Customer Ratings & Reviews

The GoPro brand is synonymous with action cameras, and up until now I’ve only had experience with its traditional Hero lineup of products, which I use when traveling and outdoors. The Max 2 is my first 360-degree camera, and so far, the experience has been good. The Max 2 keeps GoPro’s familiar black-box design with two buttons, one for power and one for record, dual protruding fisheye lenses on either side, and a small rear LCD touch screen. On the right side is the waterproof slide-out door for the battery and microSD card. On the bottom are GoPro’s standard fold-away mounting “fingers” that many of its mounts use, a standard tripod mount, and magnets for a faster, thumbscrew-less experience with GoPro’s new Magnetic Latch Mount. The large protruding lenses on either side do make them much more susceptible to damage or abrasion during normal use and adds a bit of thickness. The camera does come with lens caps to use when storing or transporting it and luckily the curved glass lenses are replaceable. The camera can capture 8K 360-degree video at 30fps, or up to 5.6K or 4K at 90fps. Outdoors, in daylight, the quality is very good, and I’m always impressed with GoPro’s HyperStabilization and Horizon Lock features. It does take very wide-angle shots and there is no optical zoom, only digital, so zooming in starts to degrade the image quality rapidly, even at 8K. Night performance is not as good as I’d like, grainy and soft, but most people will use these cameras during daytime activities. You don’t need to worry about framing your shot, as the camera will capture everything, you simply choose the best perspective later in editing. It works best if it’s mounted onto something, preferably a thin pole that will be rendered “invisible” when the 360 view is stitched together. It’s cool to capture video that can be played through a VR headset like the Meta Quest, allowing you to relive your own experiences. Handheld works fine too, although you will always have your hand in the shot near the bottom or side where the cameras come together. It’s great if you are wanting to capture something in front of you and your reaction to it, then decide which to frame later in post editing or use your face as a video overlay. The GoPro Quik app handles viewing, recording, and editing 360-degree video. You can tilt and turn your phone in any direction to see what was captured from that angle. One of my favorite editing features in the app is the Object Tracking. It uses AI to keep the camera focused on a subject, perfect for those situations where the camera is in the middle of the action and you want to track a particular person or object like a vehicle or ball. You can also export video in multiple output formats such as landscape for Youtube and portrait for TikTok. The app does encourage you to subscribe to GoPro’s cloud service and locks some features, such as some advanced editing tools and automatic uploading. Overall, I feel like the app does a great job of making 360-degree video accessible to more creators. In the box, you get a curved adhesive mount and mounting buckle for things like helmets, the two lens caps, a usb-c charging cable, microfiber cloth, and some stickers. The base kit only comes with one 1960 mAh Enduro Battery for Max 2, which is not compatible with other GoPros, so you will have to buy spares and chargers specifically for the Max 2. Pros: - Compact and Rugged Design - Up to 8K 30 fps 360-degree Video Capture - 29MP 360-degree Photo Capture - Excellent Video Stabilization and Horizon Lock - Great Slow-motion Support - Bluetooth Microphone Support - 10-bit color support and 300 Mbps bitrate - Replaceable Lenses - Compatible with existing GoPro mounting ecosystem and new Magnetic Latch System - Waterproof (up to 5m) Cons: - Ultra-wide fisheye lenses can be limiting - Poor performance in low light - Some app features locked behind cloud subscription - New Batteries only compatible with Max 2 Overall – The Max 2 is an easy-to-use 360-degree action camera for travel, biking, road-trips, and vlogging, anywhere you want to capture the entire scene as it happens. However, the ultra-wide angle lenses mean less detail if you need to crop or zoom in.

Was really excited to mess around with the camera, both for social media content as well as just goofing off, but alas, I got hit with the flu. Now that I’m somewhat recovered, I spent a day out in the dog park with my puppies wearing a harness that fits GoPro devices. This gave a wickedly sharp vivid picture of playtime from a dog’s eye view. The replaceable glass lenses reduced my anxiety about my dogs jumping around and damaging the lenses. Editing on the iOS app is fairly easy, and can be exported to beefier editing software as well. Really the only issue I had with the GoPro Max 2 was that trying to run long video, it ended up cutting out due to overheating. Kinda disappointing from a videography standpoint. Don’t expect to use this to video a parade via a drone. It won’t last long enough. However, if you plan your shots and just use it to snag some good establishing shots, this will work great. Audio quality is decent, but you are better off using a dedicated audio setup. For YouTubing daredevils trying to make the latest instant gratification videos of snowboarding or shark surfing, etc, this will give you really good video clips for your 45 second clickbait videos.

Initial set up did take some figuring out. The battery compartment was hard to open and despite following the instructions, it took a bit to get it open. I also found that the camera did not like certain SD cards, and I had to try a few. Pairing and set up finally worked as the camera updated its software. The camera is a chunky square with 2 bubble type lens. It really needs a selfie stick or some type of mount to properly utilize the 360 camera features. There are camera bubble of front and back. Charging is easy via a port and USC C. Charging was fairly quick, but I found battery life not that great. You really need a few spare batteries. Once in use, I found the camera fun and with good quality recording. The LED screen was helpful in operating the unit. Again, you do need some sort of selfie stick, or handle due to the 360 camera placement. Night vision was decent, and the camera was extemely vesitile. Again, I will get some extra batteries, selfie stick and a few SD cards. I look foward to finally having records of my travels in 360 !