The Best Action Cameras

If you're going to be filming yourself at all, the Insta360 Ace Pro 2 is the camera to get. It has a great lens and sensor co-engineered with Leica, capable of recording 8K video at up to 30 fps. The 8K is not great for action—it has quite a bit of digital artifacts in fast-moving scenes—but it's nice for cropping in on slower shots while retaining 4K video quality. The must-have feature for vlogging is the flip-up rear screen. While other action cameras offer a small front screen to compose selfies, the entire back of the Ace Pro is a screen that flips up, and it's easier to frame yourself. It also makes it easy to shoot from the hip and other unusual angles.

The video quality is impressive, especially the low-light performance, which is much better than the GoPro's. Overall the image quality is similar to the DJI Osmo Action 5, which shares the same sensor (DJI caps the recording at 4K, though). Shooting side by side, it was interesting to see how the same sensor produced different results based on each company's different image processing algorithms. Overall, this is very close to the DJI for video quality. The Ace Pro 2 has great battery life and a magnetic mounting system that's different from DJI's, but also excellent. The big downside to the Ace Pro 2 is that it doesn't support 10-bit color, which means you have fewer options to colorize footage in post-production.

In November 2025, Insta360 announced a series of new bundles for the Insta360 Ace Pro 2, including a set of extra lenses like the GoPro Hero 13, a grip that makes holding the Ace Pro 2 more like holding a traditional camera, and, most creatively, an instant printer that attaches to the bottom of the grip and effectively makes your Ace Pro 2 into a Polaroid-style instant camera. I haven't had a chance to test these yet, but I will update this guide when I have. At the very least, it's nice to see some new ways to use the action camera.

You could argue that DJI is copying the Insta360 here, which pioneered the detachable action camera with the Go series, most recently the Go Ultra ($500). But the first thing I thought of when I started testing the DJI Osmo Nano is the DJI Action 2, a weird blip in the action camera world that came out and vanished in barely a year. I was always fond of the Action 2 and its strange, detachable, magnetic configuration. The Osmo Nano feels like DJI took the lessons from the Action 2, borrowed some ideas from Insta360, and out came the Osmo Nano.

The Nano consists of the Vision Dock, as DJI calls the screen and base, and the camera portion. They can attach with the screen facing either direction, using the same magnetic mount that DJI uses in other cameras. Crucially, this means the camera pod can be mounted to any DJI magnetic mount, something very convenient if you're already heavily invested in the DJI ecosystem. The dock works from a distance of up to 33 feet and offers a bright, 1.96-inch touchscreen. There are two models available, one with 64 GB of built-in memory and one with 128 GB. Both have an SD card slot if you need more storage space. The 128-GB model offers a higher download rate when transfering footage, but it's $30 more.

Nano uses the same 1/1.3-inch sensor as the Action 5, and has very similar video specs and output. You get some things here that you do not with the Insta360 Go cameras, including support for 10-bit color, 4K/60 fps video, and full sensor 4:3 4K video at up to 50 fps. Video out of the Nano looks good. DJI appears to have changed its color science somewhat. Video from the Osmo Nano looked more natural and less aggressively sharpened than video from the Action 5. If you shoot in 10-bit D-LogM, and do your coloring in post, you'll have about 13 stops of dynamic range to work worth. That’s really nice when you're filming difficult scenes like riding a trail through the trees in midday sunlight.

What I didn't love about the Nano is the design. If you want to film yourself, the Insta360’s flip-up screen is easier to use and works better. The camera pod is also considerably larger than the Go 3S pod. That said, the video quality here is better in almost every case I tested, and it's $150 cheaper. The added bonus of integrating well with the rest of DJI's products makes the Osmo Nano a great option.

