Akaso 360 review: I think Insta360 and GoPro should be worried about this budget rival

The 360-degree camera market isn’t the largest, but it has its share of enthusiasts. Until recently, it seemed like Insta360 had achieved significant dominance, occupying multiple spots on our best 360-degree cameras list. However, a new challenger has arisen in the form of the Akaso 360.

Akaso is perhaps best known as a maker of cheap action cameras, offering basic but affordable alternatives to the GoPros of the world. The Akaso 360 is the firm’s first 360-degree camera. With dual 1/2-inch 48MP sensors on front and back, it can shoot stabilised 5.7K 360-degree video, from which you can use the Akaso app or Studio software to pull clips in a more standard aspect ratio. You can also shoot using just one of the lenses in 4K or 2.7K, for a more standard, action-camera look. It captures stills at either 72MP or a more manageable 18MP – and again, you can select your preferred composition from the full 360-degree frame.

To declare my priors up front: I have tested Akaso action cameras for DCW before, and honestly wasn’t hugely impressed. I found them too cheap for their own good – so compromised in quality that they didn’t justify their asking price, meagre as it was. The Akaso 360 looked and felt a little more premium from the moment I took it out of the box, so while I remained cautious, my expectations started to rise.

Akaso 360: Specifications

Akaso 360: Pricing

The Akaso 360 currently retails for $199.99 / £199.99, and even though I’m writing this a scant few days after release, I’m already seeing offers knocking £30 or so off that price in the UK. For context, the Insta360 X5 costs $549.99 / £519.99 before adding any accessories, and the refreshed 2025 GoPro MAX starts at $349 / £349. Even the three-year-old Insta 360 X3, which is probably closer to the Akaso 360 in terms of an alternative people would be considering, still costs more at $249 / £259. That’s quite the undercut.

The Akaso 360 requires a microSD card, maximum capacity 512GB, minimum speed UHS-I V30 / UHS-I Class 3. This isn’t included in the package, but there are bundles available where you can tack one on for a fairly trivial amount. All in all, Insta360 and GoPro (and DJI, if they ever do enter this race) have good reason to be concerned.

Akaso 360: Build & Handling

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Insta360 should be blushing – the Akaso 360 looks pretty much exactly like the X cameras have since the X3, with an oblong body, front and rear-mounted lenses, and a 2.29-inch touchscreen for composition and control. On one side there’s a power button that doubles up as a quick toggle between video and photo modes. On the other side is a USB-C port, and directly beneath the screen is a large, rectangular shutter release button. It’s all very simple – not that that’s a bad thing.

Despite professing on the box to be a ‘360 action camera’, the Akaso 360 is not waterproof, and won’t stand up to the same kind of punishment as the GoPro Max. With that said, and despite the plastic build, it’s reassuringly weighty and doesn’t feel flimsy. My gut says it would survive a drop on a hard surface, though I wasn’t brave enough to test this. There’s also a standard screw thread for attaching the camera to a tripod or selfie stick.

Most control is conducted via the screen. I tested the Akaso 360 on a bright and sunny day, and in such conditions, the screen is a little hard to see, even at maximum brightness. More than a few of my compositions amounted to ‘point-and-hope’, and I was scurrying to find shade when I wanted to change settings. I also found the touch functionality quite temperamental, often having to stab at an icon several times before the input was accepted. Ruinous? No. Annoying? Yes.

Akaso 360: Performance

Photographically speaking, I can happily report that I found the Akaso 360 to be very charming. Once you’ve captured 360-degree images, you can import them into the Akaso 360 app for editing. Using the touchscreen, you navigate around the 360-degree image to select your desired frame, touch up the exposure or colors if needed, and then simply export the file for sharing in 4K or FHD.

Images don’t stand up particularly well to zoom or cropping – detail is muddy if you look close. They’re not winning awards for quality. But the colors are punchy and vivid, and the images are certainly good enough to share on Instagram or similar platforms. This is the case in good light, a least; night shots are about as unappealing as you’d expect from a camera with such tiny sensors. Noisy, blurry, and indistinct.

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Still, it’s very easy, and dare I say addictive, to create 360-degree snapshots of your travels, and then reframe on the highlights. The composition process takes getting used to – the huge width of the lenses means you have to get much, much closer than you think – but this is true of all 360-degree cameras.

Video-wise, in terms of quality, the story is much the same – footage looks pretty decent in good light, with pleasing colours. High-contrast situations tend to present a problem; on a day of bright sunlight, I found moving between light and shade would often result in blown-out highlights or muddy shadows. The stabilization, however, works very well – I shot some 5.7K footage while walking, using Akaso’s own selfie stick/tripod, and was impressed by how smoothly it came out (I know my hands aren’t that steady).

Above: 5.7K stabilised 360-degree video, reframed and exported in 16:9 using Akaso Studio

The workflow for editing video in the app is fairly intuitive, allowing you to select keyframes to focus on the part of the 360-degree video you want to capture – though this ended up being a moot point, as I simply could not get the app (on Android) to export any video from 360-degree footage. No matter how long I waited, the progress bar never moved above 0%. I could export footage from the single-camera 2.8K mode without issue, so hopefully this is just a fixable bug. On the Akaso Studio desktop software, things were better, and I was able to pull a 16:9 clip from 360-degree footage very easily.

Battery life isn’t brilliant. The first time I took the Akaso 360 out, I spent an hour and change by the riverside shooting video clips and photos, and the fully charged battery was ticking into the red just as I got home. That spare battery included in the box isn’t just a nice gesture from Akaso – it’s pretty much a necessity if you want to spend a reasonable amount of time shooting.

Below: 2.8K single-lens video, exported using Akaso 360 app.

Akaso 360: Overall Verdict

I think Akaso has played a bit of a blinder here. Sure, quality-wise the Akaso 360 is left in the dust by its rivals – but it’s so much cheaper than any of them. It nails the basics of 360-degree imaging, making it easy to capture, edit, export, and share imagery from its dual cameras.

Many cheap cameras ultimately fail by cutting so many corners that they don’t nail the basics. Well, the Akaso 360 has nailed the basics. It produces exactly the kind of fun imaging experience that’s going to tempt people who may not have dabbled much in 360-degree imaging before, and were perhaps always put off by the price. The box proudly touts it as ‘Your first 360 action cam’ – for more than a few people, I reckon it will be.

Alternatives

The Insta360 camera that’s most comparable in price to the Akaso, this older model captures 4K and 5.7K video, with the option of 8K timelapses. However, the Insta360 X3’s sensors are the same size as Akaso’s – so you may not feel it worth the extra $50 / £50 premium.

GoPro’s aging 360-degree camera, the GoPro MAX, got a very minor refresh for 2025. It’s a bit more expensive than either the Akaso or the X3 – though of course, you do get that trademark GoPro waterproofing.