Insta360 Go Ultra

Introduction

Insta360’s most portable camera has finally matured, going through its best upgrade yet in the Insta360 Go Ultra.

Without any sense of hyperbole, this is one of the best times to pick up a new action camera, and it’s largely thanks to how much choice is now available on the market.

Since the introduction of the DJI Osmo 360, you can now buy 360-cameras from all three of the big names in this space (the other two being GoPro and Insta360). However, these cameras are better suited for the pros who already know a thing or two about 360-filming.

For the folks who are just starting, it’s the standard action cameras that offer a simplified experience that’s easier to get to grips with. While the likes of the GoPro Hero 13 and the DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro are great choices, I’ve always felt more at home with Insta360’s Go range.

The Insta360 Go 3S was a great option that provided tons of versatility for anyone adventurous enough to try for eye-catching shots.

In the all new Ultra however, Insta360 has sought a mid-way point between its pint-sized concept and the larger Ace Pro 2, and in doing so, I believe that it’s made not only the most accessible Insta360 camera yet, but also one of the best action cameras period.

Design

• New, square-like build
• The magnetic base is now much stronger
• Still compact enough to fit in a pocket

The first thing you’ll notice about the Go Ultra is that it looks like a beefed-up version of the Go 3S. Gone is the thumb-sized design, ditched in favour of a square-like shell with rounded edges which, I have to say, does feel great in the hand.

Because it is slightly larger, I feel more confident filming on the Go Ultra itself without the included Action Pod, as there’s simply more of it to hold on to.

Still, even with the larger build, the Ultra doesn’t betray the Go line’s key facet of being a mega portable action camera – it’s still small enough to fit into a pocket and at just 53g, it doesn’t weight down any of the accessories you might be looking to bring into the mix for more ambitious shots.

What I love more than anything else are the upgraded magnets on the rear, which will no doubt make the Go Ultra a true delight to use amongst content creators.

It was possible to attach the Go 3S to magnetic surfaces, but the connection wasn’t anywhere near as strong as what the Go Ultra is capable of. As an example, when taking the camera around my flat to see what angles I could achieve whilst filming, I had the Go Ultra attached to the oven, kitchen door handles, radiators and even a watering can. Just having the camera on your person implores you to scan the environment for any possible angles you might not have considered before. It’s great fun and really inspires a ton of creativity.

The Action Pod is now slightly bigger to accommodate the Go Ultra, and it’s brought two key changes. First, there’s now a rubberised camera grip that lets you hold the entire apparatus like a point-and-shoot camera. Personally, my hands are a little too big to make use of it, but I do like the addition in theory. The other change is the upgrade to a larger touchscreen, which I very much appreciate.

It no longer feels like I’m squinting slightly to get a proper look at text and all at the various menus. This time around, there’s ample space for everything to spread out, and it just makes the process of scrolling through the settings feel much easier.

I will say that the Go Ultra can run a bit hot after it’s been in operation for a few minutes, but it’s nothing like how the Insta360 Go 2 used to be, and the heat dissipation does a great job of preventing a buildup, so I never felt as if there was anything to worry about.

Screen and Performance

• The screen is larger than before
• The new 5nm chip makes a huge difference
• Downloading videos is faster than ever

As I mentioned before, the screen feels like a massive upgrade on the Go Ultra. Having the larger space not only makes it easy to read any onscreen text, but it’s also much more efficient to swipe through menus and get straight to the filming mode you want without error. It’s a very bright display to boot, and I had no issues with navigating it when filming outdoors against direct sunlight.

It’s just a great screen overall, and it can be used wirelessly even when the Go Ultra isn’t docked in the Action Pod, so you can always see a live preview of how your shot is framed. What really makes a difference though is the new 5nm AI-enabled chipset sitting inside the Go Ultra, which paves the way for the fastest performance of any Go camera I’ve tested yet.

In the past, even though it’s never been a slow experience per se, the Go cameras couldn’t quite match the processing speeds of Insta360’s more expensive cameras, but given the disparity in price, it was an understandable part of the trade-off. With this new chipset however, it feels as if the parity gap has finally been closed. Not only can you jump from one mode to the next at great speed, I didn’t encounter any moments of slowdown in the process.

I was also amazed to see how quickly I could download videos from the Go Ultra to my iPhone 16 Plus via the Insta360 app. This is perfect for anyone who’s been filming all day and needs to get the footage edited and uploaded quickly – it goes a long way towards making the Go Ultra feel just as convenient for filming as it would be on your own smartphone.

A major change, which might be a drawback to some but a win for most content creators, is the shift from having internal storage to relying on Micro SD cards. I can understand the desire for removable storage, particularly after my experience last year of losing my footage to a faulty review unit of the Insta360 Go 3S, but I would have liked to have had a compromise. It’s just very handy to have some onboard storage, especially if you forget to bring a card, but this does mean that you can have a higher ceiling of up to 2TB if you have the right card to hand.

A practice we’ve come to expect with each new addition to the Go range is a slight price increase, and it’s no different with the Go Ultra. Compared to the Go 3S, prices have risen from £349.99/$399.99 to £389/$449.99 which isn’t insignificant, and at this point the Go Ultra is steadily creeping up on the territory currently occupied by more fully-featured cameras. For example, the DJI Osmo 360 can be bought for not that much more in the UK at £409.99 (it’s a different story in the US with a $549.99 price tag).

Even with the price increase, I still think that the Go Ultra is well worth the money and an easy option for any beginners, but if a successor ever crosses that £400/$500 mark then it might be time to reassess.

