Gaming Gear

My brother punched his rapier toward my head. The blade missed me by inches, but the clever duelist swiped down and chopped at my crown, sending the $450 action camera attached to my fencing mask spinning away. The magnetic pod for Insta360’s Go Ultra tumbled to the floor, the light still blinking red, still recording. His sword left a gash along the side of the lens and a scuff on plastic. The camera still works, so if you were wondering how durable the Go Ultra is, know that it passed the “getting hit by a sword” test.

Insta360 Go Ultra

You won’t find a smaller action cam that’s this portable with video quality to stand up to your favorite GoPro.

Pros

• So light and portable
• Records at 4K/60 fps
• Magnetic mount with wide variety of uses
• Durable against sword blows
• Fast charging

Cons

• Battery doesn’t last too long
• Overheating issues
• No internal storage

I had been looking for a camera light enough to stick on my fencing mask without rigging up a mount for a much larger recording device, and I think I found it with the Insta360 Go Ultra. The pricey action camera looks like your average GoPro when both of its main parts—the “Standalone Camera” case with the flip-up display and “Action Pod” with the image sensor and lens—are connected. But its detachable design means you can stick the smaller practically anywhere, so long as you rig up the right mount for the appropriate situation.

The Go Ultra doesn’t have all the capabilities of its contemporaries. It’s not the best for slow-motion footage or shooting at the highest possible resolution and frame rate. But because of its light and idiot-proof design, the Go Ultra is now my favorite little device to take on adventures or whenever I next enter the dueling pit.

An action camera for ants?

The Standalone Camera and Action Pod serve as the two pieces to the Go Ultra’s whole. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

The Action Pod can communicate with the Standalone Camera up to about 30 feet away, which helps you compose a shot when you can’t physically see the camera’s orientation. Whereas the average rugged action camera, such as the GoPro Hero 13 Black or DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro, can take a hit and keep on filming, the Go Ultra is still durable and can adhere to any magnetic strip or ferromagnetic metal (though you still want the strongest mount to keep it from going astray). However, if you’re planning to attach the Go Ultra’s Action Pod to any moving object, you’ll want a strong magnetic attachment to keep it secure. Compared to the Insta360 Go 3S from 2024, the Go Ultra’s Action Pod is much larger with longer battery life and a bigger sensor that makes it better for low-light shooting.

The Insta360 Go Ultra contains a 14.27mm focal length lens with an f/2.85 aperture and the ability to shoot up to 50-megapixel still photos. With those specs, the lens fits somewhere in between higher-end action cameras and a simple point-and-shoot video camera for recording your family’s antics. It can shoot in a max 180Mbps bitrate with a variety of preset video modes, though most of the time you’ll stick with either “Video” in daylight or “PureVideo” for low-light environments. With a wide-angle lens, you’re more likely to get the shot without having a death grip on a selfie stick.

The Go Ultra comes packed with a magnetic clip and a necklace you can wear under your shirt. The necklace will sit center-mass on your chest, which I found good for doing point-of-view shots when I was reporting on the ground from IFA 2025 in Berlin. The clip can help your lens hitch a ride on a hat or helmet and still feel light enough you may forget it’s there. I clipped the Go Ultra Action Pod on a thin tree branch and managed to get a shot without needing a tripod. The Action Pod is light enough I never had to worry about it weighing down anything it was attached to.

The older Insta360 Go 3S may be lighter, but it’s to such a small degree that the trade off is worth it. Speaking of changes from the older Go-series action cameras, the Go Ultra doesn’t come with any internal storage, unlike the Go 3S. Instead, it records to a microSD card that slots into the Action Pod. I would have appreciated some buffer of internal capacity in case I ran out of storage on the memory card while shooting, but I vastly prefer SD cards to being stuck with limited built-in storage.

Depending on what kind of bundle you buy, you may end up with more attachment points. The Standalone Camera housing can attach to a Quick Release Mount with your traditional GoPro two-pronged threads, a tripod, and a Pivot Stand with a suction cap. There’s even a $17 “Toddler Titan Hat Clip,” which Insta360 implies parents will hang from a child’s cap facing toward the body to take extra-close shots of the tyke’s wide-eyed expressions. I would not blame any toddler who takes that camera and chucks it across the room. Inevitably, it will be up to innovative camera aficionados to create their own magnetic mounts for their needs. To that end, the Action Pod allows for more creativity in how and where you set up your camera.

Better than most for low-light shooting

Insta360 sells several magnetic and non-magnetic mounts, such as its Pivot Stand, but you can DIY your own mounting rig with a little ingenuity. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

We all want to believe our action cams can take footage as beautiful as those slickly-produced GoPro promotional videos. The true footage you can get from such a small lens will inevitably disspaoint. The Insta360 Go Ultra shoots at 4K resolution at a max of 60 fps, though the camera will default to 30 fps in most scenarios. If you want to shoot with HDR—aka high-dynamic range for better contrast—you’re also limited to 30 fps. For my amateur hour fencing video that I published straight to Instagram, that’s perfectly acceptable. For those hoping for video footage requiring minimal editing, just know you’ll never get the quality you’ll see in all the promotional video that Insta360 shares to its social feeds. You’ll find that your phone may present better-quality footage for quick and dirty POV feeds.

