Insta360 ONE RS Twin Edition review: A worthy GoPro challenger

For a long time, the most prominent name in the action camera business has been GoPro. Now, Insta360 is mounting a challenge to that title, with the release of its new ONE RS Twin Edition modular 360 action camera in March. 

It’s a bit of a mouthful to say, but that’s because there’s a lot to chew on here. An impressively compact and powerful camera, the Insta360 ONE RS’s unique design allows users to pull it apart and quickly swap between a regular 4K lens and a 360 lens, immediately adding a ton of versatility, value, and a novel bit of fun — without sacrificing image quality. 

Judging from this showing, Insta360 is providing some more than decent competition for GoPro.

The Resolution

The Insta360 ONE RS Twin Edition is the successor to the company’s ONE R Twin Edition, a similarly modular action camera released in 2020. Both have practically identical form factors, however the ONE RS boasts some internal upgrades that distinguish it from its predecessor.

Users can now take higher resolution videos with the 4K Boost lens, with a max of 6016 x 2560 at 25 FPS as compared to 4000 x 3000 at 30 FPS. Photo resolution has also gotten a boost, reaching up to 8000 x 6000 — twice the maximum resolution of the ONE R.

Of course, the resolution boost won’t mean much unless you have the hardware to actually view 8K media. But as always, the option to future-proof your footage is always appreciated, and the extra pixels open up more options for editing without noticeably compromising image clarity.

Resolution and frame rate for the ONE RS’s 360 mode remain unchanged since the ONE R, still sitting at a maximum of 6080 x 3040 for photographs and 5760 x 2880 at 30 FPS for videos. Even so, that should be more than enough pixels for most people’s purposes.

The Build

The ONE RS Twin Edition’s biggest selling point is its unique modular design, which allows you to separate it into three pieces and swap out the lens on the fly. The camera comes with two interchangeable lenses — the 4K Boost lens and the 360 lens — though you can also shell out an additional $299.99 for the 1-inch wide angle lens.

I loved this versatility. Providing these options lets you decide on the spot what format you want to film in while carrying just one camera, rather than having to fumble around with an entirely separate device. It’s also an excellent pick for people who are curious about 360 video and would like to try it out, but don’t want to commit several hundred dollars for a dedicated 360 camera.

Further, the camera is conveniently small enough to just toss in your bag. The ONE RS is about the size of a GoPro HERO10 Black when assembled, measuring just slightly bigger than its competitor. It’s advertised as weighing 135.5 grams with the 360 lens module attached, though my kitchen scales clocked it at just 124 grams — around 30 grams less than both the 360 GoPro Max and the GoPro HERO10 Black. Either way, it’s definitely lightweight.

However, some sacrifices do have to be made to accommodate the camera’s compact and modular design. The most notable is the minuscule size of the ONE RS’s preview screen, which measures at just 1.25 inches.

It does operate as a touch screen, allowing you to change your camera’s settings and preview some footage without going through the phone app. Yet the screen’s lilliputian size makes actually using it feel fiddly, and would likely be particularly frustrating for people with larger hands or thicker fingers. The preview display is also too small to provide more than a vague idea of your framing, making it preferable to use the Insta360 app to control your camera.

The App

As is the case with most gadgets these days, a good swath of the Insta360 ONE RS’s functionality is accessed via a dedicated app. I would not mourn if companies collectively decided we don’t need an official app for every piece of tech we own, but in this case the small size of the ONE RS’s onboard screen does make it more understandable.

The first thing that struck me when I opened the Insta360 app was how busy it is. There’s a ton packed into the ONE RS’s tiny package, providing a myriad of options both in the initial filming and the in-app editing afterward. It felt a bit like lifting the lid on a packed toy box and trying to decide what to grab first.

It’s great to have so much choice, but it can initially be a bit overwhelming trying to figure out what everything does and how to use it, especially when it comes to editing. Video tutorials and pop-up tips definitely help, but there’s still a lot to take in and thus a lot of trial and error involved. To be fair, it’s to be expected when there are so many features, though it’s slightly frustrating that most tutorials are videos rather than easily skimmable text.

