Insta360 One X2 ⛷ Real-World ⛷Review // It's a game changer for action cameras!

Good morning everyone! I’ve always wanted to 
test [a] 360 degree camera and that’s what  
we’re doing today with the Insta360 One X2. 
This won’t be your normal review as my goal  
is to bring you along so we can both learn 
together how this camera actually works.  
Now with the Insta360 One [X2] and my skis ready, 
let’s go into the forest to film some b-roll!
For those of you who are new to this 
channel, I’m Loïc Bellemare-Alford,  
a young photographer and filmmaker on the journey 
to become better at this art. A few weeks ago  
Insta360 reached down and asked me if I 
would be interested to make a comparison  
between their camera and the DJI Pocket 
2. They do not get to see this video,  
they do not get to pay me and they don’t even know 
I’m making this video, so you’re getting my full  
unbiased review of this camera in this video. 
We will quickly talk about the build quality  
of this camera. So it’s really accurately pretty 
impressive. The handle is all made of metal which  
I didn’t really expect. I expected it to be made 
of plastic or something like that. And the camera  
is actually a lot heavier than i thought, but 
that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s a good  
thing because it has a huge battery so that means 
you’re probably getting better performances out  
of that battery and out of the camera because 
there’s so much tech inside of this small

body.
The idea with the Insta360 is that you can shoot
first and reframe later. This is particularly
useful when doing things like right now and we’re
gonna go for a ski we can just enjoy the activity,
film some footage and afterwards decide what
is the best firming for your shot. I’m also
using the built-in microphone right now so i’m
pretty curious to hear if it sounds good or not.
I finally got to the trail so let’s talk a little
bit more about the camera itself. IIf you’re
coming here, you might be a little bit scared
because there’s a lot of snow falling right now
and you might think it’s not waterproof, but
it’s actually waterproof up to 10 meters so
this is not a problem at all being outside. The
only big problem is actually the lens is going
to get some snowflakes on it. So first thing you
can actually buy this little pouch to go on it
to protect it when you’re not using it. But the
most important part is actually to bring with you
at the little lens cloth that they gave that
comes with the camera and always wipe your lens
before taking every shot. Now if you look at the
different buttons on here, first we have on the
side right here our power button. So if we press
it we’re gonna see that after a few seconds it’s
gonna power up and tell us that it’s on. Then if
we look at the other side right here we have first
at the top here a little door and behind the door
we have access to our usb-c connection that’s for
charging and also transferring file if you want.
Then if we go now we’re just gonna close it,
then we go down here, if we take this one out
we have the battery here and it’s a huge battery
so i’m pretty sure it’s gonna last pretty long.
And one thing I had a hard time finding at the
beginning was actually where was the sd card. But
yes the card is located right inside of here. So
now you know if you’re searching for the sd card
where it’s located. So we’re just gonna put back
the battery inside to keep the water ceiling.
Finally at the bottom here, you have your quarter
inch screw and this screws into this invisible
selfie stick. And this might seem a little bit
silly, but i wasn’t sure how to extend the selfie
stick at the beginning. I thought we had something
to turn or something like that but you actually
just pull it and it holds in place perfectly
steady. So it’s actually really simple to use
just pull it, unpull it and that’s pretty much it.
Now let’s quickly talk about the different
video modes that are available on the camera
because i definitely want to try out the
hyperlapse mode that they have because
it seems to be pretty cool. So if we come on
the camera right here and look at the screen
and we swipe up, so this is my understanding
up to now is that if we swipe up,
right here we have a quickly our different
shooting modes we have a picture here,
we have video and we have time lapse. Now if we
come back to the main menu let’s say we select
video mode and then we go on the little icon here
so if you click on the little video icon here
you’re gonna have different shooting
modes so here we’re gonna have standard
hdr time lapse time shift and bullet time so
i’m not 100 sure what are all these different
modes but i guess standard is what i was using
up to now which is seem to be the default mode
hdr seems to be for high dynamic range but right
now i don’t really need high dynamic range so i’m
not going to test it out for now then time lapse
i guess is just a time lapse but i’m not sure
if this is the one we need to be using for the
hyperlapse but i think what we need to be using us
is time shape so this is going to allow to have
a hyperlapse with motion blur inside of it and
then freeze at time now bullet time i think it’s
when you turn around you can have a mode where you
put it on the top and you turn it around to get a
pretty cool effect but we’re going to go inside of
time shift and now if we go from the left of the
menu from the right of the menu here we can swipe
and then we have our different uh settings here
so we have our exposure our white balance exposure
i’m just going to leave everything automatic
uh we could also shoot in vivid so we’re on
vivid color right now we could shoot in log in
different settings another thing to note right
now is actually that if you go from the bottom
here and change your video mode so let’s say you
go back in standard you’re actually going to get
more advanced settings here so you can see like if
you want to have auto exposure or manual exposure
and then you can go through the different options
and you might have a few extra options depending
on the mode you’re selecting so for example i
think if we go on hdr we only have access to
the white balance because the camera is doing
all the rest of the work for you so you can
only change the white balance in this case so
this is something to keep in mind but yes let’s
go back inside of time shift and test that out
i’m just it right away but it’s pretty
incredible how good and rugged this camera is
