Insta360 One R 1″ First Impressions

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Insta360 recently sent me their 1″ sensor camera to test out for the FPV market. There’s been a lot of excitement surrounding this camera, and I’m so glad to have it in hand finally. The purpose of this article and the attached video is simply to start the conversation and have a first impressions reaction to it. I have a lot more tests that I’m going to continue doing, and I will be creating content based on those tests. This is JUST a first impressions reaction.

I’ll include most of my thoughts written here in this article, but the primary source of information should be this video, which I’ve just published to my YouTube account breaking down my thoughts in real time.

Here are a few quick glamour shots.

And the next section will be all about comparing the footage!

Insta360 One Inch Sensor

These first two clips are from the Insta360 One Inch sensor. They are exactly the same clips, but with Flow State (Insta360’s built in stabilization) turned on and off. 

GoPro Hero 8

GoPro is still the gold standard for action cameras, especially in the world of FPV drones. I’ve included a clip from the hero 8 on the same day as filming everything else so that you can compare the way that this footage looks against the Insta360. 

Insta360 One R 4k Mod

Our next couple clips are from the Insta360 4k mod, which is their module that’s actually cheaper than the GoPro hero8, and a couple hundred bucks cheaper than the 1″ sensor. I figured that adding in a couple of these clips would be worthwhile since you’re basically deciding whether or not the quality of the 1″ sensor is outweighing the added cost.

Overall First Impressions

• 5.3k on a 180 is amazing – you can reframe anything and it has good detail as you zoom in to 1080p
• The camera is very heavy, even compared to a GoPro, but do we really care about weight that much any more? 
• The picture tends to be a little bit over sharpened in my opinion, but I’m thinking that’s something that could be fixed with software updates later on
• I love that the front lens protector element is removable and replaceable 
• I really want to see how well this would look with some ND filters because of the high shutter speed required to operate this thing in the light
• Despite the weird shape of the brain module, it still mounts just fine on most drones