Shooting VR videos and 360° panoramic photos is the purpose of Samsung’s new Gear 360. At present, people are not familiar with ordinary camera products. This new product may refresh the user.
Currently, Samsung Gear 360 has no competitor, LG 360 (about 268 US dollars for RMB 268) and Ricoh Theta S (US$418 for about RMB 2770) is one of the few direct competitors. Gear 360 is priced at US$390 (about 2585 yuan). RMB) is not the most expensive in this product category.
There are two 180° fisheye lenses on this camera. Each lens can take 180° photos or can be combined into 360° photos. Of course, it can also record videos. The camera's storage space can be expanded and the battery is available. Demolition of the design, but currently Samsung did not separately sell Gear 360 battery.
List of parameters
Memory: 1GB
Screen: 0.5 inch PMOLED
Connectivity: 1 x USB2.0, support up to 200GB mircoSD card expansion, NFC, gyroscope and accelerator, WiFi Direct
Network: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1
Body size: 60 x 66.7 x 56.2mm
Camera: 2 x 15 million pixel camera
Weight: 145 grams
The Gear 360 has a body size between a golf ball and table tennis. Although the material of the body is made of composite material, it feels strong and weighs 145 grams. At the same time, the body has an IP53 certification and is waterproof and dustproof. However, it is only able to withstand raindrops and cannot be thrown into the water. Both fisheye lenses are wrapped in a piece of glass. Unfortunately, this glass can easily be scratched. This way, we hope that the price of the machine will be able to be thrown away again. There is a groove on the bottom of the camera. Is compatible with most tripods on the market.
(NFC location and opening cover)
Open the front cover of the fuselage, you can see the battery, Micro USB interface and microSD card, the fuselage of a variety of materials is very smooth, you can see Gear 360's manufacturing process is not bad. The included tripod provides a stable standing position for the camera. When the tripod is closed, you can hold the tripod to take pictures.
Samsung Gear 360 uses a DRIMe5s chip with 1GB of memory. The camera can be connected to the mobile phone via Bluetooth, and the NFC chip also makes it easier to connect with the mobile phone. In addition, it supports WiFi direct connection, making data transmission faster and faster.
Users can use the Android app “Samsung Gear 360 Manager†on the phone to control the camera. This app can be found and downloaded in Google’s Play Store, but currently only supports Samsung’s own phone (S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, S7, S7 Edge, etc.). Although you can find the APK file for this software on Samsung's official website, but other mobile phones cannot be opened after installation. I wonder what Samsung is doing. Do you not want users of other mobile phone brands to buy Gear 360?
With this app, you can make settings changes to the Gear 360 on your phone, and firmware updates can also be done through the App. After connecting to the mobile phone, Gear 360 can also use the GPS of the mobile phone to mark the location of the video. In the App, you can also view the camera's storage space usage, the remaining battery capacity and other information, as well as the WiFi direct connection. Useful, but in our tests, sometimes WiFi direct connection will not be used, so we can only use the Bluetooth connection to transmit data, and that really called a slow to the egg!
(camera control software interface)
At the same time also supports the live view mode, which takes about five seconds of connection time, and then you can see the real time screen of the Gear 360 on the phone, and there are a wealth of settings to adjust, like the camera's own camera interface same.
Samsung also offers users free CyberLink Gear 360 Action Director. This software allows us to edit video on PC. This editing tool is a simplified version of CyberLink PowerDirector. If you have used this video editing tool before, then I Thinking that you should use the CyberLink Gear 360 Action Director should be very easy to do. Your edited video can be stored on your computer or uploaded to Facebook and YouTube. The software supports both H.264 and H.265 encoding.
(Action Director Interface)
The Gear 360 has two 15-megapixel cameras, two of which are fisheye lenses that can capture 180° or 360° video and photos. This means that the size of the photo is up to 30 million pixels. Both lenses have f/2.0. The aperture should not be too bad under poor light conditions, and it also supports automatic HDR function.
In good daylight conditions, the photographs are still good, and thanks to the high-pixel camera, the details of the photos are very rich, and then wear a VR device, you can also enjoy immersive VR photos , but when you carefully compare photos taken from flagship phones like the Gear 360 and Galaxy S7, you will find that the Gear 360 still cannot match the photos they take, even though the Gear 360 has more pixels than many flagship phones. .
At night, you can adjust the camera's sensitivity to take better pictures, but unfortunately, you can not manually adjust the sensitivity value, only ISO 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400 to choose from, in the ISO 1600 Or more, the proofs taken will become very difficult to see, the color is distorted and there is obvious vagueness, although watching or uploading to social media on the mobile phone screen is not a big problem, but if you watch with the VR device, you You will find the quality of the photo is very slag.