it’s pretty cold outside right now plus the rain
that is falling down i’m completely soaked and
the camera seems to have no problem at all i’m
a little bit scared of how this was gonna look
on the lens but apart from that it seems
to be working perfectly fine in this case
two pretty important things i forgot to mention
is first you can use a little touchscreen here
to look around and see what you’re framing and
this is a big improvement that they brought to
the second generation of this camera
and the second thing is also that on
the bottom here if you click on the image you
actually have your different frame rates and
resolutions so it usually films at 5.7 k
that’s the whole image for the 360 degree view
but you also have options at 4k and also a 3k at
100 frames per second so 100 frames per second
is for slow motion so that’s
what i’m gonna try out right away
um so i think i’m gonna have to call
it a day a little bit earlier right now
because the conditions are just
not good i’m soaked completely
and it’s pretty cold so yeah
i prefer going back home
just when i was getting very close to home the
snow decided to stop being as awful as was so
we’re going to continue reviewing this outside
so there’s a few things i just discovered about
the insta360 one x2 and the first one is that you
can quickly start recording by long pressing the
record button so that’s the button in the front
here it’s gonna open the camera right away start
recording so it takes about a few seconds to get
started and it’s recording right now then when
you want to stop you simply press the button and
the camera is going to power off automatically so
this is pretty useful if you don’t have the camera
on you just want to quickly start recording start
recording without keeping the camera on all the
time so if you have the camera on now there’s a
few other things i want to talk about so first of
all is that i forgot to say but you can actually
view your footage by swiping from the left here
but one thing i realized and was a little bit
disappointed is that i realized that if we have
some slow motion footage so like right here
you can actually not view it on the camera itself
you need to go for the app but if you have some
360 footage so just let me swipe here and start
playing the 360 footage you can actually look
at it and swipe around to see different point
of views so this is pretty cool if you want to
review your footage pretty quickly on the camera
without having to take out the phone to do it
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another pretty neat feature of the insta360 one
x2 is that it can also take 360 degree photos
not just videos so if you come in our menu in the
bottom here and we go and our selections we can
actually choose the first mode right here which
is for photos and just like for video we have the
standard mode we have hdr we have burst mode we
have interval and we have night shot interval i’m
actually pretty excited to test this one out maybe
not today because the conditions are not good
but it’s going to allow to take raw pictures
but with an interval so you’re actually going
to be able to control that then do a time-lapse
or something like that taking high-resolution
pictures instead of using only the video but one
thing i realized so if we go back in standard mode
where we have the most options and then we slide
from the right here to access our more advanced
settings we’re actually going to see first that
we have an option so for jpeg plus raw which is
pretty good then after if we go on manual mode
and we’re gonna have a lot more uh settings and
if we go on the shutter speed right here we can
actually see that we have an option to go up to
let me scroll it’s going to take a few seconds
the shutter speed can be up to 120 seconds so
that’s a full two minutes of taking a picture
so that is pretty great because it’s gonna allow
especially at night to get much longer shots
and much more light inside of this tiny sensor
now if you go on daily options you can control the
iso the white balance so you have pretty much uh
control over your shot then if you come back in
our exposure setting another pretty cool thing
here is that you have access to otto so i’m living
on a2 today because that’s my goal is just to test
how it works out of the box but if you go manual
we just talked about it if you go on iso priority
so you can set your iso and the rest is gonna
be automatic you can have shutter priority
and it has isolated so yeah let’s take
a few test shots and see how it performs
in auto mode automatically actually two things i
was just going to forget is first that you have
an option to put a timer so if you click on the
bottom of the little screen here you’re gonna have
an option to select a timer so three seconds
5 seconds 10 seconds 15 seconds um so i think
that’s a good idea to have it on three seconds so
you have the time to put it on the pull and take
your picture so then there’s a little button here
that you might miss so by default it is on but if
you click on it it’s going to say check pure shot
effect in the app so i think this is going to add
a little bit better editing to the photo once
you look at it instead of the app afterwards
so before it gets too dark today i
want to end the day by talking about
uh vlogging using the instax 360 one x2 so this
is an important thing for me because i vlog a
lot using these types of cameras and i think what
is very interesting using this camera is actually
that you can see what i’m seeing because i can
turn around the camera as i wish and you can also
see me and i can change the framing afterwards i
can get a tighter shot a wider shot i can control
all of this right after taking the video now let’s
switch to steadicam mode and talk about that mode
so i’m now using steadycam mode and cdcam mode
allows to replicate what you get with most normal
action cameras so you get a super wide angle field
of view the only problem i have with this mode is
that it maxed out at 1440p which is a huge problem
for me because most of the videos coming out
instead 360 one x2 is 1080p so that is a little
bit higher than what you get normally and a super
wide angle field of view it’s going to be very
useful for me when i’m going to be doing first
person uh videos of me taking pictures
so i’m pretty excited to test that out
and if you’re wondering how it compares to the
dji pocket 2 that’s going to be my next video so
be sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven’t
