360° HD Video Camera

After research all the 360 cameras that I could find on the market, I picked the 360fly 4k for several reasons.1. Single video stream, no clumsy proprietary stitching required to produce a final video. Included software exports directly to facebook and youtube.2. Price. I bought mine on sale for $4003. Waterproof up to 5m4. Included GPS and gyro5. Form factorNow that I've had and used the camera for a couple of months, let me go over some of the finer points. I am an avid outdoors person. I hike, bike, and participate in many action sports. I've used GoPros in various aspects, and are familiar with their limitations. I would HIGHLY recommend this as a replacement for an action camera and I'll give some points why.Video:At this price point the video quality is great. Is it the best? No. To get better, though, you are looking at spending significantly more money. You also have to pay attention to the settings in the apps, because it defaults to half the native resolution for sharing on social media. This caught me off guard, but once I changed it I noticed my facebook and youtube videos were much more clear.Audio:Audio sucks. Sorry, but it does. Do I care? No. I'm going to try using a separate sound recorder, which I'd do with any other action camera. I've heard some great audio from gopros, but people have modified them to put deadcat material over the mic's. That might work, but I bet it would obstruct some of the video. No biggy.Form factor:Yes, this has an integrated battery and integrated memory. IT DOESN'T MATTER. Are you really going to record 2 hours straight of content? I hope not. Ain't nobody going to watch that and editing that much video would be a pain. I've found that for my excursions, the battery life and memory have been more than enough. Unless you need 2 hours straight of recording, just figure out how to record the interesting bits.Now, the integrated memory and battery make this camera waterproof up to 5m. I've taken the camera snorkeling and dove with it. The cheaper version of this camera requires the microphone to be plugged, but the 4k version does not to be waterproof.The camera has a single button with a multicolor LED. Something that I appreciate on the 360fly 4k is that it vibrates in addition to the light to give feedback for button presses. This means that if the camera is mounted to you, you don't have to look at it to know that it is recording. Just feel the buzz.Lastly, the form factor is great for an action cam. Yes, it is kinda dense and the problem with one large lens is that I'm always getting hand and finger prints on it. But, I have no problems chest mounting this, or mounting it to my helmet or handlebars. It isn't particularly obtuse, either, compared to some of the competitors. Being round, I will admit that I'm afraid that I'll drop it, but it has a grippy exterior and comes with a neoprene carrying case.Software:I've used both the 360fly app and desktop software. While traveling, it was great to be able to post 360 video to facebook. The software is very simple, and not super feature rich. Occasionally the android app required multiple attempts to get things posted to facebook. However, not sure that is 360fly's fault. Facebook doesn't have a great track record for their android app. The desktop software is very similar to the app. No advanced features, but it works and doesn't annoy me. If you just want to share stuff with your friends, it works great. If you want to professionally edit the video? Get premiere pro. Also, don't forget to set the quality to its highest before sharing to social media.Other thoughts:There is a learning curve with 360deg video. The 360fly does have a dead spot, but if you are aware of it you can put yourself in it and only show the interesting stuff. What I really like about this camera is the simplicity. What I mean by that is that you don't need an LCD to see what it is recording. It records everything, except directly beneath it. You don't need to make sure it is angled exactly perfect. With such a wide field of view, having it 10deg off doesn't make the video crap. It is so much easier to get good video.I am waiting for the integrated gps and gyro to be worth something. GoPro did something similarly with the Hero5, and finally rolled out software that uses the metadata. Hopefully 360fly has some plans, because I think there are some great opportunities to use geocoded 360 video.Conclusion:I'm super happy with the 360fly camera, and glad I purchased it. You should get one, too.PS. I wish I could share some of the videos here, but I don't think amazon will play them correctly...

360Fly support said that I should buy the waterproof dive housing before taking it snorkeling so I did. It fogged up in about 3 seconds and started leaking water within 5 minutes.The 360 pics you see online are much different in that the person taking the picture is not IN the picture. Not the case with this camera.Pro Tip: If you hold it at waist level it will make you look extra fat (which I REALLY don't need).The software is really buggy.I set the folder for my library and it created all these extra folders.You have to import your videos into the Director which creates another copy of them somewhere else. These files are HUGE so having 2 copies of it seems kinda dumb to me.At one time I tried to convert a file (which you have to do to every file) and it actually deleted all the files in my library. Fortunately I hadn't deleted them from the other location yet.Trying to convert a file on my Galaxy Note 4 actually fried my battery. As in it is now in the trash. Nothing I could do to get my phone to turn back on until I replaced the battery. No boot mode, no factory reset, nothing.The Director software won't even run on anything that isn't like a really new high end gaming PC. The support guy sent me a new version for lower end PC's and it worked but it took 45 minutes to convert a 15 minute video.Overall, the thing works but plan on buying a new PC if you are going to buy this camera. 15 minute videos are like 4GB each.

This review is to let you know it still works but on a very limited platform. The app created by 360fly is no longer on the Apple store or available for the PC. Also I haven't found a way to connect the cam to the pc directly via USB. So you'll need a compatible android to be able to use this camera.The 360fly app is still available on the Google play store. I'm using it on my Samsung S21 Ultra. Took a few tries to connect. This was sitting in a closet for about a year and finally decided to play with it. For $80 its worth it compared to the next level up on a 360 cam for a few hundred dollars.You'll find that if you want to upload to youtube or social media you'll need to add meta tags to it. Thats a small piece of software that tells the media player this is a 360 video and plays it accordingly...in a nutshell. There was software to make this easy but the support for all that is gone with as the company disappeared a long time ago. So you have to find your own way. I get the impression that this is the norm with other 360 cam videos or I'd see more content readily available. Just one of those things you have to take time to learn.I'm using Magix movie editor pro. The software supports 360 video editing and will allow me to add meta tags. Will update when successful. For now still a project.