Samsung Gear 360

CES 2017 was chock full of new 180-degree, 360-degree, and 3D/VR capture devices, priced from $150 to many thousands of dollars. No matter what your budget there was one being shown that would work. Of course, you need to pay more to get more, but there are even pro-quality devices around the $1,000 mark – a fraction of what they have been previously. I’ve rounded up some of my favorites, and also provided some definitions of the terms used by exhibitors to describe their devices in this article on ExtremeTech.

This year has seen the first consumer-friendly 360-degree cameras capable of 4K video capture. 4K or better resolution is much more important for 360-degree cameras than for traditional models, because those 4,000 x 2,000 pixels have to cover a full 360-degrees of the scene. The best known of these cameras is Samsung's Gear 360, so we took one out for a spin to see if it is indeed a worthy upgrade to the Ricoh Theta S that we reviewed earlier in the year. In short, it is a solid step up in output quality, but at the cost of a somewhat-awkward form factor. Keep in mind that to use the full features of the Samsung Gear 360 you need to pair it with a Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 edge, S7, S7 Edge, or Note 5. It’s bundled software is also Windows-only.

After teasing us at CES with impressive 360-degree 4K video from its action camera prototypes, Nikon has finally announced the details of the three models in its KeyMission family of action cameras. Unlike Nikon’s under-performing entries in the mirrorless market, that never took off, the KeyMission cameras are designed to deliver state-of-the-art performance at very reasonable prices – pitting them squarely against the slow-to-ship Samsung Gear 360 and the incumbent line of GoPros, now updated with the new Hero 5.