The Insta360 X5 ($549.99) is the latest in the company's ever-expanding range of 360-degree and action cameras. While the core shooting specifications remain largely unchanged from its predecessor, the Insta360 X4 ($499.99), the X5 has larger image sensors, user-replaceable lenses, improved waterproofing, a new wind guard, and longer battery life. Its mobile and desktop apps have received facelifts and added a number of AI-powered templates for swiftly editing and exporting stills and video. The X5 is a staggeringly versatile creative tool that can produce remarkable outputs with little effort, or breathtaking ones if you're willing to learn how to get the most from it, earning it our Editors' Choice award for 360 cameras.

Price and Bundles

The standard version of the Insta360 X5 costs $549.99 and includes the camera, a USB-C cable, a soft case, and a lens cloth. The Essentials Bundle ($659.99) adds an additional battery, a fast charge case, a hard carry case, a lens cap, lens guards, and a 44.9-inch version of the Invisible Selfie Stick that Insta360 is famous for. The camera's software recognizes the selfie stick and erases it (although shadows often betray its presence), which makes for the top-down, over-the-shoulder, and birds-eye view footage Insta360 products are known for.

(Credit: Craig Wilson)

Insta360 offers a range of accessory bundles for the X5, as it does for its other cameras. These include mounts for bicycles and motorcycles, body and head straps, and diving cases and floatation devices.

(Credit: Craig Wilson)

Design: Larger, But Lighter

Visually, the X5 is little changed from the X4. It has the same pair of lenses on the front and rear for 360-degree image and video capture, and largely the same button layout. However, the ribbed front of the X4 has been replaced by a geometric pattern, and instead of a pinhole microphone, the X5 has a new, hexagonal wind guard covering the front-facing microphone. On the rear, the touch screen has increased in size from 2.5 inches on the X4 to 2.7 inches on the X5. Insta360 doesn't supply resolution or brightness metrics for the display, but it's more than bright enough for outdoor use even in bright sunlight.

(Credit: Craig Wilson)

The camera measures 4.90 by 1.81 by 1.50 inches (HWD) and weighs 7.05 ounces. That makes it slightly taller and lighter than the X4 (4.87 by 1.46 by 1.01 inches, 7.19 ounces). The left edge includes a microphone, power and quick-select buttons, and a covered USB-C port (for charging and wired data transfer). The right edge has another microphone and houses the battery. The microSD card is located in the same compartment as the battery, and like previous Insta360 cameras, the latches that lock the cover in place display a sliver of red if they're not properly seated (which is necessary for the camera to be waterproof). The bottom edge has a centered, standard quarter-inch socket.

(Credit: Craig Wilson)

On the camera's rear panel, below the screen, are a pair of rubberized buttons. The left is the shutter button, while the right switches between shooting modes. Previous-gen models have supported lens guards, but the X5 is the first that makes it easy to swap out damaged lenses. Insta360 sells separate lens replacement kits for this purpose, which include all of the necessary installation hardware.

(Credit: Craig Wilson)

Although Insta360 included lens guards with the X5 kit it sent me to test, it warns that they can impact image quality and shouldn't be used underwater. When you install the lens guards, the camera recognizes them and prompts you to ensure they're properly aligned and not blocking the microphones beneath each lens. I can see the value in using them if you're riding a dirtbike or using the camera in similarly rugged environments, but I chose to leave them off in testing, especially because the camera doesn't fit in the soft carry case when they are installed.

(Credit: Craig Wilson)

The X5 has an IP68 rating and is waterproof down to 49 feet, an improvement over the X4's 33 feet. If you want to go even deeper, Insta360 sells a dive case that enables the camera to survive trips down to 197 feet.

(Credit: Craig Wilson)

One of Insta360's most ingenious—and outlandish—accessories is its 15-foot selfie stick ($99.99). It not only ensures quizzical looks in public but also allows you to capture footage that looks like it was shot using a low-flying drone. The company also makes a range of accessories for its Bullet Time shooting mode, which allows you to swing the camera around your head while it captures 4K120fps slow-motion video.

You can get away without Bullet Time-specific accessories by simply waving the regular selfie stick included with the Essentials Bundle around your head, but the selfie stick is core to the X5's functionality, so if you're buying the standard edition, budget an additional $24.99 for one of its basic sticks.

