In Gear | Do You Really Need the New Camera? Insta360 X3 vs X5

There's a ton of action cameras out there. Do you really need the latest and greatest one to get good consumer or even professional grade footage? Or can you spend about half and get the same result? Come along, this is in gear. I'm usually behind the camera for these, but Ryan has forced me to now do this review at the threat of losing my job and my family. He thinks I know enough about cameras to review this thing, so let's try. So you want to film professional grade incriminating footage of you riding your dirt bike through various national parks unlicensed. Do you need a modern action camera like an Insta360 X5, which shoots in 360 degrees 8K 60 frames per second with built-in stabilization, AI subject tracking, or can you get away with something like the Insta360 X3 released in 2022, which shoots 360 degree 5.7K 30 FPS, but still has stabilization, subject tracking, and all of these things to slightly not as amazing degree. I'm going to argue. that dropping half the cash on the Insta360 X3 and knowing how to use it will net you the same results or even better results than if you just got one of the more modern cameras or their competitors out of the box and did not take the time to figure out what you can do with it. On top of shooting in 360 degrees, the Insta360 X3 also shoots in 4K single lens mode. Now, you might hear that and think, oh, okay, well, I can use it as a standard camera as well. Not so fast. The difference is that the Insta360 X3, along with all of these 360 cameras, shoot in a really, really wide aspect ratio for their single lens mode. There are options to go in and make the shots a little bit tighter, but the difference between this camera and one that has a normal lens is that you are just punching in digitally. So if you're trying to get a medium shot or even a close-up, you're actually removing resolution from your frame and just cropping in to do that. So I would say that for action-oriented things that really benefit from a super wide angle lens, like riding your dirt bike, a jet ski, mounting it on a surfboard if you're freaky, I would say that those things really benefit from this type of camera. However, I would not say that the kind of look this camera, or really, again, any camera in this category gives, is optimal for all shooting conditions. An additional thing I love about specifically the Insta360 line is that these cameras allow you to edit in their own native app, Insta360 Studio. Because when you're trying to edit 360-degree monoscopic footage in Premiere Pro that runs at anywhere from 5.7 to 8K, you're going to be editing really slowly unless you have a ton of processing power. When you are able to edit in another app and do all of the same things that you would do in your native editing workflow, such as keyframing the specific areas you want As you want the camera to look in that 360 degree view and then you can just Export it as a normal video and load it into your editing software like any other clip. It is so beneficial to the speed and momentum of your editing process. Like I said, that comes with the Insta360 X3. This camera comes with most of the features that its competitors and its more modern counterparts have, just slightly not as good. The stabilization, the subject tracking, shoots in 5K but only 30 frames per second instead of 60 frames per second. And here's where I come to kind of my hot take with cameras like this. I would say that the next installment in a line of cameras prior to AI used to mean a lot more. You used to be upgrading these things and natively using these tools that allowed you to get much better looking footage. But now with AI, you can retroactively go in and enhance the kind of footage that you are shooting. And you can do that in ways that these more modern counterparts provide. You have AI. Stabilization, you have AI frame rate enhancement, you have AI resolution enhancement, and you can essentially, if you know how to use it, get your footage on a camera like this to look like the footage on an Insta360 X5. You don't ever need something to be natively recorded in 8K if you are posting it on YouTube. I would say that 8K is pretty good if you're planning on releasing your footage to IMAX. You know, so if you've got that planned, you might want to do some additional research. But otherwise, if you are posting it the way that 99% of viewers are going to see it, you're not going to need anything above 4k. And I would argue for YouTube, even 1080p or 2k. Again, it's, I know, that's a crazy opinion. The biggest difference that the X3 has between its counterparts that I would say is a major difference that cannot be resolved with AI is its battery life. When you are shooting in 360 degrees 5K with the X3, you have a battery life of around 81 minutes. If you are shooting with something like the Insta360 X5 or some of its main competitors, you're shooting with anywhere between 200 to 210 minutes. And that's a huge thing because when you're doing an action-oriented shoot, like again, riding your dirt bike, doing something crazy, you don't want to have to be cognizant of your battery life. You wanna be able to hit record. And not worry about it after that. I would say that if you want to buy an action camera and get immediate amazing top tier results out of the box, drop the extra $300 on an Insta360 X5 or something similar to it. If you are willing to take the time to really learn not only what you can do with your camera's settings, but also what you can do afterwards with all of the new tools available and you want to save an extra $300, I would go ahead and go with the Insta360 X3. You have my permission.