Video and Image Quality

• The larger sensor makes a huge impact on video quality
• New capture ceiling of 4K 60fps
• The new AI editor could use some work

When I initially read through the press release for the Insta360 Go Ultra, there was one claim that genuinely forced me to do a double-take: the fact that the new 1/1.28” lens is 221% larger than the one from the Go 3S. That immediately brought to life some pretty lofty expectations in my head, but I’m glad to say that they were wonderfully matched when I took the Go Ultra out for testing.

Even at the surface level, 4K 30fps recordings (which were possible on the Go 3S) just look demonstrably better than anything I captured on last year’s tech. Even when shooting indoors, the detail is just so much more apparent, with very little in the way of visual noise.

Part of what helps is the autofocus, which does a great job of constantly keeping the attention on yourself or any other subject within the frame. It’s not quite at the same level as what you’ll get with filming on an iPhone, but it is very close, and given the added flexibility of the Go Ultra’s design, I think I’m going to be relying on Insta360’s tech more often going forward.

There was a moment when filming on a cloudy day where I was convinced that the footage was going to look a bit washed out in the final edit, but I was amazed to see that the camera had managed to capture colourful and vibrant footage that, if I’m being completely honest, didn’t require any tinkering with.

Because of the larger sensor, the quality of footage in low-light scenarios is certainly a lot better than before, with the camera taking in as much light as it can to still throw out a respectable bit of footage which can always be enhanced after the fact (not the least with Insta360’s Dolby Vision toggle which rarely puts a foot wrong).

Of course, it’s a different story in nearly pitch black environments, where action cameras in general have a tough time picking up detail, so I’d look elsewhere if you want to film stable footage after the sun goes down, but with interior scenes where there’s still some light available, you’ll be just fine.

While I do prefer filming at 4K 30fps as it works well for YouTube and social media, there is now a raised capture ceiling of 4K 60fps which is sure to be appreciated by any adrenaline junkies who need the extra frames to capture the fast-paced action of a bike-ride downhill, or a skydive over an expansive vista.

Sure, it’s not anywhere near the 8K capture of certain cameras like the Insta360 X5, but I do find that to be a bit of a gimmick at a time when very few companies have embraced the 8K format, so I can’t say that I miss it.

Just like with the Go 3S, the microphone quality on the Go Ultra is quite impressive for such a small camera. When going for a walk down a canal that lay parallel to a busy road, the Go Ultra did pick up some noise from the traffic but it did a far better job at elevating my voice above it all. If you are in really busy environments, you can always hook up an external microphone to achieve better quality, and the Go Ultra has a brilliant plug-and-play attitude here.

I hooked up the receiver to the Hollyland Lark M2 and without any input beyond that, the sound levels automatically appeared at the top of the screen to let me know that audio was now being picked up from the transmitter, and for any beginners who don’t want to get bogged down in a ton of settings, I think they’ll appreciate just how accessible this all is.

Speaking of which, if you have absolutely no editing software to hand then the Insta360 app still serves as a solid option for those on a budget. You’ve got plenty to lean on here including visual effects, a built-in music library and tons of filters that can help you to achieve a certain look that you might be after. It’s all solid stuff, although I don’t think that the new AI editor is quite as good as I’d like it to be.

With this editor, you can select a handful of clips and let the app sort through them to produce an eye-catching film in just a few seconds, complete with transitions and music.

It’s a great idea in theory, but it doesn’t give you the option to edit what’s been made, so if there’s something you don’t like, you have to either start the process again and hope for the best or abandon it altogether and just edit the footage manually. I do think there is promise here, but it needs to be given greater attention.

Stabilisation and Battery Life

• FlowState stabilisation is as smooth as ever
• The battery lasts a lot longer than before
• Charging is wonderfully quick

At this point, given that great stabilisation has been firmly in the bag for the last few generations of Go cameras, it would be strange if Insta360 had fumbled it here. Thankfully, it’s more of the same in that you would have to try to get shaky footage out of this camera.

I like to put on quite a pace when I’m out walking, but the Go Ultra never seemed phased by my steps, making sure that footage remained smooth at all times. The Tilt Fix feature also does a great job of levelling out your footage, which I found particularly helpful in the moments where I had the camera attached to a metal surface. If there was a slight tilt of the camera body, the software would just fix it almost instantly, so I never had to worry about the footage looking crooked.

The only time when you may see stabilisation taking a hit is during those aforementioned moments after the sun’s gone down and there’s very little light nearby. When taking the Go Ulta around some nearby streets at night, it had a hard time understanding the environment and as a result, nearby street lights bobbled around quite a bit. Again, this isn’t too surprising given that action cameras aren’t designed for these moments.

In terms of battery life, the Go series has always been limited by its small stature, but that hasn’t stopped its cameras from working to the best of their ability with a decent run time. The Go 3S for example could go for 38 minutes at a time, and up to 140 minutes in total with the Action Pod factored in. I felt that that was quite impressive at the time, giving ample opportunity to get the shots you might be after in a single day (although bringing a spare power bank is never a bad idea). The Go Ultra on the other hand has taken things to a whole new level.

Thanks to the larger build, you can now get up to 70 minutes of use from the camera itself, which is then bolstered to a whopping 200 minutes with the new Action Pod. Obviously the longevity will change depending on how you use the camera, but this is a huge shift towards ridding users of any battery anxiety when they’re out and about filming.

When the battery on the camera is depleted, Insta360 notes that it can be topped back up to 80% after just a 12-minute charge in the Action Pod. Not only do those charging speeds stack up, I also found the process of charging the Action Pod itself to be incredibly fast, so you won’t be waiting around for long if you need to top things up during a shoot.

Should you buy it?

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