I forked out for the Insta360 One X Dive Case before the new Insta360 One Venture Case came out and regretted it immediately. One of the first rules of photography is never take new gear on holiday or an important shoot without testing it first. The best thing about the Insta360 One X 360 degree camera is that it magically makes the selfie pole disappear so you effectively have nice clean shots with people wondering how you took that shot. Unfortunately the Insta360 One X Dive Case takes this away and when either out or in water you see the base of the case and it’s pretty ugly rendering footage pretty much unusable.
To be fair, this is really my fault for not doing more research on the Insta360 One X Dive Case before buying it. I didn’t really want it for diving, more for just swimming pools, beaches, snorkelling and that type of stuff and at the time, the original Insta360 One X Venture Case (Version 1) was not suitable for that and not waterproof. I ended up taking the Insta360 One X Dive Case to Chiang Mai without testing it and came back with a bunch of mostly unusable footage due to the fact you get a lot of the bottom of the case in all shots. Even with the 360, I could only use about a quarter of the footage I’d taken.
It also fogs up, so you must use the included anti-fog things. However, they leave lint in the case and this can show up in your footage. But the worst thing about the Insta360 One X Dive Case is that’s extremely easy to scratch/mark. I take care of my gear and put things down gently and don’t throw them around, but even just putting it down on any kind of hard surface will scratch it or lave marks on the outer case, and again, this shows up on footage. For the cost (about HKD$650) this is not acceptable. And this is not something they warn you about or any other review has mentioned. Most reviews of this case are by people who haven’t even used it or taken it outside or actually used it in the environment it’s designed for.
They sit at their fancy YouTube studios behind a desk, open it up and come to the conclusion that it’s a great product. It looks kinda cool if a bit bulky, but unless you are careful not to put this down on any hard surface (sand included), you’re going to scratch the shit out of this making it basically useless. I guess if you’re a hard core diver and want some 360 shots deep under water, you might consider buying this case but it has the selfie stick in the shot so in my opinion you might as well use something like the Olympus TG-5 underwater (waterproof) camera which takes 4K Video and takes better photos, and stick that on an extension pole.
The only thing worse than the scratching and marks on the casing is how difficult it is to see the screen, which is already hard to see in any kind of sun light. Forget about trying to see the screen and what you’re doing underwater, let alone out of water. With the case on, the Insta360 One X becomes an absolute nightmare to use, Ha;f the time you don’t know if it’s on, and when you do somehow manage to figure out it is on, changing modes (from camera to video for example) is almost impossible. Well almost impossible to know if you have the right mode. The buttons are also not the easiest to use and makes the Insta360 One X, which under normal circumstances is pretty easy to use, a completely different piece of gear to use.
I sold the Insta360 One X Dive Case after one trip and waited for the newly updated Insta360 One X Venture Case (Version 2), which I have’t used yet, but it’s smaller, less expensive, is waterproof and will suit my purposes much better and hopefully be less scratch prone, although that’s yet to be confirmed. For more information on the Insta360 One X Dive Case feel free to to ask us a question on Twitter or on our contact page.
