Insta360 Ace Pro 2 Xplorer Grip Pro Kit Review: An Even Better Action Camera

Grip is comfortable and easier to hold than camera alone. Large (customizable) shutter button. Programmable dial to control exposure. Adds 5-plus hours of battery life.

Action cameras keep adding larger sensors. Recently DJI added a variable aperture lens, a move I expect Insta360 and GoPro to make as well with their next models. Is the action camera ready to replace your point-and-shoot?

Insta360 thinks so. The company recently released a grip that turns the Ace Pro 2 action cam into a point-and-shoot camera. The company also released a printer and added some new Leica color profiles via a major firmware update. I've been testing the new grip and using the Ace Pro 2 as my pocket camera for a few months now, and I think, in many cases, its as good or better than some dedicated point-and-shoot cameras.

Get a Grip

Confession time: I'm not much of a moviemaker. I try. I strap action cameras to my bike handlebars all the time. And I have hours of GoPro footage I shot living in a vintage RV for years. All these clips sit, unused, collecting dust on external hard drives. I just haven't figured out how to tell stories with video, so the footage sits, waiting for me to learn.

If you count "use" as actually creating something, then I primarily use my GoPro and other action cameras to take photos. I always thought this was eccentric of me, but it turns out I am not alone. In fact there are so many people who do this that Insta360 has released a new grip for the Ace Pro 2, which, for $100, effectively turns your action camera into a point-and-shoot camera.

There are actually two grips out there for the Ace Pro 2. The first is the older Xplorer Grip for $85. I have not tested that one. It lacks the dial of the second grip, the Xplorer Grip Pro for $99. The former is fine, but I really like the dial, so if the extra $15 isn't a deal-breaker, I recommend the Pro model.

The Xplorer Grip Pro fits snugly around the body of the Ace Pro 2, adding 7.1 ounces (202 grams) to the overall weight but giving you an extra five-ish hours of battery life (shooting video, much more for photos only) and a much more comfortable way to hold and shoot with the Ace Pro 2.

There's still no viewfinder, but with cameras like this I don't tend to bring them to my eye anyway. The Ace Pro 2's tilting screen makes it easy to shoot from the waist as well.

Before I go any further, one clarification: The Ace Pro 2 Xplorer Grip is helpful for video too, especially handheld video, as the larger grip is easier to hold steady. However, it really feels like the intent was to turn the Ace Pro 2 into more of a photo-oriented camera, and since that's what I like it for anyway, that's the angle I'm covering here. But if you're a video person, the grip is still super nice and (I think) a great deal for $99 for the added battery life, if nothing else.

For Photography

The Ace Pro 2 is never going to compete with a full-frame mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses. Even its 50-MP images are still coming from a 1/1.3-inch CMOS sensor. That's tiny compared to, well, pretty much any larger camera. Still, I find the Ace Pro 2 (the DJI Osmo Action 6 and GoPro Hero 13 Black as well) to be very capable still cameras.

There are two things the Ace Pro 2 has that the others don't. The first is the Xplorer Grip, and the second is the Leica Summarit lens. No, it's not an M-mount Leica, but it's still a very good lens, better for stills in my experience than other action cams.

It's a 13mm lens (35mm equivalent) with an f2.6 aperture, which means you can get some extremely wide-angle shots. I find it's fun to play with leading lines in creative ways when I shoot with it. Despite the relatively wide aperture, there's not much depth of field here—pretty much everything is always in focus. Again, this is an action camera. There are other lenses you can add: a macro, an ultrawide angle, and a cinema lens. The best of the bunch from a photography standpoint is the macro, but I haven't found myself reaching for any of these lenses very often when shooting photos. (I use the ultrawide all the time for video.)

While the Ace Pro 2 is no full-frame-camera replacement, it does have its own benefits—like durability, waterproofness, and compact size—that make it capable for shots you wouldn't want to risk with a $2,500-plus mirrorless camera. Even when I bring my "real" camera, I still throw an action camera in my bag to help get shots I might not without it. It's also just a fun camera to use.

A great example of this is handing a camera to someone to take a photo of you or giving it to my wife or kids to shoot with. Handing them an SLR-style camera in full manual mode requires a minute of directing and help. In contrast, I sent my wife and daughter out to a winter survival camp they did earlier this year with the Ace Pro 2 and didn't explain a thing about it. The case has one big button and one dial. I put the camera in photo mode, auto exposure, and stuck some gaffers tape over the dial so the setting wouldn't be accidentally changed, and sent them on their way. They came home with some great photos.

Another thing you can do with the Ace Pro 2 that I would not do with my mirrorless rig is take it out on the water. This may be a lifestyle thing, but I try to spend as much time as I can in and around water. My Sony A7R II isn't even weather-sealed. Neither are any of the lenses I use. A waterproof housing for that camera is 3X the price of the Ace Pro 2. I much prefer to slap a float on the Ace Pro 2 and jump on the paddleboard. This is the one place the grip was a little disappointing; the grip on the Ace Pro 2 is no longer waterproof.

