what's up everyone for the past 8 weeks I've been testing the latest action cameras from the three major companies we've got the GoPro the DJI and the insta 360 now in this video I'm going to run a bunch of side-by-side comparisons to Showcase what all three of these cameras are capable of see if you can work out which camera is which before I reveal now I've watched countless videos on YouTube comparing these three cameras and something that really frustrated me is I felt that 99% of creators didn't fully test these cameras properly at the end of the day they made for fun adventure activities if I see someone reviewing an action camera that's just walking around a city I'm not satisfied with that and so I took these cameras on as many different adventures and activities as possible I literally make a living off using an action camera and for the past almost decade GoPro has been my choice but having watched a bunch of review videos on YouTube recently has made me doubt if I'm still using the best gear and that's kind of my agenda in this video is I want to work out who actually makes the best action camera in 2024 and for you guys to work out which camera is going to be best and how you should spend your money now I have worked with both DJI and GoPro in the past but I wanted to create full transparency in this video and so that's why I'm including a Dropbox link below with all the raw footage so that you can check it out for yourself and I highly recommend doing that if you think about getting one of these three cameras what you will see is honestly quite eye opening now I'm not here to bash or hate on any of these companies I think they all make incredible products but I really felt it was important to just show all the facts all right and Camera reveal in 3 2 1 now let's break it all down now there are four key things that I consider the most important thing when it comes to an action camera and that is image quality field of view slow motion and stabilization everything else is a second and third priority so we're going to run through those right now and then get into everything else so quickly for the super tech people it took me about 4 days to work out what are the best image quality settings for each camera and I'll have them on screen right now and those are the settings I used for most of the video so when it comes to image quality across the board on all of these cameras with all the different modes I'd say GoPro consistently has the best image it has the best dynamic range in the HDR modes as well as the log profiles it also has the highest bit rate in all three cameras up to 200 mbes per second if you use GoPro Labs GoPro Labs is insane I'll touch on that a bit later I would say DJI has the second best image quality overall in some cases the dynamic range on the osmo action 5 was even better than the hero 13 I found it went back and forth depending on the situation and in third place goes to the Ace Pro 2 mostly because it only shoots 8bit video so you can't cigrate it as much as the other cameras the GoPro log profile also has the flattest color profile amongst all three cameras I found it quite strange that the a Pro 2 even has a log profile considering it's 8bit it's kind of pointless and kind of random but I guess it's nice to have now the strangest thing to me is that the standard profile on the DJI camera seems to have this HDR look to it a lot of other people have talked about this on YouTube as well I'm not a big fan of it in certain scenarios it is nice so if you want to get that HDR look on the DJI camera use the normal mode it's really weird personally I think the dlog M profile on the osmo action gets you the best image and that's what I mostly used in this video so when it comes to underwater footage I got to say DJI and GoPro do an amazing job the GoPro seems to have a bit more of a green look to it but I think I prefer the skin tones it is 10 bits so you can color grade the footage to look very similar across the board the insta 360 is a bit of a roller coaster sometimes the shots look great other times the contrast and the Shadows are a bit weird so so color tones and textures are honestly a bit of a personal preference I would recommend downloading the ra footage and seeing for yourself which one you prefer personally I do prefer the skin tones on the GoPro as well as the blues and I like how soft I can make the footage I don't like that oversharpened look that some of the other action cameras have but like I said go check out the roll footage for yourself something else to note is the DJI shoots in 4k the GoPro shoots in 5.3k and the insta 360 shoots up to 8K the 8K mode on the inst 360 is a bit of a marketing gimmick I found it has limited usability with a cropped in field of view and you don't end up using it much at all great for like a simple landscape shop but beyond that not great for activities so field of view is honestly one of the most important things with an action camera because you want to capture as much as possible you don't want anything cropped out of your activity and miss any shots that you're getting so the GoPro shoots in an 8x7 ratio the Ace Pro 2 and the DJI only shoot in a 4x3 ratio so this means the GoPro is capturing more vers vertically and you can see