Review: Insta360 One RS 1-inch 360 Edition

Insta360’s One RS modular action camera is one of our favorites. The ability to swap lenses—from a typical action-camera wide-angle lens, to a 360 lens, to a Leica-designed lens with a 1-inch sensor—makes it more versatile than a GoPro. Insta360 is now building on that modular foundation with the new One RS 1-inch 360 Edition.

The 1-inch 360 Edition sports dual lenses and dual 1-inch sensors coengineered with Leica, and builds on the system that One RS owners already have. The core module is the same as the action camera, but the new 360 version adds a bigger battery, a case to hold the battery and core module, and a lens unit with dual sensors and lenses that sit on top, like ice cream on a cone.

The result is a camera that produces the best-looking 360-degree video footage I’ve ever seen. Insta360 also has a video editor that makes editing the footage easy. If you’re all in on 360 video, this is the camera to get.

I should say that I have never been a huge fan of 360 video. This is mostly because, well, the human eye doesn’t have a 360-degree view of the world. Sure, there are VR goggles that so far almost no one owns or uses, but even then you can’t see it all at once. The only use case that makes sense to me is to capture an entire scene in 360 because you don’t know ahead of time where you want to point the camera. Later, you can edit the video into a normal view. This use case means you have to have a good video editor. Insta360 is the only 360 camera system I’ve used that makes editing your 360 footage easy enough to make shooting it worthwhile.

But if you are into 360-degree footage for its own sake, this camera is remarkable. The footage I shot is sharper and captures more detail than any other 360 camera I’ve used, including several of Insta360’s own past efforts. If 360-degree video is your thing, this is your camera.

Between the two sensors, you get 6K video (a step up from the 5.7K that the previous version’s 360 Mod is able to shoot) and 21-MP still images. In combination with the improved sensors, these lenses are much more capable than the much smaller lenses on the 360 Mod sold with the action camera. The quality of video is noticeably better than what I was able to capture with the One RS. It’s sharper and has less noise. This was especially obvious when shooting in low light and zooming in to look at leaves, grass, or signs.

6K video sounds like a crazy high resolution, and it would be in the normal camera, but professional-level cameras shooting footage for the VR goggles no one buys are typically shooting 10K and up. Still, 6K is a step up for consumer-level cameras. The clarity here is good enough that if you’re framing and cutting down to produce normal video, you shouldn’t notice much difference in video quality from footage shot with a 4K camera. This is especially true if your video’s destination is YouTube or TikTok, both of which heavily compress video anyway.

This opens up the possibility of using the Insta360 One RS 360 Edition as a one-person camera rig. Any 360 camera can do this of course, but the improved video quality on the 360 Edition means that the reframed footage doesn’t suffer the loss of quality you’d get doing this with most other 360 rigs.

The downside to the huge lenses on the 360 Edition is the weight. This is largest, heaviest 360 camera I’ve used. It feels especially awkward mounted at the end of a selfie stick (file that as reason #132 that you should never use a selfie stick). If you must, know that Insta360 does not recommend a selfie stick over 4 feet when you’re doing anything like running, biking, or skiing. That said, I stuck it out the window while I was driving at 55 mph and it was fine. It’s not like you can’t stress it, just know that strong jolts could snap your selfie stick.

The other downside is that the lenses are spherical and really hang out there. Insta360 includes a soft rubber cover, but mine had a nasty habit of collecting sand on the inside if I was anywhere near a beach. In over two months of testing, I haven’t scratched the lens, but that hasn’t stopped me from worrying that I will. Insta360 does sell a $79 add-on service which covers a one-time accidental damage repair for one year. That’s better than nothing, but not nearly as good as GoPro’s free replacement coverage for $50 a year.

As weirdly heavy as the One RS 360 Edition feels at the end of a selfie stick, it’s fine when you're holding it in your hand. It’s a bit like carting around an ice cream cone. A good bit of the extra size and weight come from the much larger battery. Insta360 claims you can shoot for 62 minutes. I could not confirm that because I don’t have an SD card large enough to hold that much 6K footage. Shooting a few minutes here, a few minutes there, I was able to get through a weekend’s shooting without needing to recharge. 

The microphones on the One RS 360 Edition are pretty good when the environment cooperates. If you're shooting in a windy situation, though, you’re better off with an external mic. There’s an adapter that connects to the side (and is automatically cropped out of your footage). I attached a Rode wireless mic and got much better audio that way.

Finally, it’s worth noting that, unlike the previous One RS releases, the 360 Edition is not an action camera. There’s the big, potentially scratchable lenses; it’s not waterproof without a case; and it lacks the high frame rates you want for slow motion footage.

As noted above, there are very few places you can upload 360 footage to. Facebook has a viewer, but in most cases you’re going to be editing your footage down and panning through the 360 view. This adds overhead, but thankfully Insta360’s Android and iOS apps are excellent. There’s also a desktop app and an Adobe Premiere plugin. 

Nothing has changed here from previous releases. You can transfer files from the camera over to your phone or tablet and then edit. There is some compression happening when you edit on mobile, and fewer export options. More serious videographers will want to use Insta360’s desktop app for Windows and macOS, which gives you a larger view of your footage and can export in Apple’s ProRes format, among others. 

I briefly tried the desktop app, but for the most part I find an iPad to be the best place to edit my Insta360 footage. For newcomers, there will be a learning curve. They make editing 360 footage much easier than anything else I’ve tried, but they still require you know how to use keyframes and other video editing tools. There are good tutorials both in the app and online, and when you’re getting started, the automatically generated edits make a good starting point. But it does take some time to master the art of editing.

As much as I enjoyed shooting with this camera, I think the audience for it is limited. At $800 for the full kit, or $650 if you’ve already got the core unit from the Insta360 One RS, this is a significant investment. The image quality is better than the smaller 360 mod on the action camera, but it’s less rugged, and if your footage ends up on TikTok anyway you’re not going to notice the image quality improvements.

Still, if you’re all in on 360 footage and need the highest possible image quality in a consumer camera, the Insta360 One RS 360 Edition is what you want.