We don’t know how well Insta360’s 360-degree camera business is doing, but we imagine there still aren’t a lot of people making 360-degree content these days. That, we’re guessing, is the reason why they’ve been going hard at GoPro’s domain in recent years. That continues with the Insta360 Ace Pro, the outfit’s newest premium action cam.
No, this isn’t one of those innovative action cam designs like the outfit did with their modular One RS or compact Go 3 cameras. Instead, they’re embracing the more traditional GoPro form factor this time around, albeit adding a few niceties that could be enticing enough to make some GoPro faithfuls stray from the path.
The Insta360 Ace Pro houses a Leica-designed lens and a 1/1.3-inch image sensor, which is, apparently, large enough to let it shoot 8K video at 24 fps, 4K at 120 fps, and 1080p at 240 fps, all while capturing 48-megapixel photos. Paired with a 5nm AI chip, the sensor boasts exceptional lowlight performance, although you’ll have to switch to the PureVideo mode, which tops out at 4K/30fps. For well-lit settings, you can also activate ActiveHDR mode, which brings more details in highlights and shadows, while capturing more vibrant and accurate colors. Like their previous action cams, it boasts advanced electronic stabilization via the outfit’s FlowState algorithm and 360-degree horizontal locking, ensuring smooth, blur-free action shots.
While there’s no optical zoom, they have an electronic one called Clarity Zoom, which claims to let the camera shoot 2X footage without any loss in quality. You can also pause a recording and resume directly to the exact same file, so you get one continuous footage, instead of having to deal with multiple files, while canceling a recording automatically deletes, too, so you don’t have to manually delete multiple files from the storage later.
The Insta360 Ace Pro has a small screen out front that shows information about the recording, while a 2.4-inch touchscreen around back lets you frame shots. That touchscreen, by the way, is hinged, so you can flip it up to see the framing when shooting selfies. As with modern action cams, it comes in a rugged housing that’s waterproof up to 33 feet, although you will need the Dive Case accessory if you want to go deeper (it supports up to 196 feet). It houses a 1650mAh battery that boasts a 100-minute runtime, with 30W fast charging that allows it to replenish the battery stores in 46 minutes.
Other features include photo grabbing (you can take pictures while shooting a video), an AI highlights assistant (it can find the best scenes in your SD card and compile them into a single video), the ability to add sensor stats to your videos (from either Garmin devices or Apple smartwatches), a new AI warp mode that can add generative AI images to your videos, and all the usual Insta360 shooting modes (timelapse, timeshift, loop recording, and more). You can also set it to download files in the background directly to the companion app, so you will always have room on your SD card for more footage.
The Insta360 Ace Pro is available now.
