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Samsung Gear 360 Review!

2016-07-05
whether you're ready for it or not 360 video has definitely arrived and Samsung is one of the first companies to bring out a standalone product that provides 360 video with a number of different features this is judge of a guard from Android Authority what's going on everybody and this is your full review of the Samsung gear 360 in Hawaii the first thing we'll talk about with the gear 360 is its shape this vehicle shape is actually really smooth and very high quality to the touch so it definitely has this somewhat futuristic look to it on either end or large fisheye lenses that will be used to stitch together ultimately the 360 video that you create but there are some controls on the left side if you're looking at it straight dead-on and then on the top there is a recording button along with a small screen to show you exactly where you are and how long you've been recording and on the right side is a cover that allows the gear 360 to be dust and splash resistant but if you open that up you'll be able to get to a port for microUSB charging a micro SD card slot for up to 200 gigabytes worth of storage and then a removable battery at 1350 milliamp hours the battery is pretty decent on here I haven't had any problems with the gear 360 dying on me before the end of a shooting day but I will say that you should have a battery pack available or even a replaceable battery if you're going to be doing very long form recordings especially when using both of the lenses speaking of those lenses they are dual 15 megapixel sensors that come in at F 2.0 aperture and are both fisheye meaning you get full 180 degrees inside of your photo or video if you're using both of them at the same time then of course that will put together a full 360 content but from there there are little lights on those lenses or just outside of them rather that show you which ones are being used whether it's both or just one of them probably the first thing I really like about this 360 camera the gear 360 is that it's actually really solidly built one of the favorite parts about it is well comes with this tiny little stand it works really nicely to you can also use it as a bit of a handle if you want to take some pictures that way or some videos that way but overall it's just a very well-built device it has a really good premium feel to it and all of the buttons are just nice and meaty that very satisfying click to them and the audio prompts the small acoustic audio prompts are really helpful in knowing that you are getting around in the different menu settings with that tiny little screen on top that cute little tripod that the gear 360 comes with can be screwed off of the gear 360 revealing a tripod mount if you need to mount the gear 360 on pretty much any other standard tripod the main hindrance to the gear 360 software experience is that it requires a Samsung Galaxy device whether it's a recent notes or galaxy s device that is what you're going to have to use because the software even though it's available in the Play Store is not compatible with most other Android devices pretty much any ones that I tried were not able to work with the gear 360 that said however the camera app itself is pretty much what you would expect if you are familiar with Samsung camera applications provides you a lot of control including the ability to turn HDR on or off change the exposure in a manual mode or change the different modes there are other modes on the gear 360 aside from video and photo which include time-lapse and a looping video mode which will take a certain amount of the user-defined video and then when it is done taking let's say that 30 seconds of video it will actually discard that video unless you stop it from doing so it's a way of keeping space on the SD card so you make sure that you only get the part that you want and not have to record let's say ten full minutes of something when you only really need like a minute of it but the best part about the gear 360 is that it can be used standalone for the most part while you won't be able to change HDR or the exposure if you only use the camera on its own the controls on the left and the record button on the top can be used in conjunction just like a GoPro in order to go through the different modes and to change a few different settings the main sighting that ends up being used here at least my experience was changing whether or not you're using both lenses for a 360 video or photo or just using one of them the gear 360 can do a bunch of diff resolutions including 4k and 2k and one of the best parts about it is you have to 180 degree video cameras on both sides of this little sphere and you could use either one of them for a full 180 degree video kind of like a GoPro so that means you can have a pretty viable tool for things like blogging like I'm doing right now or even just getting a regular video at 180 degrees to get a lot of your subject or at the landscape and that's the thing about the gear 360 you're actually getting two very high-quality fisheye lens sensors on either end of the sphere both of which output really nice-looking photos and very good-looking video especially in the better lit situations that you would usually use an action cam in I actually ended up using one of the lenses more often than using both now that's not necessarily to say that 360 video is not something I'm into I'm very much into it it's just that when you use the gear 360 as a standalone vlogging rig for example it actually does a wonderful job and as a standalone high quality product you are able to get some great videos without much fuss at all but let's say you do use the gear 360 primarily for 360 photos and videos if you have a Samsung Galaxy device transferring the videos and photos from the gear 360 to the device is pretty easy you just have to select it and it will copy to the phone and stitch it together using the software in the phone but if you bring it to a PC the gear 360 actually comes with a license key for the gear 360 action director powered by CyberLink and essentially what will happen is you take these photos and videos and you put them into the action director project and it will begin the stitching process for you now right off the bat you might be noticing that there's already a stitching problem here especially when you have two slightly different exposures on both of these lenses it will show very plainly in these videos and the other thing too is the gear 360 does I'll put some very good videos but it may not seem like that when you look at the full 360 video that I've put out alongside this review here at Android Authority calm now the reason why is that a 4k video even though it's 4k is being put into a viewer that then zooms far into that frame so that you get the illusion of a 360 /vr experience now assuming far into even a 4k 4 name will make the quality seem much lower than it usually is and that's something that a lot of people kind of need to realize about 360 video by now for now these particular devices like the gear 360 and the LG cam 360 are the ones that will provide this kind of look other ones that use let's say 8 to 10 different GoPros to stitch together a super high quality video is a whole different story overall the Samsung gear 360 might be one of the best ways of getting into 360 video right now at $349 it is more expensive than the LG 360 cam but it is also less than pretty much any other rig out there that might require more than one actual camera as a standalone product it does a wonderful job of providing that entry point into 360 video but the thing that I love the most about it is that you can use it as an action camera by only using one side of those two cameras and if you do that you have a wonderful vlogging rig that while not necessarily pocketable is small enough to throw into a bag or a backpack and you have it with you wherever you end up going personally I wish that you would be able to get two different video files if you used both of the lenses at the same time which would make this one of the most powerful vlogging rigs that are out there but until then what we have here is a wonderful dual GoPro like set up that puts together 360 videos if you want to have some fun with what might be the future of our video content stay tuned to Android 34 even more about the Samsung gear 360 and a future review of the LG 360 cam now 360 video and it's cameras are incredibly new so it's a little bit hard to give these things scores for now we're going to give you just our thoughts on these cameras and as more devices come out we'll be able to give you more of a benchmark as to what the scoring on these should be 360 video is still incredibly young but we're looking forward to using it and reviewing it and future content and you can stay tuned to Android or D for more of that and also our sibling site VR source which will also be diving into 360 and virtual reality video in the days to come so keep it tuned to Android Authority for even more because we are your source for all things Android
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