GoPro drops first photos of its long-awaited MAX 2 360 camera

In a very literal bit of product news, GoPro seem to be telling us that the very long-awaited GoPro Max 2 – the next 360-degree camera from the famous action camera brand – is about 'to drop'. They've done this by showing photos of the new camera (with MAX 2 visibly written on the side) held in the hands of parachuters jumping from a hot air balloon – and gravity is definitely helping them drop!

So what can we learn from these images, shared on the company's Twitter/X account, and their distribution? Well, as you'll see, the word 'Dropping' was included too just to hammer home the point for those not spotting the visual metaphor. So what else do we know?

What we know is that GoPro is keen to re-establish itself in a market that it sees as growing. The company's CEO has talked about something called 'Total Addressable Market' in the past, and felt that a problem with action cameras like traditional GoPros was that the total number of people that wanted them had more or less flatlined (though other companies like DJI were still coming in with competing products).

That provides an incentive to move into other areas, and in the past GoPro has done that with drones (catastrophically), subscription services (successfully), a TV channel (also unsuccessfully).

360-degree cameras is an interesting field because GoPro had made a strong start in the space, with the Fusion (2017) and then the Max (2019) – before seeming to ceed it to other companies, especially Insta360. That company's X4 and X5 cameras have dominated our best 360-degree cameras guide because, among other things, they offer better resolution, what we call 8K.

(It's established practice, by GoPro in fact, to say that the resolution of a 360-degree image is the size of the pixel square area of both image sensors together, assuming there are two image sensors, but given the lenses are fish-eye you might argue that the images are circular and fewer pixels are actually involved.)

Sticking with convention for now, it is widely expected that GoPro will go with 8K for the Max 2 camera – though some commentators on social media seem optimistic that the extended delay might mean an even higher spec – 8K at 60fps, or 12K at 30fps – might be a possibility because there is an incentive to try and get ahead of both Insta360 and, it is widely expected, DJI – also rumored to have an 8K 360-degree camera in the works for the next few weeks.

GoPro re-launched its original Max camera earlier this year as the GoPro Max (2025) with a more appealing price and a new USB-C charging port, as well as refreshing the software. All of this puts the company in a good position for a new launch since GoPro can now offer a range of 360-degree cameras, cheaper and newer with higher spec, which is not coincidentally just how GoPro tends to sell its action cameras.

While we can't determine all the specs of the Max 2 camera from a few photos posted to GoPro's social media, it is clear that the lenses are central, so back-to-back, rather than in the corners like the previous camera. This should make for slightly better "invisible selfie stick" modes and potentially less work for AI algorithms when stitching the video from the two fish-eye lenses. That, in turn can improve battery life and keep the camera cooler.