Insta360 GO 3S

Insta360 GO 3S has been a great evolution of the original Insta360 GO 2 camera.

I was a big fan of the GO 2, as it was as close as possible to almost-invisible button-sized camera. The GO 2 had some drawbacks though. Image quality was good but not great and there were limited menu navigation options, as the "base station" had only a super tiny text display.

But it still proved very useful. Even during the white water kayaking trip we took just two weeks ago. The "kayaking" included some related fun like jumping off a suspension bridge to a stream. But even without the cliff jumping, white water kayaking is a kind of activity when anything can happen. So carrying a phone is not the best idea. I know iPhones are waterproof now, but there are more dangers in white waters, in particular stones. Plus you must be prepared to lose all your gear. I would also not dare to jump off a cliff with an iPhone in my hand (I did that with the Insta GO).

One other problem with a smartphone is they can do everything which means you tend to try using them in all situations and if you lose them, you lose everything: emergency communications, navigation, photos, everything. That is why rugged sports cameras make sense.

So enter the GO 3S, a successor of the wildly imaginative GO 3, a GoPro-like package but with removable lens part (which can act as a standalone video recorder and stills camera). The two-piece unit is ingenious: it has a display (which rotates) and can be used as GoPros are, but also can act as a wireless display/controller: the lens/camera piece can be on a selfie stick (Insta makes a really long one which gives a drone-like view) or sticked to a windshield.

Some can argue you could always use a phone as a wireless display/controller, but to my point: there are places where you just don't want to take a phone or just don't want to pull it out frequently. Surprisingly one such place is a car, if you're using wireless CarPlay (which I love). The camera connection competes with the CarPlay connection and none works in the end (Apple: this needs to be solved - I believe technically WiFi can do multiple simultaneous connections, right?). So having the recording piece / lens sticked to the windshield while operating it (with live preview) from the base unit is a great use case.

On top of the obvious improvements, the GO 3S offers many others which are not that prominently visible. One is the software module implementing the Apple AirTag protocol (every Bluetooth device should be doing that!), so the camera can be added to the FindMy network. And last but not least - it properly charges from a USB-C Power Delivery source. Insta360 GO 2 required an A-to-C cable, as it failed to implement the 5.1kΩ resistors.