The best 360 degree cameras (2025), tested and reviewed

There are two reasons why you might want a 360-degree camera. The first is filming VR content, where the final viewing takes place on a 360-degree display, for example, VR headsets and the like. So far, this has mostly been the province of professionals shooting on very expensive 360 ​​rigs which this guide has not covered, although there are a growing number of amateur creators as well. If this is what you want to do, choose the highest resolution camera you can get. Either of our top two picks will work.

However, for most of us, the main appeal of a 360-degree camera is to photograph everything around you and then edit or reframe the part of the scene we want to focus on, or move and track objects within the 360-degree footage, but the result is a typical rectangular video clip that is then exported to the web. Video resolution and image quality will never match what you get from a high-end DSLR, but your DSLR may not be pointed at the right place, at the right time. The 360-degree camera doesn’t have to be pointed anywhere, it just has to be on.

This is the best use case for the cameras on this page, which produce primarily HD (1080p) or better video — but not 4K — when reframed. I expect to see consumer-level 360 cameras with 12K capability in the next year or two (which needs to be reworked to 4K), but for now, these are the best cameras you can buy.

Whether you’re photographing virtual tours or your child’s birthday, the basic premise of a 360-degree camera is the same. A fisheye lens (usually two wide-angle lenses combined) captures the entire scene around you, and it’s best to release the selfie stick if you’re using one. Once you’ve captured the 360-degree view, you can then edit or rework that content into something ready to upload to YouTube, TikTok, and other video sharing sites.

Camera makers have been touting ever higher video resolution for so long that it seems like a gimmick in many cases, but not with 360 degree cameras. Because the camera captures a huge field of view, the canvas is, so to speak, very large. To get traditional video from that footage, you have to crop the image which enlarges the image, which means your 8K 360 shot becomes just under 2.7k when you reframe that footage.

Reframing is the process of taking a huge 360-degree view of the world your camera captures and zooming in on only part of it to tell your story. This makes 360 footage fit traditional film formats (such as 16:9), but as mentioned above, it means cropping the footage, so the higher the resolution you start with, the better the reframed video will look.

If you’re shooting with VR headsets or other immersive gear, you won’t have to reframe anything.

I’ve been shooting with a 360-degree camera since Insta360 released the Thank God we have come a long way in the past five years. The 360 ​​degree camera market has grown and the footage produced by these cameras is now good enough to blend seamlessly with your action camera and even high-end mirrorless camera footage.

To test 360-degree cameras, I broke the process down into different shooting scenarios, especially scenes with different lighting conditions, to see how each performed. No camera is perfect, so the right camera for you depends on what you’re shooting. I paid special attention to each camera’s ease of use (360-degree cameras can be confusing for beginners), as well as the kind of useful extras each camera offers, HDR modes, and accessory support.

The final item in the photo is the editing workflow and tools available for each camera. Since most people shoot on social media, the raw 360 footage needs to be edited before posting it anywhere. All of the above cameras have software for mobile, Windows, and macOS.