Autumn is action camera season, and this year the first out of the gate is GoPro, which has released the Max 2, a long (long) awaited update to its Max 360 camera. GoPro largely invented the action camera space, and with it the idea that you can (and therefore should) record everything, all of the time. The 360 camera has always felt like the endgame. Not only is it durable enough to withstand everything a GoPro can, but it's literally recording everything all of the time.
It's been six years since GoPro first jumped into the 360 camera market with the original GoPro Max, and the second version's capabilities are so far beyond that first model that comparing them is pointless. The Max 2 is light years ahead of the Max and pretty well ahead of the current competition as well.
Long Time Coming
Ordinarily in reviews we spend some time looking at how the new model compares to the old, but since the Max is rather ancient, I'm going to look instead at how the Max 2 compares to the current 360 market, namely how it stacks up against its main competitors, Insta360’s X5 and DJI’s Osmo 360.
In leapfrogging forward, essentially what GoPro has done here is take the feature set of the GoPro Hero 13 Black and put it in a camera body with two lenses and two sensors. All the bits Hero fans enjoy are here, including the stabilization, special shoot modes like Hyperlapse, star trails, and more, along with triple mounting options of tripod, magnetic, and the traditional GoPro three-finger mount. Alas, the battery is not the same as the Hero battery, but in most important ways the Max 2 is a Hero 13 Black turned into a 360 camera.