With the 4K lens attached, the app let me scroll through 13 different shooting modes: Starlapse (for photos of the night sky), Burst, Interval, Night Shot, HDR Photo, Photo, Video, Timelapse, Active HDR, TimeShift, Slow Motion, Loop recording, and 6K Widescreen Mode. Swapping it out for the 360 lens removes Active HDR and Slow Motion, replacing them with HDR Video, Bullet Time, Live, and Reframe Live (which let me control the framing on a 360 livestream).

Insta360’s app does take a moment to boot up and connect with the camera though, so it isn’t the best if you want to quickly whip out your camera and capture a shot. I also noticed a significant delay of several seconds when taking photos, meaning by the time the picture was actually captured my subjects’ smiles had typically gone stiff or dropped altogether.

Editing

After you’re done filming, there are also a lot of editing options. These include the ability to edit the aspect ratio, apply filters, select freeze frames, alter the video’s speed, and even use MultiView modes which show two angles of a 360 video at once. One of the more interesting editing tools was the option to drag a rectangle over a subject to automatically track them through a 360 video, which works well to produce smooth reframed clips (and also feels really cool). I had a lot of fun with that one.

The most unexpected in-app editing tool was the beauty filter, which definitely isn’t a feature I expected to see on an action camera. Called Face Filter, you can have the Insta360 app apply it automatically, or manually adjust the toning and brightening yourself. But even the beauty filter’s lowest setting was an aggressive change, noticeably reshaping my entire face to make my chin smaller, forehead bigger, and shifting my eyes farther apart. These alterations were applied even if I only used the brightening option and left the toning alone.

It’s a very smooth, consistent, and well-executed effect that made me look like a K-pop star, but anyone who actually knows me in real life would immediately recognize that this is not what I really look like. I would have liked the option for a gentler effect, just to take the edge off a bad skin day.

All of this isn’t even mentioning the catalogue of example clips, community videos, and tutorials that greets you under the Insta360 app’s Explore tab, which offer up a wide variety of edit ideas and are actually rather inspiring. Seeing them made me want to go snowboarding with my ONE RS despite never having snowboarded in my life, or use the Face Off template to recreate the final scene in Crash Landing On You‘s title sequence.

Livestreaming

One disappointing element was the ONE RS’s 360 livestreaming capabilities. I ran into a myriad of issues trying to set it up, with the function simply refusing to work with YouTube. An Insta360 spokesperson told Mashable that YouTube had recently changed some settings which impacted its compatibility with the new camera. The problem will likely be fixed in an eventual update, but for now 360 streaming to YouTube just isn’t possible.

Streaming to Facebook works fine, provided your internet connection can handle it. The stream froze and lagged so much on my home network that it was unusable, but I had no issues when I later tried it using the WiFi at a WeWork in the middle of Sydney. The resolution certainly left something to be desired, as did the audio quality, and there was a significant delay. But the footage was smooth, and the 360 camera did let viewers look around.

Unfortunately, creating a private stream for just a few invitees isn’t possible on Facebook, as you can only restrict your post to either yourself, your friends, or the public. This meant I couldn’t create a 360 livestream just for my family, which is one of the reasons I was so interested in investigating the ONE RS. The app also notes that you can only broadcast 30 minutes of live 360 video at a time.

I have my fingers crossed these issues will eventually get sorted out, but if you were hoping to use the Insta360 ONE RS to launch a YouTube channel of 360 livestreams, I’d be hesitant.

Should you buy it?

Overall, I really enjoyed playing with the Insta360 ONE RS Twin Edition, and quickly began taking it with me whenever I went out. At $549.99, the Insta360 ONE RS sits alongside the $549.98 GoPro HERO10 Black and GoPro MAX in terms of price point (though if you get a $49.99/yr GoPro subscription they’ll knock $200 or $150 off these respective camera’s prices, putting your total immediate outlay closer to $400 or $450). However, it’s flexible enough to substitute for both, with its 360 footage resolution about on par with the MAX.

The Insta360 ONE RS’s compact, portable size and modular versatility provide a lot of freedom to experiment and determine how you most like to shoot. It’s a great, low-risk option if you’re new to 360 video and want to try it out, but aren’t quite ready to buy a camera strictly dedicated to it. 

And if you find that 360 video isn’t for you, you can always just stick to the 4K lens.