Resolution and File Formats: Plenty to Play With

The X5 maintains most of the same shooting modes as its predecessor. Resolution for 360-degree video tops out at 8K30fps and 5.7K60fps, and slow-motion video tops out at 4K120fps. InstaFrame Mode, which records flat footage and 360 footage simultaneously, offers a maximum resolution of 5.7K30fps. Single-lens video tops out at 4K60fps, or 4K30fps in FreeFrame Mode, and 4K30fps in Me Mode. Insta360 has also added a new PureVideo Mode that offers a maximum resolution of 8K30fps for improved low-light footage. Meanwhile, 360-degree photos are captured at either 72MP or 18MP.

(Credit: Craig Wilson)

Like the X4, the X5 encodes video using H.265, but you can change that to H.264 if you're so inclined. Color profiles include Flat, I-Log, Standard, and Vivid. The camera records 360-degree video using the INSV file format and single-lens video in MP4. Photos are saved as INSP (360-degree) or DNG (single-lens). Both INSV and INSP files can be edited in Insta360's mobile and desktop apps, and there's an optional Adobe Premiere plug-in for 360-degree video, too.

Audio modes include Auto Wind Noise Reduction (weak or strong), Stereo, Voice Enhancement, or 360 Audio. You can also connect the X5 to external microphones using Bluetooth. Audio is recorded at 48kHz and 16-bit in the AAC file format.

Battery Life: Better Than Last Generation

Insta360 promises up to 185 minutes of recording on a charge when using its Endurance Mode (5.7K24fps) with Active HDR turned off, up from 135 minutes with the X4. With any camera, real-world battery life varies depending on how it's used—capturing higher-resolution video will, inevitably, run down a battery far faster than capturing stills—so we'd take this number with a pinch of salt. Nonetheless, the X5's battery capacity of 2,400mAh is an improvement over the X4's 2,290mAh, and swapping out a depleted battery for a charged spare remains a simple and speedy process.

(Credit: Craig Wilson)

Setup and Controls: Power On and Shoot

When you first power up the Insta360 X5, it launches a tutorial that teaches you the basics of navigating the camera's core features. Swiping left from the right-hand edge of the screen opens the shooting parameters menu to adjust color profiles, white balance, and the like. Swiping up from the bottom edge lets you change resolution. Swiping right from the left-hand edge opens the gallery. Swiping down from the top edge opens the settings menu.

The settings menu is expansive and includes options for toggling gesture and voice controls on and off and enabling the AI Highlights Assistant, which flags key moments in videos as you record them. It also lets you choose whether to prerecord footage the moment you power the camera on, connect Bluetooth microphones, set a timed capture, adjust audio settings, and choose what happens when you press the record button with the camera off (either use the last shooting mode or choose a specific one).

(Credit: Craig Wilson)

Pressing the power button when the camera is on turns the screen on and off, while long-pressing it turns the camera off. By default, the Q button beneath the power button opens a customizable list of presets, such as Motorcycle, Skiing, and Surfing, but you can change this to your preferred shooting modes and reorder them.

Pressing the Mode button beneath the screen toggles through the following options: Bullet Time, Burst, InstaFrame, Interval, Loop Recording, Photo, PureVideo, Road Mode, Starlapse, TimeLapse, TimeShift, and Video. As you cycle through each mode, a description is displayed beneath it, making it easier to tell them apart and choose the right one for your use case.

The camera also offers helpful info about shooting parameters. For instance, if you choose Video mode and select 8K resolution, an information box at the bottom of the display reads: "High res makes X5 heat up faster. Best to use when windy or while moving. In low light, shoot in 5.7K." Similarly, the X5 will prompt you to switch to PureVideo if it detects you're in a low-light environment.

Apps: Easy to Use, Hard to Master

(Credit: Insta360/PCMag)

The Insta360 mobile app (free for Android and iOS) will look familiar to anyone who's used it previously, but alongside the X5's release, Insta360 has updated it to include new AI-powered editing templates and a one-touch AI edit mode that'll take clips and try to turn them into shareable content with minimal user intervention. I had mixed success with the AI editor when left wholly to its own devices, and preferred to be more hands on with my edits. But I had great success with the templates.

(Credit: Insta360/PCMag)

Some of the templates are aimed at helping you create a cinematic recap of a holiday compiled from a number of disparate clips, and others are meant for specific use cases (like riding a motorcycle or snowboarding). Some use the X5's 360-degree camera's all-encompassing field-of-view to unusual effect. Nose Mode, for instance, prompts you to hold the camera between your teeth and results in caricature-like videos where your head is enormous, your body is shrunken, and your movements are sped up. It's incredibly silly, but also hilarious.

