may be the hardest most expensive thing to address. The microSD card B&H Photo sent with the camera is evidently too slow to handle full 360 recording. It’s full 5.7k recording so I understand the need for a fast card. I am going to have to shell out some bucks for one!
