Ricoh
Ricoh THETA X
Ricoh has been making 360 cameras longer than anyone else here and aims them somewhere else entirely: real-estate tours, insurance surveys and construction documentation, not helmets. The THETA X reflects that — 60 MP spherical stills with the best stitch quality in the category, built-in GPS to tag where each shot was taken, a swappable DB-110 battery so a surveyor can work all day, and a 2.25-inch touchscreen for checking frames on site. It is also not an action camera in any meaningful sense. There is no waterproof rating, nothing mounts to it but a tripod thread, it is rated only to 0 °C, and 5.7K30 video is a secondary feature rather than the point. If you want one camera for both a ski trip and a property listing, this is the wrong half of that pair.
Sensor area against the rest of the catalogue
Derived from the standard optical-format table rather than copied off a spec sheet, because makers print a fraction that hides it. The table and the arithmetic.
Battery, with the small print
- Maker’s claim
- 30 min at 5.7K30 video, Ricoh's figure (about 55 minutes at 4K30)
- Third-party test
- None collected. We publish a tested figure only where a named outlet has run one and stated its conditions.
What a reframed clip is worth
This camera records 5,760 px across a full 360°. A normal 16:9 clip pulled out of it uses only the slice its field of view covers, so at a typical 80° reframe the usable width is about 1,280 px — roughly 1.3K.
5,760 × (80 ÷ 360) = 1,280 px
An estimate. Stitching, supersampling and the projection move it by a few per cent either way. How this works.
Specifications
Features
- ●60 MP spherical stills with 11K output
- ●Stitch line hard to find in daylight
- ●Built-in GPS for geotagged capture
- ●Swappable DB-110 battery
- ●2.25-inch touchscreen
- ●46 GB internal storage plus microSD
- ●5.7K30 spherical video
Strengths
- +60 MP spherical stills with the cleanest stitch line of any camera here
- +A swappable DB-110 battery, so a surveyor can carry spares through a long day
- +Built-in GPS tags every capture, which is the point for survey work
- +46 GB internal plus a microSD slot
Drawbacks
- −No waterproof rating at all, and rated only to 0 °C
- −Nothing mounts to it but a 1/4-20 thread — no helmet or chest rigs
- −1/2-inch sensors and a 2022 processor make video its weakest side
- −Video runs about 30 minutes per charge at 5.7K30, by Ricoh's own figure
- −Costs more than an Insta360 X4 Air for less video capability
- −Ricoh's app and desktop tools are built for property work, not for editing action footage
The strengths and drawbacks above are drawn from the manufacturer’s specifications and published reviews. No body of owner reports for this camera has been read, so nothing here claims to speak for its owners.
What owners say
No owner discussion has been collected for the Ricoh THETA X yet. The pros and cons above come from the manufacturer’s specifications and published reviews. Rather than fill this space with invented sentiment, it stays empty until there is something real to put in it.
Ricoh THETA X, head to head
Cameras people look at alongside it
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Ricoh
Ricoh THETA Z1 51GB
Dual one-inch sensors and a selectable aperture — f/2.1, f/3.5 or f/5.6 — are things no other 360 camera here has, and they are the reason this 2021 camera still sells for over a thousand dollars. It is a stills instrument: 23 MP spherical RAW files out of sensors with about a quarter more area per lens than an Insta360 X6's, which is what professional virtual-tour shooters buy it for, and the selectable aperture is how they control depth of field and diffraction in an interior. Everything else about it is dated and deliberately so. Video caps at 4K30, storage is 51 GB fixed with no card slot, there is no screen beyond a small status OLED, and there is no waterproofing. As an action camera it makes no sense; as the highest-image-quality one-shot 360 stills camera on sale, it is still unmatched.
Insta360
Insta360 X6
Two things lift this above the rest of Insta360's line. It shoots 8K at 50 fps rather than 30, which is what makes reframed slow motion possible instead of theoretical — only DJI's Osmo 360 matches that here — and it records 10-bit, with I-Log and in-camera Dolby Vision. The 2600 mAh Xtreme battery is rated at 140 minutes of 8K30, more than double what the GoPro MAX2 claims, and 20 m of bare waterproofing is four times MAX2's. A note on the sensors: Insta360 markets these as one-inch, and the spec sheet says 1/1.1-inch, which on the standard optical-format table works out around 92 mm² per lens rather than a true one-inch's 116. That is less than DJI's Osmo 360 (96 mm²) or Ricoh's THETA Z1 (116), but well above the X5's 72, which is why the low-light gap to the X5 is as visible as it is.
Insta360
Insta360 X4
First of the X-series to shoot 8K, and the model that made spherical capture mainstream on bike handlebars and ski poles. The 200 Mbps ceiling is the highest of any X-series camera, the X6 included — Insta360 spent the bitrate on holding detail through the stitch. What the X4 does not have is the thing the X5 introduced: its lenses are fixed, and a scratched fisheye is a service job. The sensors are 1/2-inch, less than half the X5's area, which is exactly where the two cameras separate once the light drops. Bought as a daylight camera at its current price, it is a lot of resolution for the money; bought expecting the X5's night performance, it will disappoint.