that in these shots it just captures that a little bit more above and below from a horizontal perspective all three cameras look the same apparently the DJI shoots 155° the GoPro shoots 156 and the a pro2 shoots 157 I can't see the difference maybe if you want to go download the RO footage you might be able to see something but personally I can't now the big key factor here is that when shooting across all modes and especially slow motion modes the DJI and the GoPro have the largest field of view for some reason on the Ace Pro 2 when you shoot in a mode like slow motion it crops in quite a bit and you miss a lot of the action and you can really see that here I'm wakeboarding my buddy gram does a flip over me and I completely missed the shot with the Ace Pro 2 whereas I frame it perfectly with both the DJI and the GoPro and for that reason alone I put the Ace Pro 2 in third place when it comes to field of view now field of view is a lot closer between the GoPro and the DJI I would give the wi GoPro because of that 8x7 ratio it's just capturing more vertically and more is better when it comes to field of view on action camera that being said both DJI and GoPro have wide angle lens adapters for the cameras these things are epic it's honestly probably the first accessory I'd recommend to anybody just take your POV footage to the next level as you can see on the side by-side footage here both GoPro and DJI have taken somewhat of a different approach when it comes to these wide angle lenses for DJI it just really extends the field of view across all modes with GoPro it almost becomes a different camera and it just is the most insane stabilized shot you've ever seen seen on an action camera but we'll get more into that when it comes to stabilization GoPro takes the win for field of view second place is DJI and third place is the Ace Pro too all right so slow motion is one of the most important things when it comes to an action camera because you're doing fun epic activities you want to slow it down it looks awesome so if you look at this footage here all three cameras running 4K at 120 frames per second it looks amazing however the insta 360 has a limited field of view like I mentioned earlier I'm not a fan of that you're going to miss out on some of the action you're not going to be able to frame shots the way you want so it pretty much immediately gets third place because of that now the GoPro and DJI have a wider field of view when it comes to slow motion as you can see in these shots they're pretty much exactly the same I do love how the DJI does it in 4x3 whereas the GoPro is only in 16x9 but it is in superview basically that means it's shooting in 4x3 and just stretching it in camera all three cameras also shoot 240 frames per second however the DJI and the in 360 only do it at 1080 PhD and the GoPro does it at 2.7k so if each Square you see on screen right now represents 4K this is the relative resolution size of each camera shooting at 240 frames per second so GoPro is a lot closer to 4K and gets the win on that side GoPro also has these both slow motion modes that let you shoot up to 400 frames per second here's a great example to show how much you can slow down my buddy Thomas doing a flip on a wakeboard and we shot this at 360 frames per second and you can see see it slowed down way more I believe it's about 8% whereas the a Pro 2 and DJI could only slow down to about 12% so for slow motion GoPro gets the win DJI second and the Ace Pro 2 is in third when it comes to stabilization on these cameras there's a few different things to cover first off across the board on most of the standard modes I'd give the win to GoPro second place to DJI and third to the Ace Pro 2 and that seems to be the general consensus on YouTube now all three cameras have a full 360 degree Horizon balancing feature however the GoPro can shoot at 4K 60 frames per second the a Pro 2 can only do it at 4K 30 frames per second and the DJI can only do it at 2.7k but up to 60 frames per second so in this example here with the water slide I have the Horizon lock feature on the GoPro and the a proo 2 in 4k I wanted to shoot in 4k as well on the DJI but unfortunately it only balances up to 45° and you can rarely see the difference it makes I also ran more comparisons with the horizon feature on all three cameras and it's pretty even but GoPro gets the win because it's better quality and higher frames per second now we can take this to the next level with the wide angle lens adapter on both the GoPro and the DJI and when you look at it you can really see GoPro is just miles ahead with stabilization quality and field of view I honestly had higher expectations for the DJI with the Boost lands on I thought we get a wider field of view it is wider than the a Pro 2 but it's nowhere near the GoPro yeah when it comes comes to 360° stabilization lock the GoPro is the clear winner I'd give Ace Pro two because of quality and third place to DJI now something I haven't seen anybody talk about is stabilization underwater when you take a camera underwater the water creates a magnification which changes the field of view and that's why if you've ever filmed with the action camera under water you might see some strange warping on your stabilization now in 360 did an