Insta360 has upgraded its Ace Pro action camera with a new sensor, dual processor system, and a host of other improvements. Oh yeah, and it can now shoot 8K video at 30 frames per second.
Impressive as that is on paper, as with the original, the Ace Pro 2’s 8K capabilities are limited. Useful, but limited. While I love the Ace Pro 2, it isn’t for the 8K footage. It’s for the 4K 60-fps footage combined with all the little improvements in this release—the great low-light performance, outstanding audio, reverse charging, and longer run times.
8K Is for Marketing
The headlining feature in Ace Pro 2 is the new sensor and processors. Yes, that’s plural. More on that in a minute. First, the 1/1.3-inch sensor can now record 8K footage at 30 frames per second. Alas, as with the original Ace Pro, there are some limits.
In the real world, the Ace Pro 2’s 8K ability isn’t for action footage. It ends up with a lot of artifacts in the motion, though it does have more detail. There are probably some situations where it could work as action footage, but most of the time I shot in 4K. Where I liked having the 8K was to shoot a broad landscape and then crop in, but still have 4K footage. I find this handy for B-roll type of situations, where it’s easier to pull out the Ace Pro 2 and hand-hold a shot than it is to change lenses on my mirrorless camera.
The other issue with 8K footage in my testing is that you can’t use the most aggressive stabilization mode (High). The minute you switch to 8K, the Ace Pro 2 switches to “standard” stabilization, which is fine for some things, but really not good enough for what I was hoping to use it for—chest or head-mounted footage from a mountain bike.
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If you’re walking, standard stabilization is fine, and I could see the additional detail in fine areas like tree leaves in the 8K footage (it was especially obvious on a nice 4K OLED screen). That said, by the time you export a video for the web, which is going to 4K at the most, much of this nice detail is lost.
But that’s OK, the Ace Pro 2 is a great camera even if you never shoot 8K video. This is probably why, despite using the same sensor, DJI’s Osmo Action 5 camera limits footage to 4K.
Low-Light Excellence
Let’s leave 8K behind and talk about what has impressed me more about this update, namely the number of things Insta360 has fixed from the original Ace Pro that makes this a much better camera. First, there’s a new Leica lens with a wider field of view at 157 degrees (up from the 151 degrees in the first model). That doesn’t sound like much, but it is noticeable in situations where the FOV is key, like with chest and helmet mounts.
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This sensor supports 13.5 stops of dynamic range, which is particularly nice for shooting in mixed sunlight and shade, and in low light scenarios. As with the first Ace Pro, the Pure Video mode is what you want for low-light videos. Insta360 has upped the max frame rate in Pure Video mode to 60 fps, which is nice for slowing things down in low light.
Low light is one place I think the Ace Pro 2 is better than anything else on the market. In reviewing test footage from both, I found the Ace Pro 2 did a slightly better job of preserving details than the DJI Osmo Action 5, which is otherwise very close. Both blow the GoPro Hero 13 Black out of the water. If you want to shoot at night, don’t get a GoPro.
Some of the impressive night and HDR capabilities may be due in part to the dual-chip processing architecture, which splits tasks between primary and secondary imaging chipsets. One of these chips is the same that was in the Ace Pro, but it’s now joined by a second chip, which can process denoising, dynamic range, and the like separately. Whatever is happening under the hood, the results are pretty good.
That said, Insta360 has upped the saturation considerably in the default settings, which makes it even worse than the last model. Perhaps I am the only one who doesn’t like oversaturated video, but to my eye, the default color saturation mode in the Ace Pro 2 has a hyperreal quality only Jean Baudrillard could love. Maybe that’s just me.
There are two new color modes to shoot in, though, and they are both nice—Leica Natural and Leica Vivid. When I wasn’t shooting in log I shot in Leica Natural, which is less saturated and produces a more realistic image, at least to my eye.
The Ace Pro 2 is, to my knowledge, the first action camera to do something I’ve done on my own for years—incorporate a windscreen over the microphone. Yes, I often put a bit of felt or even some spare “fur” from a dead cat over the mic input of my action camera. It’s not perfect, but it does help, especially on a lightly windy day. Well, the Ace Pro 2 includes a nice wind guard with a bit of foam to cover the mic and it works. Shocking I know. Audio Engineering 101 wasn’t lying. The advantage here is that you can leave off the digital wind-noise reduction, which never works that well in my experience, and still record decent audio in light winds.
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That’s a nice addition, but if you want good audio out of your Ace Pro 2, you want an external mic. And I have good news fellow audio nerds, the Ace Pro 2 has added support for using a third-party mic via the USB-C port. The one that comes to mind is the DJI Mic 2 (or hey, maybe the new DJI Mic Mini), which you can use with the Ace Pro (or any other camera) via Bluetooth, though only one mic can connect. Connecting the DJI Mic 2 receiver via USB allows you to connect both transmitters to the Ace Pro 2, which opens up new audio possibilities.
The Ace Pro 2 also has a new battery. In a move like what GoPro did back with the Hero 11 and 12, the new battery is the same size as the old but has a higher energy density—1,800 mAh. It also charges much faster—up to 80 percent in 18 minutes according to Insta360. I didn’t catch it at 80 percent, but it did get fully changed in about 40 minutes.
Also nice is the new reverse charge feature, which means you can use your Ace Pro 2 to charge another device. If you’re in the field and your phone is dying, that’s a nice way to keep it alive. In a more limited use case, if you happen to be a camera reviewer shooting side-by-side with the GoPro Hero 13, you can recharge the Hero 13 off the Ace Pro 2 so you can finish up your tests without going home to recharge, which is nice.
Insta360’s Ace Pro 2 is an impressive camera. I’ve been testing it for over a month and haven’t run into any situations where it let me down. The ability to charge other devices off it has come in handy several times, and the image quality coming out of it is every bit as good—often better—than the GoPro Hero 13 and the DJI Osmo Action 5. The flip-up rear screen gives the Ace Pro 2 a bit of flexibility you won’t find in the others, though the Hero 13’s various lens add-ons arguably give it the edge when it comes to versatility.
