While Insta360 has branched out into a few different types of camera, the 360° imaging experience remains its core offering, and the Insta360 X5 360° action camera therefore could be considered its flagship. The latest and unambiguously greatest in the manufacturer’s line of see-it-all action cameras, the X5 once again allows you capture everything in a scene at once in a complete, wraparound video, which can subsequently be clipped, edited and exported into a more conventional format for sharing on social media.

This expands your shooting versatility in a number of ways. You no longer have to worry about framing the camera on the action – just hold it up, and figure out later where the point of interest in the frame is. It also means you can introduce simulated camera movements into your footage, using keyframe editing to introduce smooth panning from one point of interest in the 360° frame to another (this is a concept that’s much easier to demonstrate than explain, so check the sample footage to see it in action).

I’ve used a few different 360° cameras, but Insta360’s offerings have a reputation for being the best of the bunch. So, I was looking forward to putting the Insta360 X5 through its paces.

At a glance

• $465 / £425
• 360° action camera
• 1/1.28-inch CMOS sensor (x2)
• 8K 30p max. video resolution
• 72MP max. stills resolution
• 15m waterproofing (without case)
• 46 x 124.5 x 38.2mm dimensions
• 200g weight (with battery, card)

Price & availability

The Insta360 X5 is just coming up to a year old, and as such we’ve already seen some tempting price reductions. For the base edition of the camera, no extras, you’re currently looking at paying around $465 / £425, down from $550 / £499 at launch. That’s still more expensive than either the GoPro Hero13 Black or the DJI Osmo Action 6, but it’s not bad, especially for a camera that offers quite a bit more functionality than a standard action camera. 

Features

With its two big, bulbous lenses on the top, the Insta360 X5 has a striking design. These are the beating heart of the camera, with their 180-degree fields of view allowing the X5 to capture a complete view of everything surrounding it, which is then stitched together near-seamlessly in software.

Those protruding lenses feel like a point of vulnerability, and they are, but Insta360 has done a fair amount of legwork to put your mind at ease. Optional accessories include Lens Guards, which can be placed over the lenses without overly compromising field of view (the Insta360 Studio software has a specific setting for you to let it know that you’re using them), and there is also a rubber protective sheath that can be placed over the lenses when they’re not in use. Finally, if despite all this you do manage to damage the lenses, Insta360 offers an affordable ($24/£29) lens replacement kit.

One one side of the X5 is a 2.7-inch touchscreen, which is bright, clear and responsive. There are also physical buttons, including a dedicated shutter button, a menu button, and on the side, a customisable ‘Quick’ button. The other side of the camera is more or less unblemished – save for a hexagonal grille beneath the lens, which houses the on-board mic system (this has been upgraded from the Insta360 X4).

Waterproofing has also been upgraded, with the Insta360 X5 now sporting 15-metre waterproofing straight out of the box (compared to 10m on the X4), which can be extended to 60m with the optional dive case. 

The X5 captures both video and stills, though will likely see more users interested in the former. Video is available in a range of resolutions and frame rates; the topline option is 8K 30p, but more likely to see consistent use are the smoother, higher frame rates, such as 60p in 5.7K or 120p in 4K. Stills-wise, it captures 360-degree imagery at a resolution of up to 72MP, which you can then cut conventional frames out of after the fact. If you don’t want to mess with 360-degree content, there’s also a single lens mode that shoots in 4K.

The Insta360 X5 offers a range of shooting modes, including: various timelapse and hyperlapse modes; a dedicated low-light mode called ‘PureVideo’; burst mode for stills; InstaFrame, which simultaneously captures 360-degree and flat content; and ‘Bullet Time’, a flashy mode designed to work with Insta360’s ‘invisible’ selfie stick to create Matrix-style swirling slow-mo shots. The accessory ecosystem is also quite developed, with such highlights as Insta360’s preposterous but entertaining three-metre selfie stick, which essentially lets you simulate drone footage if you don’t mind people staring at you.

Performance

Working with 360-degree content is unavoidably a bit more of a faff than working with ‘straight’ imagery, and it’s commendable to see the extent to which Insta360 has streamlined the process. You can edit and export your images and videos using either the mobile or desktop app – though unless you have a very powerful smartphone, you’ll likely have a much better time with the latter.

The Insta360 Studio software will instantly detect and offer to import any Insta360 content it can find, and will then catapult you into a simple but effective editor. You can navigate through your own images and videos by clicking and dragging around the frame.

Extracting a video in a standard aspect ratio from 360-degree raw footage is simple and satisfying – I even started to find it quite addictive. You navigate through the frame as mentioned, and when you find angles you like, you can insert a keyframe. The software will then smoothly dissolve between your keyframes – and you can also vary up these transitions, with options like fade-in, fade-out. The software isn’t perfect though, with certain features bizarrely missing; for instance, you can set your audio to ‘Noise Reduction’, but there’s no option to just mute it, even if you’ve recorded a video of yourself walking through some nice scenery and the only sounds are your own breathing and footsteps. 

Photo editing is similarly streamlined – you simply navigate through your 360-degree content, and then when you stumble on a slice you like, simply export it out. Again there are lots of lovely streamlining features, and a few odd omissions; the software applies some pretty decent automatic horizontal horizon correction, but doesn’t offer you the option to just rotate the damn thing yourself. But it works, and if you were put off by the thought that editing 360-degree content would be too complex for you, I can say that this is unlikely to be the case. It’s smooth, simple and fun. The only potential stumbling block might be your computer power, especially for video – I was editing on a 2024 Mac Mini, and it stuttered a few times. 

The imagery itself looks great straight out of camera. It’s bright and snappy, with vivid colours and a good level of detail. Shooting at frame rates of 60fps or greater gives you a polished, smooth-looking video, and with resolution options up to 8K, you’re easily going to have enough pixels for any kind of project you might have in mind. The automated stabilisation that kicks in on walking footage is also very effective – so smooth and seamless that I practically forgot about it.

Detail holds up well across different lighting conditions – I’d say it’s not quite as strong in terms of dynamic range as the sublime DJI Osmo Action 6, but it handily beats the GoPro Hero 13 Black. Also, it bears repeating how impressive it is how much juice you can get out of a single 360-degree capture – the below three images were all extracted from the exact same raw 360-degree file. That’s quite something!

I recorded the sound of my voice in the sample video using the X5’s on-board mics, and as you’ll be able to hear, it did a perfectly acceptable job. The clarity is solid, and the mics and software have done their best with what was some considerable wind-noise – you can hear a distinct jump up in quality at around 15 seconds when the gusts die down. It’s not perfect, and serious vloggers will want to invest in an external mic solution, but for casual use, it does the job.