I don't know how it works because I didn't allow it to access my location data and couldn't connect to it with my device.

Why is every app and device built today designed around the big brother principle?

Where in the system requirements did it say I have to trade in my privacy in order to take movies and pictures?

I'm so fing sick of this.

I love the OIS feature (stabilization) as half my uses for the camera would be impossible otherwise (I'm not mounting a gimbal AND this camera to my drone!). The "optical flow" stitching is also much better to handle parallax than other software does, such as Samsung Gear VR (I spent a long time compensating for this using some crazy Adobe After Effects editing, since giving people double-vision is not good watching the concert master's (1st violin) bow).

The 5.7k resolution is great to have, but my computer still struggles with it (and YouTube isn't optimized well enough above 4K to not lag up a storm). Adobe Creative Cloud software also bottlenecks HARD the moment you use a VR effect (e.g. VR Rotate Sphere) because of shoddy hardware acceleration (it took me >50 hours to render a 1 hour video on a Ryzen 1800X and nVidio 980TI in 5.7k without doing anything special).

The USB audio adapter cable is pretty pointless IMO because it doesn't even connect to my H2n for ambisonics, and since it uses the USB port, it also prevents external power supply use. A big use case for me is recording and streaming classical musical concerts, for which the USB microphone adapter cable is 100% useless since the battery would die way too soon.

A note about streaming: I can stream at the max quality (6 Mbps I think) using a mobile hotspot and burn through 8GB of data in about 154 minutes (by my calculations it should take 3 hours for 8 GB at 6 Mbps; not too far off). Also, you can't use scheduled YouTube live streams because there is nowhere to input the stream ID to use in the smartphone app.

The second biggest negative is the smartphone app's image settings, which caused me to fail a recording because the preview image would not update with the new setting (me: "let's use the minimum ISO because less color noise!" result: unusable dark video). Make sure to toggle back and forth between a couple different screens to make it refresh. Also, for whatever reason, it now keeps defaulting the exposure setting to -2 eV which is really annoying.

The biggest negative is how the camera firmware handles data corruption. BEWARE that if you try to stream over a wifi network that redirects to a terms of use page (or when your data plan is gone and you get redirected to the "out of data" notification page) that it really screws with the camera, requiring a purge (read: reformat) of the microSD card (probably the database file is corrupted). The symptoms include: 1) A REALLY long save time after taking a video or picture, or 2) the camera turning off immediately after powering on. I've also had it tell me 3) the sd card is too slow (of course, after starting recording and taking off on a drone to realize half an hour later nothing was recorded).

A surprising positive is that it went for a dozen minutes underwater on accident last night and seems to be working just fine today after spending the night sitting on top of a dehumidifier. It remains to be seen if it will continue working however.

One final negative is the stitching software that 1) does not support display scaling (super tiny UI on a dense 4k monitor) and 2) makes you individually set stitch settings per file (it splits files every 4 minutes in 5.7k (the splitting is perfect however with no gaps or double frames)), and 3) OIS stabilization across split video files requires manual reorientation of subsequent files so they all line up. It also takes a LONG time to stitch 5.7k at max quality, and only uses up to 8 CPU threads (but I won't fault it on that).

The camera-- when it works-- is great! Video quality is high and usability is simple and straightforward. That is, until it randomly stops working. Out of nowhere, the phone app does not sync to the camera for live preview (a primary function). I've tried on different phones, I've updated the firmware, I've deleted and re-installed the app, etc, with no success. I've reached out for customer support and have not received any response. Very frustrating. I will have to return this.

After having the camera for a few months, I have to revise my review. There have been no firmware updates since January, and compared to competition at a similar price point that has been receiving pretty consistent updates to increase feature set (both through firmware and app updates), receive bug fixes, improve overall performance, the slightly higher resolution of the Yi360 simply isn't worth it.

Go with an Insta360, Rylo or similar camera. Slightly lower resolution, but at least those products receive support and updates. Maybe even go with the Xiaomi Mijia Mi, which is cheaper, waterproof, can shoot 7k, RAW photos, has an app that supports bracketing for HDR, and has received a lot of updates since launch.

I want to rate this higher, but the lack of Mac stitching software really is a huge drawback. Additionally when stitching in camera there's a very pronounced stitch line as if the two camera lenses are slightly out of alignment. Image quality is decent, with the biggest drawbacks being signigfigant flaring that can cover a whole lens, not extending to the opposite lens, resulting in a very defined hard line at the stitch. Chromatic aberration is also an issue. Optically the Ricoh Theta S is better, but doesn't have as high of resolution as this. Also, it's low light performance isn't anything to brag about. The advertised stabilizing doesn't happen while the footage is shot, but is added afterward using the app or desktop software, which borders on being false advertising as this camera doesn't stabilize its footage at all, software does it. Ultimately, I wish I would have spent a little more and got the better Garmin Virb.

I almost returned it, but decided that for my uses, it is good enough. I use it with a gimbal and mount it to drones and rc cars mostly. In my video practice 360 video is still only a kitchy gag.