already so my big question now is how good is the
stabilization going to be inside of this mode so
i quickly checked some of the footage at the 360
degree view and it seemed to be pretty good but
didn’t really look at it in detail and for this
one i enabled pro mode because it allows to use a
computer to apply the stabilization so i guess it
should be a little bit better than doing it inside
of the camera directly so we’re going to see the
footage to see if it’s actually good or not but
i’m pretty sure it’s going to be pretty good
now let’s talk about the other menu options are
available on the camera so if we come at the top
here and slide down our first gonna see that
we have an option for the screen brightness so
this one is pretty self-explanatory the second one
is to lock the screen and this was actually very
useful yesterday when by accident with the snow
it was really easy to touch the screen and make
things that you didn’t want to so by accident i
was in photo mode at some point when i was trying
to take a video so this is pretty useful and then
if we go on the next mode here we’re gonna have
the led lights on or not and this is very useful
because on both sides you have nice led lights
right here that allows you to know when the
camera is on and if you’re recording or not so
this is especially useful when it’s high on the
pull where you cannot really see the screen to
know if it’s recording or not so you can always
look at the lights to know if it’s recording
then you have if uh quick capture is on so
that’s what i talked about yesterday where
you can simply long press the button and it’s
going to open the camera start capturing the video
and then stop right afterwards then there’s a
few other options that are pretty cool so the
first one here you have air pod support so if
you have air pods from apple you can actually
link them and use the audio from your airpods i
don’t have that option so it’s not going to work
then if you look at the next option here is your
audio settings so you can either film the audio
from all around so 360 degree audio or you can use
the wind reduction i’m on wind reduction and it
seems to be working pretty well then you have your
voice command so this is actually the one super
useful to have on so if you just say to the camera
when it’s on the stick you can say start recording
and here it starts recording and once you’re
ready to stop you simply say stop recording
and it stopped recording there’s a few other
options for voice control but this is super useful
especially when it’s on the pull and you don’t
want to have to touch the camera every time
to start and stop recording now we have our
other options inside of the more advanced
settings so you have general you have bluetooth
remote you have auto sleep voice control sd card
video encoding so you can either select
your 360 degree mode or your city cam mode
and the camera information so this is pretty
much all the other options you have so
there’s actually a lot of option
already built in inside of the camera
one of my thoughts of this insta360 one x2 after
using it for just over a day i first thought that
360 degree cameras were kind of a gimmick but
after using it i really like it first of all it’s
very rugged so like we saw yesterday after using
it on a very heavy snow that was kind of rain
it didn’t have any problem at all and was
perfectly fine afterwards which is a very
important thing for me the second thing is that
we have pretty good audio directly out of it
so this is actually something i like quite
a lot is that you can just use it to vlog or
something like that and you know that you’re
going to be getting pretty good audio without
anything additional with it because you cannot
plug in a microphone or something like that
it’s also very easy to use but there’s a lot of
options in the menu so it might be a little bit
complicated when starting but once you understand
what are all these options it’s actually really
easy to go through all the menus and change your
settings as you wish another really great thing
is that during winter they have big buttons all
around the camera so it’s really easy to press on
them even if you have gloves or things like that
uh on your hand while manipulating the camera
there’s also a pretty good battery life so it
lasted for about like two three hours yesterday um
and i filmed about like an hour of footage so
that’s pretty good and it was also pretty cool
that yesterday and had no problem at all during
the cold weather which is probably some of my
other cameras where the lens freezes or something
like that this had no problem at all with the cool
weather it’s also very cool because you can get
some super unique shots with this camera that
you simply cannot get with any other cameras and
then with a selfie stick you can really just point
it wherever you want whether it’s higher lower or
things like that and get some completely different
shots that you’re not used to seeing and this
is great because i’ll use to be more creative in
the end now not everything is perfect about this
camera there’s two things that frustrate me just
a little bit the first one is that you need to go
through the app for a lot of things so some of the
footage you simply cannot review it on the camera
directly you need to open the app just to be able
to review the footage so i would like if they
could fix that and so we can see all the footage
directly on the camera to quickly know if the shot
is good or not the second thing is that there’s so
many options that can be kind of complicated to
understand where are all the options and some of
those modes actually have more settings that are
hidden away so it’s just a thing that you need to
learn all the different options that are possible
on camera so i highly suggest you go through all
the different options of the camera and try to
understand all the menus before using it to not
lose time when you’re in the field and don’t
really understand how to change the different
setting on the camera this is an easy camera
to recommend especially if you’re doing action
sports or you just want to get more creative
shots if you enjoyed this video please let me
know by hitting the like button below and also
consider subscribing my next video is going to
be a comparison of the DJI Pocket 2 and the video
after that is going to go through a more creative
techniques including the ai modes that this camera
has built in so see you in the next one bye bye