Insta360 GO 2: Finally a wearable cam that doesn’t suck?

Photo-taking often presents a Faustian bargain: be able to relive memories later, but at the cost of being less present in the experience as it happens. When my team researched why people do & don’t take photos, wanting to be present & not intrusive/obnoxious were key reasons not to bring out a camera.

So what if you could wear not just a lightweight, unobtrusive capture device, but actually wear a photographer—an intelligence that could capture the best moments, leaving your hands & mind free in the moment? Even naive, interval-based capture could produce a really interesting journey through space, as Blaise Agüera y Arcas demonstrated at Microsoft back in 2013:

It’s a long-held dream that products like Google’s Clips camera (which Blaise led at Google) have tried so achieve, thus far without any notable success. Clips proved to be too large & heavy for many people to wear comfortably, and training an AI model to find “good” moments ends up being much harder than one might imagine. Google discontinued Clips, though as a consolation prize I ended up delighting my young son by bringing home reams of unused printed circuit boards (which for some reason resembled the Millennium Falcon). Meanwhile Microsoft discontinued PhotoSynth.

The need remains & the dream won’t die, however, so I was excited ~18 months ago when Insta360 introduced the GO, a $199, “20-gram steadicam” for $199. It promised ultra lightweight wearability, photo capture, and a slick AirPods-style case for both recharging & data transfer. The wide FOV capture promised post-capture reframing driven by (you guessed it) mythical AI that could select the best moments.

Others (including many on the Insta forum) were skeptical, but I was enamored enough that my wife bought me one for Christmas. Sadly, buying Insta products is a little like Russian Roulette (e.g. I have loved the One X & subsequent X2, while the One R has been a worthless paperweight), and the GO ended up on the bummer side of the ledger. I found it way too hard to reliably start/stop & to transfer data. It’s been another paperweight.

To their possible credit (TBD), though, Insta has persisted with the product and has released the GO 2—now more expensive ($299) but promising a host of improvements (wireless preview & transfer, better storage & battery, etc.). Check it out:

“Looks perfect for a proctologist, which is where Insta can shove it,” said one salty user on the Insta forum. Will it finally work well? I don’t know—but I’m just hungry/sucker enough to pull the trigger, F around & find out. Hopefully it’ll arrive in advance of the road trip I’m planning with my son, so stay tuned for real-world findings.

Meanwhile, here’s a review I found thorough & informative—and not least in its innovative use of gummi bears as a unity of measure 🙃:

Oh, and I did not order the forthcoming Minion mod (a real thing, they swear):

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