JK Imaging (the licensee behind the Kodak camera brand) got into the 360-degree camera game early, albeit with single-lens models. The Kodak Pixpro Orbit360 4K ($499.99) is its first dual-lens camera, so it can capture the entire world that surrounds it. But seams from stitching are clearly visible in video, and the quality of the two lenses is not identical. For the price, you're better off with the Nikon KeyMission 360, a fully waterproof camera that stitches its highest quality video as it records. Our favorite 360 camera, the Samsung Gear 360, is a lot less expensive, and is your best bet if you own a compatible phone.

Design

The Orbit360 ($141.69 at Amazon) is a squat, squarish device with two lenses, each protected by a removable dome. Construction is plastic, finished in white. The camera measures 2.2 by 2.2 by 2.7 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.5 ounces. There's a standard tripod socket on the bottom, and the device itself is protected from dust and splashes, but won't survive being submerged in water.

There are a few control buttons on the camera itself. On top you'll find Power and Record, along with a small monochrome LCD. Wi-Fi and Menu buttons are on the side. There's enough information shown on the top LCD so that you can use the camera without an app, but it's easier to change modes and adjust settings using your smartphone. I think the camera would be simpler to use if it had separate buttons for video and still capture, as it's a bit of a pain to change modes on the fly.

A locking side door covers the removable battery and ports. There's micro USB, for data transfer and charging, as well as a microSD card slot, a micro HDMI output port, and a 3.5mm microphone jack. The battery is good for about 25 minutes of 360-degree recording.

Software Support

To control the camera with your phone, download the Pixpro360VR app for Android and iOS. It shows a live view on your phone's screen, and delivers full control over the camera. You can change shooting modes, start and stop recording or snap photos, and set white balance and exposure compensation.

The app also supports transfer of images and video to your phone. It takes about four minutes to transfer a minute of 4K 360-degree video to an iPhone 8 Plus. That's not bad, but if you're shooting at 4K 24fps the video isn't stitched. (In-camera stitching is available at 15fps in 4K, which is choppy, or at 960p, which doesn't offer nearly enough resolution for the spherical format.) The Orbit saves video in a single file, but with each lens shown as its own circle. To put it in a format that can be shared and viewed in 360 degrees, you need to stitch it together into an equirectangular projection.

The app does that, but you need to be sure you select the right format for conversion—by default it simply extracts a 16:9 frame. That's useful in some situations, but most users shooting in 360 will want to share in 360.

The app requires about 6.5 minutes to stitch a minute of video—it can't handle conversions longer than that, so you'll need to keep clips short or convert longer videos piecemeal. But there's a big problem with the app—if your phone's screen turns off, or if you go into another app, the stitching stops and has to be started again fresh. Because of this I found myself tapping my phone's screen every few seconds while using it to convert video into a format that can be uploaded to Facebook and YouTube.

If you need to convert a clip longer than a minute, you need to use a computer to convert video. Desktop software is available for macOS and Windows. The same minute-long clip took about four minutes to stitch on a 2014 MacBook Pro. The software is pretty basic, without an editing timeline, but it does let you trim clips and upload them to Facebook or YouTube.

Video and Image Quality

Other dual-lens 360 cameras use identical lenses. That's not the case with the Orbit. Its front lens is noticeably shorter than its rear, and covers a narrower (155-degree) field of view; the rear lens captures a huge 235-degree swath, wide enough to see behind itself.

There's some logic behind the choice. In addition to full spherical video, the Orbit uses the front lens by itself to capture flat 16:9 video at a 135-degree angle of view, similar to what you get with an action cam. The rear lens can be used on its own as well. Unfortunately, the design has a detrimental effect on video quality.

Let's talk about 4K first. The Orbit is a 4K camera, but it's also a 360-degree camera. Instead of constraining the pixels to a relatively narrow 16:9 frame, they're stretched out across a full sphere. Even the best 4K 360 cameras record video that is softer than traditional 1080p footage.

But the Orbit doesn't capture anywhere near the best 360 footage we've seen. You can see the seams where the two lenses meet very clearly, even with subjects in the distance. It's exacerbated by a noticeable difference in sharpness. Take a look at the hedges in the distance in the first scene of our test footage—you can make out details to the left, but to the right you just get blur. The blurriness extends across the entirety of that half of the scene. There's also a difference in exposure, which certainly doesn't help things.

Not surprisingly, the sharper footage is captured by the tighter, front camera. Both lenses are backed by a 20MP sensor, so it looks like the optics are simply better with the less ambitious half lens. This means you should put it toward the more important portion of action when recording video.

When recording 360 footage at 4K the frame rate is limited to 24fps or 15fps. Let's ignore 15fps—it's too choppy to be considered useable. Shooting at 24fps is great if you want a cinematic look, but more action-oriented videographers will want a 30 or 60fps option. You need to drop the resolution in half, to 960p, to get 30fps with both lenses. Right now, because of the processing power needed for 360 video, we haven't seen affordable 4K models that shoot at 60fps, but there are some out there that support 30fps.

Other frame rates are available if you don't use both lenses simultaneously. The front lens can shoot 16:9 4K at 30fps and 1080p or 720p at 60fps. The rear dome lens rolls 2880p at 24fps, but can go to 30fps at 2K 1920p. Still capture is available in all three modes too—you get 27MP images using both lenses, 8MP shots using the front camera, and 13MP images with the rear lens.

The Orbit360 doesn't do a great job under indoor lighting. Our outdoor test footage doesn't show any noise—and it shouldn't—but a clip captured in the relatively brightly lit interior of a bowling alley shows more noise than expected. And you shouldn't plan to get useable footage in a dim bar; it's just not going to happen.

Conclusions

The Kodak Pixpro Orbit360 4K has too many marks against it to recommend that you buy it. Video quality is the biggest issue. The 360-degree footage shows seams and only one half of the frame is reasonably crisp. And, while the mobile software is fine for remote control, it's simply baffling that the app goes to sleep and cancels stitching if your phone's screen turns off. Strike three is the price. For $500 you can get the Nikon KeyMission 360, which is fully waterproof and stitches footage in camera—the downside is that it doesn't let you switch to single-lens operation as you can with the Kodak.

Our Editors' Choice is the 2017 version of the Samsung Gear 360. It costs a lot less (and often sells well under its $230 list price), supports dual- and single-lens capture, and does a much better job with stitching. It has its own limitations—its mobile app only works with Samsung Android handsets and iPhones—and you do need to stitch video either with your phone or with a computer. But it's a more polished, consumer-ready product than the Orbit360.

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