Still, I would put the Go Ultra’s quality up there with the expensive action cameras I’ve used. Small sensors often struggle with low-light scenarios, a problem that has plagued action cameras since the beginning. The Go Ultra’s “PureView” mode does a fair job brightening up images to make them more visible. I could spot a little bit of noise from the video once I brought it to my PC, but for my purpose the footage was good enough to flip over to my socials. As for the shots I took in the dim halls of IFA, the quality was a mixed bag. Some clips still appeared dark without great contrast. Overall, there’s only so much you can expect from a small sensor.

The Go Ultra may not be your first go-to choice for extreme sports, especially if you were planning to shoot in slow motion. You can choose to film in 60 fps, but if you want automated slow-mo video, 4x slow-mo at 120 fps is limited to 1080p recording. Like Insta360’s 360-degree cameras and its upcoming Antigravity A1 drone, the Go Ultra also includes options for automatic dewarping to correct the fisheye effect of the rounded lens, but you may end up going for “Ultra” setting to capture as much of the scenery in one go. The video above used the standard “Ultra” wide field of view, which felt on the money for hands-on shots. With any of these modes, the camera’s automatic FlowState stabilization did a good job even as I was whipping a sword at my fencing partners.

The action camera can shoot in both vertical and horizontal just by changing the orientation of the lens. The default 16:9 shots are when the camera lens is positioned in the top right. When rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise and the lens is on the top left, it will shoot in 9:16. There’s nothing on the Action Pod to mark when it’s vertical or horizontal, and there were times I would lose the Action Pod, reattach it, only to realize I was now shooting in the wrong orientation. This wasn’t a problem on older Go models with the oval-shaped pod compared to the square on the Go Ultra. A small indicator arrow on the Action Pod itself may have resolved this small headache.

Not the longest battery, but it charges up real quick

The Insta360 Go Ultra is about the same size as a GoPro Hero camera, though the detachable Action Pod is much smaller and lighter. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

The Go Ultra can’t last you an entire afternoon’s worth of continuous shooting. Filming in 4K at 60 fps, I found it would last a little over 40 minutes before I needed to shove the Action Pod back in its case to let it recharge. In those cases, the Standalone Camera housing essentially acts as a way to give the Action Pod a little extra juice. But after depleting the Action Pod, the Standalone Camera and its limited 500mAh capacity battery won’t be enough for more than 1.5 hours, especially if you’re shooting in low-light or higher frame rate modes.

Though the battery isn’t the best, the more concerning hurdle you’ll run up against is heat management. The Go Ultra alerts users as soon as they choose the 4K 60 fps mode that this could cause overheating, which would also hinder battery life. Outdoors, in the shade, the Action Pod didn’t feel hot to the touch, but it still alerted me about overheating after an extended shoot. A few minutes set aside in its Standalone Camera case eventually let continue recording.

© Raymond Wong / Gizmodo © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

The latest GoPro Hero 13 Black lasts a little more than 2 hours of continuous recording at higher resolutions. The Go Ultra Action Pod should last longer—closer to 2 hours if you drop the frame rate down to 30 fps and only shoot at 1080p. I wouldn’t suggest you limit resolution for the sake of battery life unless it becomes absolutely necessary. To make up for the limited battery, Insta360’s small action camera supports fast charging. I could recharge up to 80% from empty in around 15 minutes. A full charge takes about 40 minutes for both the Standalone Camera and Action Pod.

Most amateurs looking to post their snowboarding tricks to their TikTok won’t have any complaints with image quality. Those with more professional setups could find extra use for a small-form camera. Since the Go Ultra’s Action Pod is so compact, it becomes another arrow in the quiver when you need to get POV footage. It won’t have all the enhanced zoom, resolution, and frame rate options as other action cameras, but in my time using the Go Ultra, I didn’t miss 5.3K resolution or any of the other features, especially when the Action Pod is so damn light. It’s so small I don’t need to duck into a full head or chest mount to get quality shots.

Those imagining all the action shots they can take with the $450 Insta360 Go Ultra need to remember what they may be sacrificing for the sake of portability. The Hero 13 Black’s costs $430 while Insta360’s Ace Pro 2 demands $400. At the very least, the move to smaller magnetic cameras is pushing the industry forward. Multiple leaks have implied DJI is planning to launch its own pod-based action camera. Until somebody comes along and does it better, the Go Ultra has just the right balance of camera quality and portability.

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