Tested: Insta360 AcePro 2 & Ultra Wide Angle Lens

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With so many action camera options that all seem similar, choosing which one checks all the boxes feels like a roll of the dice. To be fair, most will be fine for 99% of people, but if you want the best footage right out of the camera and a user interface that makes sense, the Insta360 Ace Pro 2 has been a faultless companion while shooting videos for the BIKEmag YouTube channel .

GoPro has been a dominant force in action cameras, but with more options on the market from DJI and Insta360, there's not much reason to stick with GoPro despite its heritage in the space. I've had tons of GoPros over the years, and my most recent pick was the Hero Max 360 camera, which was a ton of fun. Before that, I used a few different ones, but they often overheated or had storage issues. Although 360 footage is fun and easy to edit, it wasn't always necessary, and it didn't meet 4K standards. These drawbacks, which included the size, prompted me to explore other options.

Overview

I landed on the Insta360 Ace Pro 2 for a few reasons. First, it offers excellent image quality and in-camera stabilization for its size. Second, you can swap out lenses, which was a huge bonus later on. After actually using it for extended periods, more benefits soon became apparent.

• Price: $369.99 USD

• Video: Up to 8K (16:9): 7680×4320@30/25/24fps

• Slow Motion: 4K (16:9): 3840×2160@120/100fps

• Photo: Up to 50MP (8192×6144)

• 16-bit audio

• USB-C Fast Charge: 47 mins (30W fast charging adapter)

Shop Ace Pro 2 Cameras Here

Selling Points: Great battery life, great image quality, excellent low-light performance, an easy-to-use user interface, swappable lenses, a mounting system, and great audio quality.

Pain Points: Other lenses can add weight, it's not as small as other cameras on the market, and the USB and battery doors are fragile (but replaceable).

Details and Features

The Insta360 Ace Pro 2 is pretty damn impressive, and I have almost no complaints after a year of use and abuse from both mountain biking and skiing. The Insta360 Ace Pro 2 weighs just 148 grams (more with the Ultra Wide Angle lens kit) and has an easily swappable 1800mAh battery. For storage, you can slap a 1 TB microSD card into the camera and capture hours of footage. I have found that for my use cases of shooting 4K at 24FPS, a 256GB SD card is more than adequate, but it does need fast read/write speeds (SanDisk Extreme works great IMO).

One of the selling points Insta360 is proud of in this camera is its AI chip, which auto-detects "highlights" in the footage, among other less flashy things. Although the highlight detection is a neat feature, I have only used it a couple of times, and the results were less than ideal, so I don't really rely on it to know what's best. For me, the UI, audio quality, and actual footage take precedence, and the Ace Pro 2 delivers on that front, partly thanks to the aforementioned chip.

I've been really impressed with the image stabilization and audio quality, with most footage being perfectly usable out of the camera. For mountain biking, it is really impressive and handles wind noise and low-light conditions exceptionally well. Thanks to Leica optics with a 2.8 aperture and the dual processing chips integrated into the sensor, the Ace Pro 2 handles low light better than any other action camera I've seen. So it has that going for it, but I have noticed that it can struggle when transitioning quickly from bright light to shade, especially when mountain biking. A quick toggle of the HDR video setting helps combat this, though.

The camera offers a lot of adjustability when you enable manual exposure control, but I've found auto mode works excellently in almost every situation. The Ace Pro 2 also shoots in I-log, enabling you to retain more detail in the highlights and shadows and do more precise color grading in post-production if you really want to get deep with it. 

Most modern action cameras can shoot the same quality and frame rate, with only the new GoPro Mission series cranking things up to the extremes in frame rate. So it's hard to compare those specs against he competition, but the images and video right out of the camera on the Ace Pro 2 are fantastic, no matter what shooting mode you're using.

Lenses & Image Quality

Part of what was really attractive was the ability to swap lenses, particularly the Ultra Wide lens that makes the Ace Pro 2 really shine in my opinion. The base Wide-Angle is great, but depending on where you mount the camera, it won't fit everything in the frame. With the Ultra-Wide lens, that wide angle is now 36% taller and 32% wider, for a total field of view of 189°. This wider FOV makes the angles look and feel as fast as they do in real life, and it's well worth the extra $60.

Shop Ultra Wide Lenses Here

The real difference between most digital cameras is the image processing and color profiles applied to the footage, and Insta360 has multiple Leica profiles baked into the camera for easy color matching depending on the subject matter. They aren't always the best from scene to scene, so it's smart to check what profile you have before you start shooting, and if you happen to nerd out on color grading, I-log is the best bet – if not, then the standard color profile is great.

The Settings I Use For Great MTB Footage

For mountain bike footage, I keep the Ace Pro 2 on a slower shutter speed to get the motion blur that makes everything look the way it feels. I shoot mostly in 4K at 24 fps, with image stabilization set to the highest setting, and I rarely find the footage too shaky or unusable. You can also shoot up to 120fps in 4K if you want to get those slo-mo shots, but if you're mostly capturing ride footage, the slower frame rates are the best bet.

• Color Profile: Standard / I-Log

• Frame rate: 24p

• Quality: 4K

• ISO: Auto

• Stabilization: High

• Sharpening: 0

• EV: 0

Longevity and User Interface

Build quality was another thing that drew me to the Ace Pro 2, and despite being very robust, it's also the only thing I can ding the camera for. In the first few months of using it, I dropped it off my desk with the memory card door open, and the plastic hinge broke. At first, I was pretty bummed that a 3-foot fall would cause this, but I quickly looked up a replacement, and it wasn't that big of a deal. The USB/memory card door was $15 USD and didn't require any tools to fix, so I couldn't be that bummed.

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The Ace Pro 2 is pretty damn intuitive to use, too, with a familiar UI and an app that provides all the assistance the device's UI lacks. This makes transferring footage to a phone for social media a breeze, and the Insta360 software makes it pretty easy to edit the footage before saving. The flip-out screen at the back also makes it great for filming yourself if you want to talk directly to the camera or take a selfie.

I really like the mount system that Insta360 uses for its action cameras. They might seem fragile or less secure than the two-prong mounts on other cameras, but even with the added weight of the wide-angle lens, I've never worried about losing the camera in a bump.

Overall, I've been really pleased with the Ace Pro 2, and this might be the longest that I've ever owned an action camera without it begging for early retirement; and that's saying something. In the past, a GoPro lasted about a year before it stopped being a reliable way to capture ride footage, and I still use the Ace Pro 2 for every video I shoot for the BIKEmag YouTube channel , and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

This story was originally published by BikeMag on Sep 15, 2026, where it first appeared in the Mountain Bike Gear section. Add BikeMag as a Preferred Source by clicking here.