We were sent the newly released Akaso 360 Action Camera – Your first 360 Camera – to check out and share our thoughts!

What’s in the box? We were sent the standard combo which includes the 360 camera, a protective pouch for the camera (which has a conveniently placed slot for the USB-C cable should you wish to charge / copy footage off while it’s not in use) as well as two 1350 mAh batteries, a USB-C cable, lens cloth and the quick start guide. We were also sent the selfie-stick and tripod set.

Akaso 360 Action Camera – Here’s the 360 Camera with the selfie-stick attached

 

Founded in Seattle, USA and then shifting over to China in 2014, Akaso have been making action cameras for a while now, and this is their first 360 action camera, a great entry point into the 360 Action Camera world! I’ve had very little use with another brand’s 360 camera before now and certainly no time editing the footage from one! so it really is “My first 360 Camera” I have had a chance in the last couple of weeks to take it to a car show, and I’ve taken it on walks with my little JRT, Coco, as well as trying it out as a vlogging camera for my DIY videos, out for a bit of cycling and then a quick unbox of my new ProGrade Digital SD cards right before coffee at Lumberjack – the camera is a versatile little thing! (Be kind, it’s my first kind of edit / filming with a 360 camera!)

 

The great benefit of the 360 camera is that you can literally shoot first and frame later, now while that sounds amazing, there are a few caveats – if you move the camera around its axis, your framing can get a little crazy, but with some handy editing in the app, including your stabilisation options, defringing and frame rate along with some basic colour grading, you can sort all of that out ‘in post’

 

The Akaso 360 Action Camera has Ai tracking which works just fine in nicely lit scenes without a whole lot of interference, I found when Coco, my dog, ran behind my legs that the camera would choose to track my shoes, or when the young lady at the cafe delivered my coffee that the little camera started tracking the greenery. That said, for a camera in this price range – it did good!

You can’t see the selfie stick in most of the clips in my test video, it’s great at hiding it in almost all of your shots, and the stitching is very good, too!

The Akaso 360 Action Camera supports DNG8 RAW Photo Mode, and while that won’t rival my 50mp mirrorless camera, it does a great job if you’re thinking of one device for all of the content – I’d maybe advise using the nifty included stand when shooting stills, just to make sure there’s no shake in your photograph.

Yes, I look like this ALL the time. Akaso 360 Photograph after editing in the Akaso 360 app 😅

 

The Akaso 360 app I’ve been using on my Mac is easy to navigate, simple to operate and quite basic in terms of what you can do, but I had no trouble using the app and working on my files. TO be honest, I think it’s a nice balance between “enough” and “too technical” for photographers, families, content creators starting their creative 360 journey.

There’s not a lot to be critical of at the $199 (USD) price point, it works best in good lighting as is true of most cameras with smaller sensors, but we had a great time with the little Akaso 360 Action Camera and we’re looking forward to capturing our ski trip next week!

It’s currently listed on Amazon Au but not in stock yet. On the other hand if you are keen, it is available on the Amazon US site.