As someone who watches a reasonable amount of PoV outdoor activity footage shot on helmet cams and the like (base jumping, mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding, etc)… I don’t love watching 360 videos uploaded in the raw because of the perspective distortion.

I’m assuming it must be possible, if the resolution is good enough, to post process a portion of each overall frame into an undistorted 1080p (or better) view of the key view of the action, but a lot of people don’t do this (perhaps it’s much more difficult or time-consuming that I’m imagining, or perhaps many viewers enjoy the distorted 360 view more than I do).

Just my two cents, YMMV, etc.

If you're willing to put a little time into video editing, a 360 cam is great. The insta360 tools can make that a little easier if you want something simple.

If you just want to store a snapshot of the moment as it was captured, a regular camera that you pointed in the right direction is better.

DJI Osmo cameras are good, I still have my original Osmo action and while the quality is a bit behind now, the battery life and general stability and menus are better than GoPro IMO.

I've found DJI cameras also don't discharge their batteries when sitting, my gopro 11 black is somehow always dead when I grab it even after a few weeks, but my osmo action is still at ~70% after a year.

Insta360 also has some neat offerings, but their software/app is absolutely abysmal, it's crammed full of ads and takes up several GB of space. It also requires an account login.

> Then they started literally falling out of the sky.

Yep, something must have gone horribly wrong with QA.

Apparently (checked with AI), Hero 4 Black was the first camera with 30 fps 4k video and was released 12 years ago already (how time flies)

Frankly, after 4k/30 and 1080p/60, there are strong diminishing returns, because most people these days watch videos on their phones in suboptimal conditions (or older desktops that may still be on 1080p), so what are they going to do with your 5k/6k video?

Sure, you can keep doing minor improvements to sensors and optics, but for a consumer it will not justify getting a new model for $500.

Also, competing with smartphone cameras which have gotten better over the years. I bet 99% of people would not be able to tell a gopro video from a phone video.

The GoPros aren’t manufactured in the US either.

At the manufacturing level it largely isn't, no, though as others have pointed out Apple at least still has the ability to explore options outside China. But Apple represents a lack of vertical integration for its big Chinese suppliers like Foxconn, an American middleman taking a big slice of the revenues and profits which come from the customer. One thing to note is that Android isn't all that different, as phone makers still have to tithe to Google.

One factor (mentioned at https://bsky.app/profile/rajakorman.bsky.social/post/3mqubnh... for instance) is Western distrust of the Chinese government and the regulatory barriers erected from both sides. TikTok's probably a good case study. There was a conspicuous lack of Chinese software companies having success in the Western consumer market before TikTok. Building TikTok involved creating a new product aimed at RoW which was separate from its original Chinese model, Douyin. And then after TikTok Western success was still elusive, to some extent, as the US government snatched away Bytedance's toy.

Though even beyond tech and other politically sensitive areas China's generally been pretty slow at generating RoW-consumer-facing products and brands. There's also the slightly remarkable fact that historically (and even to some extent still today) GUIs have been extremely, mysteriously hard for large companies worldwide to do well. The main exception have tended to either be called "Apple" or have dedicated themselves to copying Apple's homework: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22288221 .

(I am not an expert on anyhthing.)

Mac Mini will be made in Houston (they already make their own servers there) https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/02/apple-accelerates-us-...

Manufacturing is primarily in China - that's true for Go Pro & everyone else and almost needless to say. The point is China usually eats the design layer too, making Apple a little unique in that they survived Chinese competition completely unscathed.

Mac Mini will be made in Houston (they already make their own servers there) https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/02/apple-accelerates-us-...

Are you looking for Good or Great?

If you just need Good, there are dozens of no-brand options on Amazon and Ali that do 4K60fps with output that is more than sufficient for any non-professional use.

I don't have a brand recommendation off hand, because the ones I've bought have been random names, but they've all been more than enough. As a reference, I've used them for capturing footage for training machine vision systems, and some general purpose marketing videos. I'm not a "creator", so I paid no attention to editing features, clip hosting, or any of those things.

Amazon sometimes gets some hate here, but I usually just buy there because the returns process is so simple. In the random case I get a product that turned out to be deceptive advertising, I drop it at Whole Foods and have a credit before I leave the parking lot. And I have the product in hand in 48 hours at most.

From the financials, it's a little of both?

Memory is the acute issue causing their struggles; their most recent quarter saw a gross margin of 4.5% (that's revenue minus the direct cost of producing the cameras, divided by the revenue). That's a hefty fall from their previous margin of ~31%. This contributed to their operating loss of $57M in the last 3 months.

Thag being said, they haven't had a positive quarterly operating income since the last quarter of 2022, even when the margin was higher than 4.5%. So it's not like they were succeeding before the memory crunch, just losing money slower.

This article is not very satisfying to read, because it doesn't explore the reasons why GoPro is on the ropes.

Adventure cams lose a market when people can’t afford to go on adventures?

Well that is pretty much true. It's founder was a marketing director for a consumer goods brand.

yep, and there's no reason why a company with that brand couldn't be selling action cameras, or shoes (Nike), or anything adjacent to extreme sports

> and their software is horrible

As a long-time GoPro owner who recently added an Insta360 X5 to his collection, I can't really see any meaningful difference in software horribleness. They are both really really bad, with ads everywhere constantly pushing subscriptions to their cloud services.

At least with the normal cameras the software can be entirely ignored, I can take video from my Hero5 straight in to any ordinary NLE and go from there, but the 360 camera requires their software to convert from the native format to anything usable, even if I'm keeping it as 360 footage.

The worst part IMO for both is that they prioritize mobile apps over their PC software so if you want to edit on a computer like a normal reasonable person you lose features compared to idiotically doing things on a phone.

Not surprising, it's a commoditized sector.

On top of that, when GoPro first launched mobile phones generally did not have cameras capable of producing production-quality images, and especially video. 20 years later, the game is much different.

Remember the Flip video camera that was all the rage for like 2 years and then just disappeared when cellphones could shoot video? GoPro is like a rugged Flip, so it took a little longer for the world to catch up to them, but now there are lots of options, and a "cheap" sports camera that is 1/4 the price of a GoPro is good enough, even if it only lasts 1/2 as long.