Insta360 Pro firmware update improves audio with spatial audio and fanless option

The next Insta360 Pro firmware update will improve audio quality in two important ways: spatial audio and a fanless option.

Insta360 Pro is an 8K 360 / 6K 3D 360 camera and as I showed in my review, it’s amazing.  However, one of its few weaknesses is the audio quality.  Among other things, it has a fan that is always on and is loud.  It sounds somewhat like a hair dryer on low power (I will measure the actual sound level).

In the next firmware update, Insta360 Pro will improve the audio quality by adding spatial audio and by adding an option to turn off the fan.  With the fan turned off, the Insta360 Pro can operate for up to 15 minutes.  After a video recording with the fan turned off, the fan automatically reactivates.  Here is a demo by Hugh Hou of CreatorUp!

UPDATE: Hugh explained that after the 15 minutes of recording, the recording will stop automatically and the fan will reactivate.  If you try to record, you’ll get a warning that the camera is still too hot.  But if you restart the camera, you’ll be able to record again.  This behavior seems to show that the camera is not using an internal temperature sensor to determine whether to allow recording again (otherwise it would prevent you from recording when you restart the camera).  Either that or it cools down so rapidly that even just the downtime from restarting the camera is sufficient time to cool down, which I doubt.  I will try to find out from Insta360 about how much time is safe to wait to record again.

In any case, the update looks very useful especially for sensitive shooting environments and is just another instance showing how responsive Insta360 is to their customers.