AKASO 360 Action Camera

The Akaso 360 Action Camera is a technological marvel that captures a 360-degree video of your rides, but comes in at a lower price than its competitors. It lacks the feature set of more expensive rivals, but it offers a fun perspective and it’s useful for commutes.

360 cameras have gone from being a bit of a weird and kooky way to record your rides to a regular sight among Sunday riders – mostly thanks to Jeremy Vine’s championing of the format on Instagram. Chinese brand Akaso’s first attempt at the platform comes in at about half the price of its competitors, and while it may lack pro-level features, it’s still a perfectly acceptable entry point.

Cameras of this type aren’t usually svelte, and the Akaso 360 is a beefy, chunky unit that you won’t be able to attach to a helmet unless you have prodigious neck muscles. As is necessary for these cameras, the lenses bulge out of the sides so they can capture a dome-like panorama and then some, so you have to be careful where you place it.

Akaso includes a neoprene case for the camera, plus a silicone hood to protect the lenses themselves, but it’s likely they will get scratched at some point.

Installation and recording

The cycling-specific kit Akaso supplied includes the camera itself, plus brackets and a telescopic pole so you can either mount it on your handlebars or extend it from the back of your saddle.

All connections take place via a 1/4-inch screw mount – there are no DJI-style quick releases here – but thanks to the nature of the camera, it doesn’t really matter how it’s mounted. It’s more important that it can see everything going on around it.

Once it’s installed, recording is just a question of hitting the big button at the front. There’s a touch screen you can use to check the angles, plus you can link it to the smartphone app. If you’re coming to 360 video from a more conventional perspective, it takes a little getting used to.

This is where the rear mount comes in handy, extending a good 6ft out from the saddle – but thanks to the weight of the camera it looks and feels more fishing rod than tripod.

Akaso recommends only using this on very flat and smooth terrain. I hit a moderate speedbump and it caused the base of the pole to pop out. It turns out it was only glued in place.

The rear mount is fun for very specific uses, and it’s nice for creative aerial shots when you’re off the bike, but it also seems like something that will end up gathering dust in a drawer after a couple of uses, if you don’t break it.

The handlebar mount is likely to see more action, in both senses of the phrase. This feels like the 360 camera’s natural home, recording every angle of encroaching traffic, because there always seems to be something you’ll miss with conventional cameras.

In this shot, I was overtaken by a car as I signalled to change lanes. This is not the most heinous of crimes, but had there been a collision, I have footage of my arm indicating, the car approaching from behind, and its subsequent pull in front of me.

Capturing this footage conventionally would have involved fore and aft cams, plus something recording my body — you’d basically need a drone, or you’d have to hire a cameraman to follow you everywhere.

The pack Akaso supplied here comes with two battery packs and a 64GB MicroSD card, and it’s a race as to whether the card will fill up or the battery will run out first. Five minutes of video takes up about 5GB, but the battery only lasts about 50 minutes, so that was usually the limiter.

Software and editing

Editing software and apps are usually a pain point for cheaper cameras, but, despite some slightly dodgy translations, both the phone and computer software feel polished. The phone app allows remote control of the camera, which can be laggy, and both transferring video files and editing them can be painfully slow.

Opening the files in the Akaso 360 Studio computer software (I used the MacOS version) proved far more fluent. It can be a little intimidating for newbies, but anyone who’s tried video editing software before will feel right at home.

Keyframes are the, ahem, key here: inserting one allows you to change angles (in 360-degree space) or switch between views, including fun tiny-planet and crystal-ball modes. This is also where you can add an AI tracking feature that does a reasonably good job of following whatever you point it at, but can randomly jerk around a bit.

It may lack the more in-depth features of full-blown editing software, but it’s good enough to push out a quick video for social media, and you can always stick it in the timeline of a more comprehensive tool.

Quality

At ‘just’ 5.7K, the Akaso 360 is on a par with the first generation of 360 cameras from Insta360. Obviously, you aren’t going to be able to see the entire 5.7K video at once, but this means you can crop it without losing too much detail, and the Akaso software will give you a pretty decent 4K video. There’s a little of that watery effect you get with software upscaling, and it’s not broadcast-quality, but it’s good enough to share on social media or with your mates.

This is a pretty good representation of the quality. It’s not bad and good enough to make out number plates. The wind noise is present but not distracting, the stabilisation is exceptional (although this was captured via the very solid handlebar mount), and the panoramic view makes it look like I’m going a lot faster than I actually was.

Night performance is pretty decent, too, but not quite good enough to make out number plates even with street lights, which is always an issue with cheaper action cams.

Following in Dave’s footsteps from his Insta360 X5 review, I paid a visit to Bath Abbey to take a quick snap in photo mode. The Akaso shot is on the left — and, yes, there is definitely some upscaling going on here.

While the photo looks fine from a distance, zooming in reveals a distinct lack of detail, with that soapy blurriness that’s characteristic of upscaling.

Yikes. The caveat is that these photos were taken at different times of day, but I’m willing to bet that even in the same conditions, there would be a similar level of smeariness. Weirdly, there is DNG support here, which is fine as long as you don’t like cropping your pics.

I don’t want to point fingers at Akaso, but upscaling is a common way for manufacturers to add impressive specs such as 4K or 5K resolution to a camera with an HD sensor. Does it matter? Not hugely. It just makes it predominantly a camera for having fun and reliving your rides in an interesting format, rather than a more professional (and pricey) tool like the Insta360.

And I’ve really enjoyed using it. It’s made filming my rides fun again and reignited a spark that I thought had died out when I got bored with my GoPro.

Value

At £199.99 (sometimes £169 on Amazon), the Akaso 360 is half the price of the Insta360 and the DJI Osmo 360, and it feels as if it’s about half as good. The 50-minute battery life is dwarfed by its competitors’ two-hour-plus lifespans, and it will only capture 5.7K footage (apparently) compared to 8K for Insta and DJI.

It’s also not waterproof, the mounts could be better and the photography mode is shocking. But as an entry point into the world of 360 video, and an alternative to a cheap action cam, it really is hard to beat.

> Best cycling cameras — capture your ride and relive it later