The Insta360 app includes an enormous selection of templates and tutorials, and it would take weeks to try them all out. In addition to AI edits, it's possible to swap out the sky in a video with something else, like UFOs or Van Gogh's Starry Night.

Some of the templates and tutorials produce twee results (see the video below), but they do a superb job of illustrating the immense creative possibilities the Insta360 X5 enables. Although it's easy to get a quick, cutesy clip ready for export and sharing, taking full creative control of your footage still requires getting to grips with the app's substantial selection of effects, transitions, and the various menus that house them.

To really make your videos shine, it's especially important to familiarize yourself with creating keyframes in the editor, which help you adjust viewpoints and perspectives in your videos. The app can do incredible things if you know how to harness its capabilities.

Experienced film editors will likely prefer the desktop version of Insta360's app (free for macOS and Windows). Editing complex timelines with multiple clips and effects is far easier on a laptop or desktop than it is on a mobile phone, and using the desktop version makes it easier to overcome the rather slim catalog of free-to-use music the mobile app offers to accompany your creations.

Photo and Video Capture: The X5 Excels at Both

Most 360-camera buyers are likely after the unique video capabilities the category offers, but I absolutely adore what you can do with the stills. I love the way a 360-degree photo can capture a crowd, an interesting space, or distort proximity and dimensions, with often cartoonish results. I also find carrying a 360-degree camera makes me look for photo opportunities I wouldn't normally with a conventional camera—an interesting ceiling or floor, graffiti-covered bathroom walls, and cramped spaces all make for wonderful 360-degree shots.

(Credit: Craig Wilson)

I've been using 360-degree cameras since LG and Samsung released their first models in 2016 (the LG 360 Cam and the Samsung Gear 360, respectively). Both of those cameras showed me what was possible with the format, but it was only when I got my hands on an Insta360 One X in 2019 and took it to Tokyo that I saw what was possible once the resolution failings and dismal low-light performance of early models had been overcome. That was also when I started an Instagram account (@craigaroundtowns) dedicated to 360-degree photos.

(Credit: Craig Wilson)

These days, I try not to leave home without a 360-degree camera, and in my testing, I had great fun making the X5 my daily shooter. I tested it around town, at a wedding in Philadelphia, and in the Hudson River with my Sunday morning cold plunge group. I also tried out some of the tutorials offered in the Insta360 mobile app.

(Credit: Craig Wilson)

As you can see in the still above, the camera performed admirably in a very dark wedding venue for photos. But as the Bullet Time video below shows, 120fps slow-motion video really pushed the capabilities of the 1/1.8-inch sensors. There's no doubt that low-light performance is significantly improved from previous models, but, like most action cameras, the Insta360 X5 works best when there's plenty of available light. In broad daylight or under bright lights, the software-powered FlowState image stabilization works amazingly well, and videos are richly detailed.

If the X5 has any other failings, they're no fault of its own: The form factor makes some issues inevitable. For example, the fish-eye style lenses will introduce significant flare when hit by bright light at an oblique angle. If you love Michael Bay movies, that might seem like a feature and not a bug. Your subjects can also end up with outrageous proportions depending on how you play with the camera's viewpoints, perspectives, and tendency to warp things toward the edges of the frame.

(Credit: Craig Wilson)

The camera can also struggle to stitch images or video from the pair of cameras if one lens is brightly illuminated while the other is in comparative darkness. However, the X5 handles this situation better than previous models I've tested.

None of these are dealbreakers; they are merely physical limitations of the hardware. I remain astounded at what's possible with the X5 and how far Insta360 has evolved its products since its early 360-cameras. It's also to be applauded for trying to make the editing process simpler, even if it's still all too easy to get stuck menu diving or accidentally baking in effects, music, or text before you're ready to.

Insta360 often uses the phrase, "shoot first, frame later," in its marketing materials, and that flexibility is the X5's biggest selling point. Unless you need 8K flat video (the 8K figure for the X5 only applies to 360-degree footage), the option to reframe after the fact is hugely forgiving. Further, the invisible selfie stick, range of accessories, and smart editing tools make the X5 a compelling choice for creators looking to produce the sort of videos that would usually require multiple cameras.