This sensor supports 13.5 stops of dynamic range, which is particularly nice for shooting in mixed sunlight and shade, and in low light scenarios. As with the first Ace Pro, the Pure Video mode is what you want for low-light videos. Insta360 has upped the max frame rate in Pure Video mode to 60 fps, which is nice for slowing things down in low light.
Low light is one place I think the Ace Pro 2 is better than anything else on the market. In reviewing test footage from both, I found the Ace Pro 2 did a slightly better job of preserving details than the DJI Osmo Action 5, which is otherwise very close. Both blow the GoPro Hero 13 Black out of the water. If you want to shoot at night, don’t get a GoPro.
Some of the impressive night and HDR capabilities may be due in part to the dual-chip processing architecture, which splits tasks between primary and secondary imaging chipsets. One of these chips is the same that was in the Ace Pro, but it’s now joined by a second chip, which can process denoising, dynamic range, and the like separately. Whatever is happening under the hood, the results are pretty good.
That said, Insta360 has upped the saturation considerably in the default settings, which makes it even worse than the last model. Perhaps I am the only one who doesn’t like oversaturated video, but to my eye, the default color saturation mode in the Ace Pro 2 has a hyperreal quality only Jean Baudrillard could love. Maybe that’s just me.
There are two new color modes to shoot in, though, and they are both nice—Leica Natural and Leica Vivid. When I wasn’t shooting in log I shot in Leica Natural, which is less saturated and produces a more realistic image, at least to my eye.
The Ace Pro 2 is, to my knowledge, the first action camera to do something I’ve done on my own for years—incorporate a windscreen over the microphone. Yes, I often put a bit of felt or even some spare “fur” from a dead cat over the mic input of my action camera. It’s not perfect, but it does help, especially on a lightly windy day. Well, the Ace Pro 2 includes a nice wind guard with a bit of foam to cover the mic and it works. Shocking I know. Audio Engineering 101 wasn’t lying. The advantage here is that you can leave off the digital wind-noise reduction, which never works that well in my experience, and still record decent audio in light winds.
