The best 360 cameras can help you capture unique shots that aren't possible with any other camera, including your phone – and now some Insta360 leaks (plus an official launch event) suggest we could soon get an 8K successor to our favorite all-rounder, the Insta360 One X3.
Insta360 has announced on its blog that it's hosting an event in New York City on April 16 at 9am EDT (2pm BST / 11pm AEST). The event's tagline is 'The 8K era is here – our next camera' and you can watch the trailer below.
The announcement doesn't give much else away, but some new leaks from the ever-reliable @Quadro_News on X (formerly Twitter) have filled in some of the gaps. The images suggest an Insta360 One X4 is en route with a slightly bigger design and some useful spec upgrades.
According to @Quadro_News, the One X4 will be able to shoot 360-degree video in 8K/30p or 5.7K/60p resolution. That would be a very helpful upgrade on the One X3, which topped out at 5.7K/30p, as it'd give you more resolution for punching into the best part of the frame.
👉Something I won't show you, but the key parameters are as follows:✅Aperture: F1.9 (equivalent for 35mm format: 6.7 mm)✅Image : 72 Mp (11904x5952) _ 18 Mp (5888x2944)✅Video: 360 - 8k/30fps _ 5.7K/60fps _ 4K/100fps✅Weight: 203g✅Dimensions: 123.6x46x26.3mm#insta3604x pic.twitter.com/SFedIAKrcyApril 11, 2024
If the leaks are accurate, the One X4 could also get a larger capacity battery (2,290mAh, up from 1,800mAh) and retain the handy tripod mount on the base of the camera. One other detail from the leaks is that the One X4 should have a similar price to its predecessor, apparently around $530 (around £425 / AU$820).
The One X3 landed for $449/ £459 / AU$799 in September 2022, but is now available for much less than that. If the Insta360 One X3 continues to be available for those lower prices, the question for many could be whether the current model offers better value than its successor – that's something we'll be able to answer for sure if the One X4 does indeed launch in a few days.
Should you wait for the GoPro Max 2?
Insta360 has dominated 360 cameras for the past few years, but last year GoPro said that a GoPro Max 2 (or at least a successor to the Max) was finally "in the works". It's been tumbleweed since then, so we still don't know when GoPro's rival to the One X3 (or rumored X4) might land.
Insta360 has been steadily refining its 360-degree cameras and software since the original One landed back in 2017, so that could give it an advantage. The One X4's rumored 8K resolution would also be a big bonus, as one of the disadvantages of cropping into the footage of 360 cameras is a drop in image quality.
But while Insta360's Studio desktop and mobile software has improved a lot and now serves up a pretty user-friendly experience, editing your 360-degree videos can still be time-consuming. The benefit of 360 cameras is capturing everything around you so you don't miss the action, but the flipside is having to then direct the camera in post-production towards those highlights.
It yet isn't clear if GoPro has made any strides towards fixing this for the Max 2 (if that's what it'll be called), but some GoPro patent applications in 2022 described a processor that has a "context component" that's capable of analyzing a scene and automatically adjust the "viewing window" and final framing of the video accordingly.
Patents applications don't give us any real conclusions, but it'll certainly be interesting to see what 360 camera innovations GoPro can produce given it's been almost five years since the original Max. As it stands, Insta360 remains the king of 360 cameras, and the rumored One X4 is an exciting new option, so we'll definitely be tuning into Insta360's launch on April 16.
