PLEASE NOTE: This wasn't purchased from INSTA360 Direct, wasn't obtained for free, this was obtained by being purchased by myself and your support makes these reviews possible.
Honestly there's so much hate around me talking about this camera when ever I hop to socials relating this camera and I am going to say this and be perfectly honest it's not perfect nothing is but love it for it's imperfections, if it works for you then that's amazing!
So Insta360 is kind of a big deal now, they have popped up every where and this Insta360 camera certainly isn't a 360 video camera which sucks but I feel like that would be totally not possible in the form factor that we've got the GO 2 in.
I think some of the things that make this so good is the form factor and it doesn't stand out when I am out on the E-Glide, I love having it on the handlebars of the E-Glide to take in the environment and to review how the scooter handled but also to work out safer routes on the scooter.
I haven't experienced any severe or dangerous over heating like some of the people have reported like someone commented and said this will burn my fingers off after recording for more than 5 minutes at 1440p in Pro Mode, no whackers didn't experience that at all it got hot but not hot enough to cause any burns or anything like any device of that size is going to have some heat issues but it's to not to the point where I would call it overheating.
So in the box there's no shortage of stuff to get you started the pivot stand, the necklace pendent, the charging case that doubles as a remote and the camera it's self which is a sleek stylish white. I feel like there's a ALL BLACK Edition in the future somewhere not exactly sure where, but I feel it.. If you head to Insta360 you can actually get skins for the Insta360 GO2 however the shipping to Australia at $20.00 is certainly something I personally consider a little steep.
32GB isn't enough... well personally I disagree with that. I feel like the battery is going to deplete before you full the storage at least that's what I think any way I could be wrong, but I have not found that to be a big limitation of the device in my experience and I have racked up maybe 40+ minutes of recording but I haven't have been checking how full it's been most of the time cause my work flow is that I dump the footage straight after I get back.
Insta360 includes a USB A TO C cable, I would have loved to see that A to C adaptor included cause it's the small things that matters to be honest with you or I would have even settled for a C to C cable. However I have been using Cygnett USB C - C cables for quite a while but these don't seem to work with the Insta360 either for data transfer or charging ability.
The Application that Insta gives you is definitely not JUNKET and is one of the best applications I have used for cameras and that says a lot for the developers behind the INSTA360 however I think more and more of us are working with the iPads in the field or even when travelling, like if I am off to Melbourne for a day or something I am more likely to have my iPad on deck than my laptop so it kind of annoys me that there's no landscape mode for the Insta360 application on iPad and that is a major downfall for me to be honest, cause working in Portrait mode is no good.
I have found the application on the iPhone 12 to be very responsive and very smooth with no lag and no issues with export, I do wish however that the Insta360 application allowed direct export to Google Drive it would just make my workflow so much more seamless and carefree, I hope in the future they will look at allowing external export to cloud services.
Even working on the desktop, I have found the application to offer no lag, but group export would be nice, I didn't find editing and exporting to be too hard on my system, you may have struggled on struggle street if you didn't have 16GB of RAM, but I wasn't exactly going to test it or stress test it, but in another video I will open the studio and I will work side by side with a couple of different computers including a M1 system and see how we go working with the same stuff across multiple platforms. I didn't notice the Acer under going any extreme heat issues or any issues that may have led to processor strain, the camera during this period did run a little HOT however I wanna stress again this was NOT A CONCERNING LEVEL OF HEAT. I feel like the INSTA360 studio for the GO 2 can run on most systems theses days providing your not doing anything to stressful for the computer. Be smart about what your running and you will be fine.
It's always a challenge working in post production, though I am not really going out to shoot with a purpose on this camera at the moment I am clearly just shooting rides for the sake of it as a action cam so my post production workflow is LACKING, but that's okay :)
I haven't noticed the colours really being washed out, even with the ND8 which I shot with for a couple of rides on a bright day I noticed that the colour profile was still nice and pleasant to watch, that video ended up on my YouTube profile. - I have had a few different action cameras in my time from 360fly, Go Pro Session, Hero 4, Hero 5, Hero 6, Contour Roam , Roam HD, Polaroid Cube and more and I think I love this one the most..
I love the ability to mix and match and mount this virtually anywhere, the action mount allows users to integrate this with their already existing GoPro or 2 prong action camera mounts, which means if you've got a bike mount for your Garmin which is the over under style you've got no problem mounting that one on deck there.
I would love to see Insta360 release the carrying case out here in Australia and even the skins but I feel like a lot of these kits will remain exclusive to INSTA360 direct which is a crying shame but that happens in life, you win some and you lose some - but for the moment I have repurposed a small bellroy TECH KIT in the marine blue and I have been using that as my main source of storage for the Insta360 GO 2. I will be sharing some load out photos of how I have loaded that kit in a future blog.
Final thoughts: This is really the wear every where take every where action cam with it's versality in mounts and it's daily life, people don't even notice this on the handle bars of a bike or scooter, they think it's a light which it isn't but they don't believe that it can be a action camera, I have been working a lot with the Insta360 GO 2 and I have grown to love it for it's imperfections. To me the pros out weight the cons and that's definitely a good thing if you ask me. I love how easy both of the apps are too use weather it be the desk top or phone app - bear in mind in my testing the phone app has been tested only on iPhone 12 running the latest iOS, and only running on Windows running the latest Windows 10 upgrades. However my experience in iPad was lacklustre as no one is working portrait anymore and I honestly think that Insta360 needs to get their tech boffins on to the upgrade so we have a much more user friendly GUI in the iPad world. I think personally this is really good value for money that allows you to get in on the ground in the action camera world, I don't know if you personally need the bells and whistles of 4K footage or 5K+ found in the Go Pro world but for me personally I am more than happy with what I have in the GO 2. I am overall very happy with my purchase of this camera and I don't honestly have any regrets in the purchase what so ever to be honest.
It's definitely not for everyone but this little action camera definitely has it's purposes for some people, as I have stated it's definitely not for everyone and you should do your research in my case it has me wanting to jump back in to the world of VR and 360, but that's a story for another day!