Next we see some proofs
Recorded videos can be uploaded to Facebook, Google+, or YouTube, but during the upload process, the video will be compressed and the video quality will plummet. In our test, after shooting a UHD video and uploading it to the social platform, we found that after compression, The quality is like a 480P video. The quality of the video recorded by the Gear 360 is also good. The microphone capture sound is also very clear, the resolution up to 3840 x 1920 (30fps), Samsung officially called 4K, but individuals do not think this resolution can be called 4K, if you Want to shoot 60fps video, then you have to reduce the resolution to 2560 x 1280. For 4K video clips that you want to watch Gear 360, click here (walls to go).
Unfortunately, when two cameras are working at the same time to take a 360-degree photo, the proofs that are shot do not look very good, and the photo joints are obvious. This is a disadvantage when taking pictures, but it is not recorded when you record the video. Discover this. In addition, both cameras can separate and photograph the shooting area separately. Even in a very complicated place, the two cameras can take good quality photos, but similarly, when shooting 360° photos, the photos Bonding will be more obvious.
(It can be seen that the two lenses have obvious marks at the joints)
Before shooting standard color cards and test cards, we adjusted the light and did not pre-set the camera. When we finished the inspection of the ColorChecker Passort's shooting proofs, we found that the colors were a bit full and the gray and white levels were a little too dark. .
(ColorChecker Passort)
In the test shots of the test card, the details are still very rich, even the edge position is also the same, but it can be clearly observed that the latitude of the camera is not high, and the black text in the dark area can be seen to be somewhat blurred .
(test card shooting)
The best way to control the camera is through the mobile phone, because only then can you adjust the camera settings. The camera itself has only a few simple functions and settings. Most of them need to be adjusted by the App on the mobile phone. . Users can switch between multiple shooting modes, adjust Bluetooth settings, resolutions, and timers. The 0.5-inch PMOLED screen on the camera can show Bluetooth status, remaining battery power, and remaining storage space.
(0.5 inch display)
Samsung's Gear 360 box includes: the camera itself, a small tripod, a cleaning wipe, a USB cable, a bunch of English and German manuals, warranty instructions, and free download instructions for the CyberLink Gear 360 Action Director. It does not have a charging head. It looks like Samsung does not want to provide charging connectors for its cameras. Gear 360 has a 24 month warranty policy and its accessories are for 6 months.
The Gear 360 is very hot, and even a little out of our expectation. Even if it is idle, the camera's surface temperature may reach 42.8°C. If you record video at the highest resolution, you can even go to 47.3°C. This means that Gear 360 will be very hot.
(The machine will forcibly turn off the heat after overheating)
During the test period, the temperature was fairly warm, probably around 28°C. After the camera recorded about 12 minutes of video, the body heat was a little serious, and then it turned off automatically to reduce the body temperature. Even if it is generally used in about 20 minutes in a 28°C environment, it will become very hot, but according to Samsung's official announcement, this device is theoretically suitable for use in environments between 0°C and 35°C.
The Samsung Gear 360 is equipped with a removable lithium battery with a capacity of 1350 mAh. If you only use the Gear 360 to take pictures, the battery can last all day. We calculated the total usage time is 2 hours 30. Minutes, but if you like to record video, the battery is not so strong, probably shut down after about 64 minutes of use.
Since there is currently no Gear 360 battery on the market, we recommend that you bring a charging treasure to go out. Especially if you want to record videos for a long time, charging a treasure is absolutely essential. We use the Galaxy S7 Edge's charger to charge the Gear 360, which is fully charged for approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Samsung's Gear 360 is definitely one of the best panoramic cameras available at present, and the price is reasonable. However, it is undeniable that it does have some flaws, such as the obvious gap between the 360° photo seams, and the camera. The "outdoor sportiness" is not very high. It can only withstand rain, and it can't be thrown directly into the water. The protective glass outside the lens is not very scratch-resistant. Finally, the camera's heat level makes us have some Worrying. If you like VR and 360° photos, Gear 360 is a good choice. Although it is the first generation of products, it still makes us a bit surprised, but I think it is for professionals. It may not be very attractive.
Bonus point
√ High pixel
åˆ¶é€ Good manufacturing process
附 Comes with ActionDirector editing software
整体 The overall quality of the camera is higher
√ Support microSD card expansion
Negative point
× Life is better than slag during video recording
× The fuselage overheats and shuts off automatically
× Lens glass is not scratch resistant
× Only compatible with Samsung mobile phones
Photo translations from NotebookCheck