amazing thing this year and they included a specialized underwater mode just for this GoPro have the same thing but you need to use GoPro labs to able it I really think DJI missed out by not including an underwater stabilization mode on the camera and you can see this in the side by- side comparison the GoPro is clearly the most stable shot underwater weirdly enough the DJI looks more stable than the insta 360 which is really confusing considering the insta 360 has the dedicated underwater mode so that doesn't really make any sense to me in some cases it was maybe slightly more stable but the DJI is really not bound underw but I think it's quite evident from this footage that GoPro with its underwater stabilization mode definitely works best underwater so overall for stabilization GoPro is the clear winner that generally seems to be the consensus on YouTube second place it's close I'd probably give it to DJI because across most modes it's pretty good insta 360 is very close behind across the board I'd give DJI The Edge but it's very close GoPro is definitely the clear winner in stabilization so now that we've touched on all four main categories GoPro has won all of them in my opinion and I don't know how I'm going to get away without seeming biased but at the same time I feel like I've provided enough evidence and proof to Showcase that and I've also made all the footage public in the Dropbox below so if you want to go fact check me it's uh completely up to you but at the end of the day that's not everything that makes up an action camera so as quickly as possible let's get into everything else all right so first up is back life from all the tests and shoots I went on there was always one clear winner and that was DJI I would say once they fixed their bit rate issue the difference was rather marginal these two would die almost the same time every single time and by then the DJI had about 9% battery left that being said I'm always going to recommend buying extra batteries regardless of what action camera you own so next up is low light now I've always found this an interesting topic because you're not usually doing activities when it's really dark outside that require an action camera the only logical argument I've seen is maybe for the motor vlogging Community you know riding a motorbike in a forest after Sunset that's a real world scenario I could see how they would want better low light capabilities in action camera and I hate to break into that Community you're going to be disappointed with all three of them that's just the reality however there are two categories when it comes to low light first is the dedicated night modes now both DJI and insta 360 have dedicated night modes they look terrible honestly download the Dropbox footage it's super digitalized and animated and it looks horrible um but once it's on YouTube it's still better than the GoPro in this category I I give the win to the Ace Pro 2 because it has better field of view options and that's important to me now when it comes to overall low light management I definitely give the win to DJI from all the footage I have in front of me it just definitely performs better than both of these cameras it has the least amount of noise download the Dropbox footage and you'll see what I'm talking about to be honest I think these larger sensors are very overhyped online um I was hoping for way bigger results than what I saw they definitely make a difference but they're not as crazy as I was hoping for and download the Dropbox footage and you'll see what I'm talking about and see as on to low light the DJI and the GoPro doing an amazing job of capturing a sunset time lapse and adjusting their Shadow speed to when it gets dark the Ace Pro 2 just doesn't seem to adjust that shutter speed correctly I tried all different modes and settings it just couldn't get it to work so that was kind of disappointing now when it comes to capturing a night time lapse they all do an amazing job I really like how the a Pro 2 lets me adjust my shutter speed for longer than 30 seconds I've never seen that on a camera before so that was really cool now when it comes to capturing hyperlapses on these cameras the GoPro and the DJI for sure do the best job they both have the best stabilization and you have more speed adjustments and increments when it comes to the GoPro and the DJI just a bit more options the Ace Pro 2 hyperlapse setting is just kind of one mode and that's all you get third place with the hyperlapse for the Ace Pro 2 first place for the GoPro is second place for DJI so when it comes to photo taking capabilities on these three cameras GoPro is honestly just Miles Ahead in this category it almost feels like DJI and insta 360 made photos a second thought and just kind of ADD added them in they've got way less features way less capabilities the one little deceptive thing I found is that insta 360 Market their cameras 50 megapixels and DJI is like 40 megapixels and GoPro is only 23 but in most of the modes that I like taking photos on with an action camera the insta 360 was only giving me about 12 megapixels and the DJI was around 9 megapixels so it was interesting seeing all these limitations GoPro honestly miles ahead with photos in 360 I would give second because it has a