Gadgetory

Juan Carlos bag bell here for pocket now and I've had the new gear 360 for about a week I wanted to share some thoughts with it first of all just it's always kind of frustrating when we call something the new product though I totally understand that we couldn't call it the gear 362 then it sounds like we're adding two degrees to a circle and that's just even stranger but again we are talking about the new who cares 5060 this won't be a proper review we don't really feel that fair to do an in-depth review on this product right now we think the hardware is pretty well finished but the software experience is definitely still super beta without further ado here are our top five pros and cons and using the new gear 360 to shoot 360 degree photos and videos let's start with the positives at number 5 the redesigned hardware I really think Samsung's nailed the look of this gadget soft around the edges got a really playful look to it a big inviting red clicky button it just looks like it's about to go on an adventure with wall-e and I think that's great number four the galaxy ecosystem like I said beta software but the pairing process between this camera and my galaxy s7 was wonderfully easy and every time you fire up this camera the phone will auto connect over Bluetooth and it's really easy to get up and running using your phone as a viewfinder for the camera you don't have to go through opening an app or trying to go through Wi-Fi settings these two talk to each other really easily number three 360 photos and video are still super fresh if you're trying to impress family and friends or you're trying to create a new channel of your own you want to fund hook to get viewers in I'm a big fan of shooting panoramas especially from phones where you can just really easily sort of swipe your phone across the scene but as you're moving the phone around you can introduce stitching errors or someone can walk through and become some sort of mutant beast now instead of completing that action it's wiping your phone across you pick up your camera you hold it up you hit one button just like that and that captured a full 360-degree view of the area I was in as a brief aside it's always kind of funny when you hand someone some kind of 360 degree photo and they're just sort of looking at the phone like well what is this that I'm looking and then you have to take your hands and sort of move them and then they're like oh oh I get a kick out of that I think it's fun positive number two that 4k quality the new gear 360 takes a noticeable step up in improving video quality again more clarity more detail really helps flesh out the scene that you're in those extra pixels go a long way towards immersing someone into that content I mean think about gaming the fuzzier the image is the more distracting it is to play that game and the number one positive you capture everything one button press and the entire scene the entire environment around you is saved for posterity it really is kind of a head trip and it definitely requires a different way of thinking about how you shoot photos and videos like normally I want to walk around and point my camera at things or pan over to things and you just don't need to do that when everything around you is captured with one button press it requires nothing of you more than holding it up and clicking the button and that's it that's all well and good but of course shooting on the new gear 360 isn't all roses so here's our top 5 cons for buting on this camera number 5 the redesigned hardware sure this looks like a weeble and weebles wobble but they don't fall down this thing falls down really easy samsung's solution is also not particularly elegant to give you this sort of hemorrhoid ring that you can put on the bottom of the camera and it'll do a better job of just sort of propping itself up instead I've got a bunch of these little cheap bendy tripods I just instead will screw this into the bottom of the the gear 360 and I've got a handle kind of like the original gear 360 which can then be splayed out into some kind of stand to better prop up the camera if I ever want to set it down con number 4 the samsung ecosystem sure these two paired ridiculously easy and I really do like how this app will communicate with the camera but as of right now this camera only works with Samsung hardware we should see some support for iPhones but I'm a little worried that any future support for competing two Isis is going to resemble what Samsung is doing with their Smart Watch strategy are you sure it pairs up with other devices but some of those features that you would really want in a product like this might be disabled if you're likely to stay in the Samsung ecosystem NBD but if you were hoping to pick up this camera and use it with an LG or with a wall away it might not work Kahn number three 360 degree video is still pretty fresh and by fresh I mean raw it's like the very early days of film we're still trying to figure out what the new narrative or storytelling constructs should be when the viewer has control over where they're looking within the scene even in just shooting a couple silly little vlogs using 360 degree cameras I'm routinely confronted by comments of people accusing me of not doing enough cool stuff with the platform or not pushing the boundaries on the platform no one's really been able to articulate what I should be doing with these cameras but they all have very strong opinions that I'm just not doing it right somehow Kahn number two that 4k quality so imagine if you will you're sitting down in your living room looking at your gorgeous 4k TV you pop on some kind of 4k video stream or 4k blu-ray and you see all of that crispy crunchy detail it's all right in front of you in one little rectangular box and it's gorgeous that 4k resolution is stretched all the way around your head so whatever you're looking at in that one little piece that one little field of view is probably lower than HD quality video a little extra education needs to happen so that people understand what's going on when they fire up a 4k video and it still looks a little blurry or a little softer a little fuzzy at least we can start that discussion off and I wholly expect that higher end cameras will probably be released by the end of this year pushing up into 8k territory just for instances of content creation like 360 video and the number one Conda suiting photos and videos with the new gear 360 if you capture everything you capture your hand and your arm and your self so you know don't go picking your nose while you're shooting 360 video you capture this amazing scene all the way around you and you capture that obnoxious guy who's always trying to make you sign petitions outside your favorite Starbucks we've got to be careful about not being creepers with our new technology you also capture that mother and that child that are out playing at a park this creates such immersive content but it also introduces a few etiquette problems that we're going to need to address so folks those were our top five pros and cons actually reading through the list now the pros and cons seemed pretty similar looking down each individual list point which is odd almost like I plan on doing that we're going to be shooting some more samples with the new gear 360 we have some links down below this video with a few of the things that I've already shot you can also check out if you really want to dig in and you want to try and see what this can be used for in a long-form discussion we did an episode of the pocket now weekly podcast 90 minutes of podcasting with hime a Jules and Ricky VHS from GSM arena just all in sort of a roundtable discussion literally around this camera and you can kind of get a feel for what it's like to be in the middle of a pocket now podcast literally in the middle of a pocket now podcast while we're recording at 2:00 in the morning after the Samsung unpacked event and we want to hear from you I know I was getting a little snarky some of that criticism over people not expressing themselves with things they'd like to see in 360 now's an opportunity to to kick up some comments down below this video what kinds of things would you like to see shot in 360 degrees you can already find tons of videos like hey I'm driving in my car or check out this sunset on the beach but I'm sure you guys have some other ideas out there and we'd love to hear them and we've got hardware that we want to compare for some interesting tests so we want to make sure we're giving you guys some cool samples to look at drop that comment down below those are the kind of conversations I love getting into as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for our full coverage of some of these hot new accessories coming down the pipe and help us out with some sharing on your favorite social networks for pocket now I'm Juan Carlos now some gadget guy on Twitter and Instagram and I will catch you all on the next video