Kandao action and 360 cameras

An odd and rather appealing camera: dual 1/1.55-inch sensors — 65 % more area per lens than the Insta360 X3 it competes with on price — behind the same F/1.6 glass as the Ultra, wrapped in a squat body that looks nothing like an X-series stick. Video caps at 5.7K30, which reframes to roughly 1.3K of usable 16:9, so the resolution ceiling is real. Where it earns its keep is stills: 62 MP spherical photos out of fast lenses and decent-sized sensors make it a credible virtual-tour camera for a third of what a Ricoh Theta X costs. Fifty-eight minutes of recording and no internal storage are the practical limits, and the 1.9-inch screen is small enough to be fiddly.

Kandao is the small manufacturer in this category and it competes the only way a small manufacturer can: by shipping specs the big three charge more for. F/1.6 lenses — the fastest glass in the catalogue — over dual 1/1.7-inch sensors, 10-bit HLG and a K-Log profile, 96 MP spherical stills, 150 Mbps, 128 GB of internal storage and built-in GPS, all under the price of an Insta360 X6. The costs are physical and logistical. At 336 g it is by a wide margin the heaviest camera here, nearly double an X6, and at 10 m bare it is the shallowest of the big-sensor 360 cameras. Fifty minutes of 8K 10-bit recording is short. And the software ecosystem around it — reframing, mobile editing, firmware cadence — is thinner than Insta360's, which is the part of the purchase a spec sheet cannot show you.