lot more functionality and modes than the DJI yeah super weird I know we live in a very video based world but a lot of people enjoy taking photos on an action camera and I found this rather interesting so when it comes to form factor I love how small the action 5 is you know it's just that little bit smaller than the GoPro the Ace Pro 2 is a very chunky boy yeah it's a lot heavier it's a lot bigger definitely in third place it's close between these two because I do love how compact this is I prefer the lens system on the GoPro but when it comes to just general size I do like the action 5 now the action 5 is actually marginally heavier than the GoPro and the reason being is that you cannot Mount the action 5 without this or the a pro too for that matter so the true weight of these cameras is actually with a mounting system on the GoPro has one built in so as you see on screen now this is the true weight of each camera and so from a weight perspective the GoPro is technically the license camera and while we're on the topic of mounting systems I'm giving third place to DJI because you can't can't mount it both ways you can kind of force it against the magnet it's really tricky and just not the best user experience the insta 360 gets second place because you can mount it both ways and first place I'm giving you to GoPro because you can also mount it both ways on the quick latch system but it also has the built-in mounting fingers as well as the tripod mount super useful because you'll find yourself an adventure bring your action camera and then you won't be able to find one of these and then you find yourself in this situation and you just just can't Mount your action camera onto anything whereas with the GoPro you've got the bolt-in mounting system so you're always going to be okay and trust me you're going to end up losing these things I've spent way too much money on them in the past couple months regardless I do recommend buying a bunch of these but it does add up so when it comes to the LCD screens on these three cameras I definitely found first place going to the DJI the screens are great I love how it just takes up more of the camera the screen brightness is amazing the quality is epic second place I give it to GoPro and third place to the Ace Pro 2 I wasn't a big fan of this flip screen a lot of the time we're out doing activity you know I might be filming my friend skateboarding and then I want to turn the camera on me and then I have to reach around and like flip it up to face me in reality it becomes quite frustrating whereas with the GoPro and the DJI you can just flip around and frame yourself on the front screen one strange thing I did notice is that when you hit record on the Ace Pro 2 there is like maybe half a second to a second delay in the camera not a deal breaker but something worth mentioning one thing I wanted to quickly add is the touchscreen functionality on all three cameras from using them the past eight weeks to me I found them to be all the same I've seen people claim that one's better than the other absolutely no way even around water drops I've seen people claim one works better than other nope all equally is frustrating one thing I will add is the screen lock system on the GoPro and the insa 360 is definitely better it might be more tedious to unlock but it's more foolproof I had multiple scenarios where water drops got on the DJI and unlock the screen and change my modes and settings and completely ruin my footage very frustrating it didn't happen often but it still happened enough times to annoy me and make it worth mentioning here a great feature on all three cameras is the ability to create different presets now for me personally this is great because I have a different video mode for when I'm Vlogging when I'm shooting POV content when I'm shooting you know slow motion action sports now this is great when you're doing activities where you can't use the touchcreen for example if you're scuba diving so what you can do on the insta 360 in the DJI is just press the side button to scroll through all of your presets and then on the GoPro you press both buttons at the same time and then use the side button to scroll through the presets at the end of the day I don't think there's necessarily a right or wrong answer on one hand I like the organization of the GoPro presets but on the other hand I like how the DJI and inst 360 you only have to press one button to scroll through the presets but I would love to know which one you think is best in the comments below so when it comes to overheating and reliability a lot of channels seem to be obsessed with this um but from every real world scenario and actual activity I went on not once it any three of these cameras ever fail me um freeze on me or overheat on me they all held up just fine and I would say they're all very reliable cameras I know GoPros has struggled with this in the past I think it was mostly the hero 10 maybe the hero 11 camera that definitely got a lot of complaints about overheating or freezing but definitely seems like they focused on fixing that the past couple years and a lot of review channels seem to say the same thing but I did feel like it was important to mention the DJI also has 47 gigs of internal memory I'm a big