Like the DJI above, Insta360's Go Ultra is a hybrid camera that transforms from a traditional action-camera design to a more portable go-anywhere wearable camera. In action camera mode, it's much like everything else in this guide—the flip-up rear screen is very similar to the company's Ace Pro. The real genius of the Go Ultra, though, is when you remove the camera from the base and shoot with just the tiny little pod. The extremely strong magnetic mounting system on the camera pod means it'll stick to just about anything metal, enabling you to get shots and angles that no other camera in this guide can match.

Most important though, this camera is just plain fun. I keep mine in my camera bag all the time and find myself using it more and more. The simplicity and ease of shooting with the Go Ultra are hard to match—just stick it somewhere and do your thing. There are two downsides: The pod isn't waterproof without a different lens cover, and the battery isn't removable, which means you need to lug around a portable battery charger to recharge on the go.

The Hero 12 Black (8/10, WIRED Recommends) remains a fantastic camera, with good, smart stabilization, support for log video, wireless mic support, and a tripod mount. One downside is there's no GPS support (that's good for battery life, but if you like GPS, this is not the camera to get). The price has dropped as low as $287, so try not to spend much more than that.

We have a whole guide to 360 cameras, but the line between action camera and 360 camera continues to blur. While I am generally a fan of things that do one thing well, GoPro's Max 2 360 camera manages to produce great 360 footage and action camera footage.

The Max 2 delivers what GoPro calls “true 8K” 360-degree footage in a tiny, consumer-friendly package. The true bit refers to the fact that the Max 2 uses a larger sensor than competitors and is not counting the unused black portions of the sensor when touting megapixels. When you're not feeling like 360 footage, switch to single-lens mode and use it like a GoPro Hero. It has pretty much the exact same specs and the plain Hero (not as nice as the Hero 13 Black, but pretty darn good). The twin 1/2.3-inch sensors are high enough resolution that you can reframe your footage to fit rectangular video formats and still have 4K clips, which are sharp enough to mix with other video and without noticing the difference. The Max 2 does struggle in low light, so see the full guide if that's on your list of must-have features.

If I had to pick a video trend of the year, it'd be solo adventures shot from a third-person point of view—as if you have a film crew following you. If you want to imitate a film crew, without, well, having a film crew, a drone is going to be an essential piece of kit. Of all the drones I've tested, the Hover Air X Pro is the best at being a flying action camera. It's spendy, and not without its quirks, but no drone is better at following you through all kinds of terrain, and no other drone is this easy to use.

All you do is unfold it, hit the power button, select the video mode, and then place the drone on your outstretched palm facing you. Tap the power button again, and it’ll head out to capture your shot. When you're done ,it'll land in your hand again. It can follow you at up to 26 mph, shoots up to 8K 30-fps video, and offers 50 GB of built-in storage (expandable by 1 TB via microSD card). The one thing I don't like is the battery life, which is only about 15 minutes in my testing. The flip side to the poor battery life is that the battery is small, meaning you have to carry two or three when you go out.

The Om Systems TG-7 isn't a strap-it-to-your-head-and-shred camera, but if you're shooting underwater—a common use case for these cameras—this is your best bet. The sensor in the TG-7 is the largest of the bunch (it's a 1/2.33'' CMOS sensor), and this is a seriously tough camera: freeze-proof, crush-proof, dustproof, and shockproof (you can drop it from 7 feet). It also has "real" camera features you won't find elsewhere, like focus stacking for close-ups, an extensive set of add-ons, extra lenses, and even an underwater case that extends its depth rating. The catch is that you probably don't want to strap it to your head, but for a certain use case this will give you better looking photos and video in many situations.

Alternative: Ricoh's Pentax WG-8 ($306) looks very similar to the TG-7 but costs a bit less and uses a 20 MP sensor to the TG-7's 12 MP. Images are sharp, and the LED lights around the lens work remarkably well for macro images. The major limitation is that it only shoots JPG, not RAW photos. But if you don't care about editing your RAW files and just want images straight out of the camera, the WG-8 is a cheaper alternative to the TG-7.