The Best Photography Settings

If you decide to pick up the Xplorer Grip, here's how to take better photos with the Ace Pro 2.

The first thing I recommend is shooting RAW images, which gives you .dng files alongside your PureShot JPGs. Every now and then the JPGs turn out fine on their own, but this is one camera where I usually want to post-process the RAW files to get what I'm after.

The resolution options for photos in the Ace Pro 2 are:

• 50 MP (8,192 × 6,144)—Full sensor resolution, with the most detail. This is what I shoot most of the time.
• 37 MP (8,192 × 4608)—16:9 crop of the full sensor.
• 12.5 MP (4,096 × 3072)—If you want Insta360's HDR mode enabled, this is the max resolution you can shoot. There's still enough resolution to print 5 x 7 images.
• 9 MP (4,096 × 2304)—16:9 with HDR. These work if you're mainly posting online.

I usually shoot in 50 MP, though sometimes I use the 37-MP 16:9 crop, depending on the composition I'm going for. I find the HDR, is enabled in the other modes by default, produces overly saturated images that look like "action camera photos," so I avoid using it. (Though in low light sometimes it's actually better because of the noise reduction it applies.)

Also note that there is a 2X zoom mode, which is nice for video but it is a crop so I don't use it for still images. If I need to crop, I do it afterward when editing.

Insta360 claims 13.5 stops of dynamic range for its DNG files. In real-world testing, I find I can raise the exposure on a RAW file after the fact by about two stops before the weird color shifts and excess noise start to degrade the image. That's not mirrorless-camera good, but it's about the best I've seen in an action camera. When combined with the Ace Pro 2's exposure compensation, it's enough to compensate for potential camera shake at lower shutter speeds (more on that below).

Part of the appeal here is the point-and-shoot aspect, which ideally for me is fully automatic. However, I do find myself needing to switch to manual mode a fair bit of the time when shooting with the Ace Pro 2. This is because the exposure algorithm seems to favor lowering the shutter speed rather than raising the ISO. This is probably the right choice most of the time, as ISO over about 800 gets pretty unusable, but the downside is there's no way to set a minimum shutter speed, which means you'll often find the automatic mode dropping shutter speeds to 1/15 of a second, which then leads to camera shake and blurry images. The worst part is that you won't notice this in the playback images on the camera because the screen is too small.

To get around this, I use manual mode almost exclusively when I am shooting outside of bright sunlight (so, all the time really). I'd love to see Insta360 add a way to set a minimum shutter, but so far that's not an option. (I expect the Ace Pro 3, whenever it arrives, to have a variable aperture lens like the DJI Osmo Action 6, which would also help, provided you can control the aperture.)

For reference, the ISO Range is 100-6400, and the in-camera noise reduction is pretty good. So you can use the upper end if you need to. Just remember that the camera's automated exposure system doesn't seem to like going too high, so you might need to use manual mode.

The shutter speed range is great, running from 1/8,000 sec to 120 seconds. You can shoot pretty much any scenario with this range, from freezing action to star trails on long exposures. To control this, however, you'll have to use manual mode.

The final exposure control feature is one I use a lot, and it's exposure compensation. This works with the auto exposure and can be used to combat the tendency to go too slow with the shutter speed be forcing the Ace Pro 2 to underexpose the image. The exposure comp here is the best among action cameras, running from –4 stops to + 4 stops in ⅓-stop increments. I set the Xplorer Grip to control EV, so when I am in auto mode, the dial is an exposure comp dial just like "real" camera. (The dial can also be set to control ISO, shutter speed, shooting mode, filter selection, and white balance.)

Even better, if you're in manual mode and you want to go back to auto, the first click of the dial will open the side panel, the second will switch from manual to auto, the third will start adjusting your exposure value. This is a really fast way to get from a carefully composed exposure back to full auto without needing to get into the touchscreen menus.

The final thing worth mentioning is the included Leica color profiles. If you haven't updated your firmware recently, you should. Insta360 has added a few more of these. Because I shoot RAW, I don't use these much, but as color profiles go these are great, especially the new Leica high-contrast black and white, which is what I've been using most of the time. This way I get a black-and-white JPG and a full-color RAW file.

To be honest, I did not have high hopes for the Xplorer Grip Pro Kit. For me, action cameras have primarily been for shooting around water, and while that still works with the bare camera, it doesn't with the grip. However, I was pleasantly surprised using the Ace Pro 2 with the Xplorer grip as an everyday camera.

I would say it's best thought of as a compliment to your existing “real” camera. It’s not going to replace your interchangeable lens camera. It could replace your point-and-shoot, but I haven't done that, because sometimes I want a pocket camera with a 28mm lens. Instead, the Ace Pro 2 with the grip has become an extra camera that I bring along when I want a wide angle or fisheye look and don't feel like lugging a big, heavy, fast, full-frame, ultrawide lens.