fan of this it's super super convenient the insta 360 is the only camera that has haptics and vibrational feedback so when you hit record the camera vibrates I love this feature it is so so convenient I cannot even begin to explain how nice this is to have an action camera yeah job all done in 360 great great feature the DJI has a built-in color temperature sensor honestly I thought it was a bit of a gimmick but there were definitely some scenarios where I saw it making a difference so GoPro has this feature called GoPro Labs it's been around since I think the hero 8 and basically it almost lets you hack your camera and unlocks a whole bunch of super complex features that just aren't available in the camera if you are really into Super Tech nerdy stuff I highly recommend you check it out I could honestly make a 2hour video about what you can do with GoPro laabs it literally takes your camera to the next level and lets you do the craziest things with the camera so I'll have a link below to a video that explains it a bit more because it's just a bit too complex for this video but it's honestly is a game changer on this camera the GoPro has a built-in GPS which is really cool for recording data like your speak spe GeForce distance traveled um it's really cool having that information available built into the camera the other cameras can also do it using third party systems yeah very cool feature the DJI also has a bolt-in pressure gauge really fun feature if you are a sky diver or free diver as you can see while I'm free diing here the DJI is pretty accurate when compared to my Apple watch the hero 13 also has a whole variety of lens attachments this is really cool if you want to use like an anamorphic filter or macro filter it really makes it an extremely versatile camera but I'm not going to touch on those too much because you know they are relatively expensive things but definitely worth checking out so when it comes to the in camera audio and all three cameras I'd say they all pretty much around the same download the raw footage and decide for yourself a bonus point to DJI for being the only camera that can wirelessly connect to laal mics at once honestly I could make an hour long video talk about all the different features and nuances of these three cameras but however I feel like I've touched on most the important things if you feel like I've missed something out let me know in the comments below so at the end of the day there needs to be a winner and that is the GoPro Hero 13 it is just the most versatile and all-rounded Camera the DJI osma action 5 is very close behind it is slightly Superior in low lights but the GoPro edges it out on things that I consider to be more important in action camera the a Pro 2 is very much in third place no disrespect to insta 360 they make some great 360 cameras but their action camera just isn't quite cutting it when these two exist I can't think of a logical or financial reason to buy this camera for the price it cost cost when these two exist you know these two go for I think $300 to $350 they are by far the best value for money out of these three options but let me know what you guys think would love to chat about in the comments below if you agree or don't agree with me you know and if I haven't answered any questions that maybe you want to know about these three cameras cuz you're looking at buying them let me know in the comments below I've tested these things so much that if you have a question that nobody's answered I probably have the answer for you so let's chat about in the comments but yeah if you enjoyed this video and you found it helpful and you want to support the channel um you can purchase gear through the affiliate links below it really helps me out and helps make videos like this possible thanks for watching and I will see you guys in the next one but yeah I don't like making these videos I almost never want to make a video like this ever again it's been a absolute headache so something I've noticed over the last year is that there seems to be quite a bit of almost hate towards GoPro on YouTube and personally from being in the industry I do believe that it's because insta 360 and DJI finan compensate a lot more creators which I'm all for I any any brand that's going to support creators and support the YouTube economy I support that but I don't know let me know what you guys think I think a lot of people are fed up with seeing paid comparison reviews and just super bias sponsorship that's why I wanted to create full transparency in this video with access to ro footage in the Dropbox link below there's nothing to hide it's an interesting and somewhat controversial topic but you know what I also get it we we all got bills to pay and we need to make money and for a lot of us that happens through sponsor videos so I guess probably a wake up call for GoPro to invest in the YouTube economy and honestly pay more creditors at the same time do I want to see them give thousands of dollars to Marquez brownle and Peter McKinnon you know people who don't really use action cameras honestly no but from a business and financial perspective it might make sense I don't know what do you guys think it's it's an interesting topic and I've spoken to a lot of other creators about it