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 a thousand dollars. It is a stills instrument: 23 MP spherical RAW files out of sensors more than twice the area per lens of 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.
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
- 1 h 50 min at 4K video, limited by the 51 GB internal storage
- 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 3,840 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 853 px — roughly 0.9K.
3,840 × (80 ÷ 360) = 853 px
An estimate. Stitching, supersampling and the projection move it by a few per cent either way. How this works.
Specifications
Features
- ●Dual 1-inch sensors, the largest per-lens area in this catalogue
- ●Selectable f/2.1, f/3.5 and f/5.6 apertures
- ●23 MP spherical RAW (DNG) stills
- ●51 GB of internal storage, roughly 900 RAW frames
- ●4-channel spatial audio recording
- ●3-axis image stabilisation
Strengths
- +Per-lens sensor area no other 360 camera comes close to
- +The only 360 camera here with a selectable aperture
- +RAW DNG output makes serious interior work possible
- +Still the reference for one-shot spherical stills five years after launch
- +Four-channel spatial audio recording, which no action camera here offers
Drawbacks
- −$1,049 — by far the most expensive camera in the catalogue
- −Video stops at 4K30, which reframes to under 1K of usable 16:9
- −51 GB fixed internal storage with no card slot at all
- −No waterproofing, no GPS, and only a small status OLED for a screen
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 Z1 51GB 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 Z1 51GB, head to head
Cameras people look at alongside it
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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.
Insta360
Insta360 X6
Two things separate this from every other 360 camera on sale. It shoots 8K at 50 fps rather than 30, which is what makes reframed slow motion possible instead of theoretical; and it is the only one that publishes a colour bit depth at all — 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 still the largest per-lens area in the 360 class, and it is why the low-light gap to the X5 is as visible as it is.
DJI
DJI Osmo 360
DJI's first 360 camera arrived with the two square 1:1 sensors from the Action 6 programme, which is the most interesting thing about it: a square sensor wastes less of the lens's circular image than a 4:3 one, so more of the light the fisheye collects ends up in the sphere. The result is 8K at 50 fps — the only 360 camera here that gets past 30 at 8K — 170 Mbps, 10-bit across every format, D-Log M, 120 MP panoramas, and a single-lens mode that runs 4K120 with a 155° field of view. It is also the only 360 camera in the catalogue with more than 100 GB of internal storage, which removes the write-speed argument that sinks so many 360 shoots. Against the Insta360 X6 it gives away half the bare waterproof depth, and DJI's reframing app is younger than Insta360's.