Insta360 Luna Pro: our review after the first shoot

Well, I need to tell you something, because it was while writing this article that I understood what had happened. We received the Luna Pro at the end of August, we unpacked it, and… no one fought to have it. It went to Caroline, I kept the Luna Ultra, and we didn’t even question it, it just happened. It was two weeks later, while going through the footage, that I realized this sharing told exactly who this camera is for. Because Caroline is a UGC content creator, it’s her job, she films for brands. And I create travel content. We each took the camera that corresponds to our work, without discussing it… and that’s exactly where the difference between the two models lies.

Because at first, frankly, I was skeptical. We already have the Luna Ultra, we think it’s excellent, we bought it with our own money (Sony had let us down, but that’s another story), and here comes Insta360 with a model that looks just like it. I wondered about the point of releasing this version, personally. It took filming it to understand. So here’s our complete opinion, from unboxing to field use, with what annoyed me and the only real difference between the two (because there is only one, and that’s what’s crazy).

The unboxing: two similar boxes

First thing, even before opening anything: I placed the two boxes side by side, the Pro and the Ultra. Same vertical format, and just from the printed image on it, you can already see the difference between the two models. It’s about the optics, and it’s obvious on the packaging.

A little honest clarification here, because otherwise you’ll tell me in the comments: my Luna Ultra box is wider, yes, but that’s because it was a bundle, the Creator Kit. The Luna Pro we received is the standalone product. So comparing the sizes of the boxes makes no sense, it compares two packs and not two cameras.

In terms of boxes, it’s still very high quality at Insta360. I say this every time and every time I think to myself: at first this brand seemed a bit cheap to me, and the packaging consistently contradicts that.

What’s in the box

You open it, and the first thing you find is the protective pouch, a kind of case that contains the product. It’s provided even in the basic pack, which is rather good news (keep that in mind, we’ll come back to it later, it’s more important than it seems).

And then it’s the unboxing in Russian dolls: the box, then the case, then the camera still wrapped in plastic. They keep the pleasure going, that’s it. At least we know it’s new.

In the case, you have:

• The Luna Pro itself, with its instruction stickers still on it.
• A small wrist strap, which I really encourage you to attach.
• The adapter mount that clips underneath, in USB-C, with grips on the sides. This is what provides the two essential things: the camera screw thread (so all tripod compatibility) and the mini-tripod with its three small curved metal legs.
• A USB cable for charging and transferring.

Regarding the small tripod legs, I’ve read quite a few testers doubting their sturdiness. We have real usage, on the Luna Ultra which has exactly the same, and honestly, it does the job. We place the camera on a table at a restaurant to film ourselves, and we’ve never had a problem so far. The only real limit is if someone comes and bumps into it, but no tripod will save you from that.

The downside of the basic pack, however, is that it’s quite basic. And especially the cable is short. In the age of laptops, it’s not a big deal, but if you have a desktop, you’ll have the cable dangling when charging. That said, a USB-C cable costs nothing, you buy another one and we don’t talk about it anymore.

Getting started: disarmingly simple

You remove the screen protector, press the button, it turns on by itself. First screen, the choice of language, French, next. And here we find the common thread of Insta360: it’s simple. You launch the app, you hit “add”, the Luna Pro appears directly in the list of devices, you click on it and it’s connected. One click on the phone screen, another on the camera screen, and it’s done.

Once again, it’s one of the easiest setups I’ve ever done, by far. I’ve said it on all the Insta360 devices I’ve had in my hands, and I confirm it here: the brand’s software is similar from product to product, it’s intuitive, and you’re operational in just a few minutes.

There is indeed a firmware to download right after, about 1.7 GB, but let’s be serious for a moment: in our time, 1.7 GB is nothing at all. By the time you finish putting away the box, it’s done. I just mention it so you’re not surprised to see a progress bar appear, not because it’s a problem.

Last good news from the unboxing: there’s no SD card in the box, but the camera has 47 GB of built-in storage, and the slot for the card is on the right side. In other words, you can film even if you forgot your card at home. It’s happened to me… more often than I would admit here.

What we filmed with before talking about it

First real field: the Dias Medievais de Castro Marim, the medieval festival on the other side of the Algarve. We were there from 5 PM to midnight, and we filmed with two cameras, each with their own, and especially each connected to their own microphone.

It may not seem like much, but it unlocks a format we couldn’t do properly until now… the duo talking at the same time, without a boom, without re-patching in editing, without one eating the other’s voice. We tried for months with equipment that couldn’t keep up, and now, boom, it works. I admit that at the time we looked at each other and said, “oh yes, indeed.”

Then we brought it out on the rooftop of Nomad, in Tavira, at the end of the day, when the light falls and most cameras start to mess up a bit. That’s where low light performance really comes into play, not in a living room with three lamps.

The image: 1-inch sensor, Leica, and what we really see

So the Luna Pro features a 1-inch sensor that opens at F/1.8. And if you look closely at the optical block, you’ll see the Leica mention engraved right next to the lens.

I mention this because it’s amusing: the technical sheet we were given doesn’t mention it anywhere, while the Leica partnership is highlighted everywhere on the Luna Ultra. On paper, one could have thought that the Pro had lost its optical signature along the way (and I swear I believed it for two days). On the device, it’s there. Sometimes, you just have to look at the object rather than the table.

It delivers 8K video at 30 frames per second, and up to 4K at 120 fps if you want clean slow motion, all with I-Log 10 bits and Dolby Vision for grading without the image falling apart at the first backlight. In photos, we go up to 37 MP, in short, there’s plenty to do.

But the most interesting part is the direct comparison, because we had both in the same place, the same evening, in the same light. And well, to the naked eye, I see no difference between the two. There, it’s said. Where they separate is in the zoom: at one point one continues and the other stops, simply because the Luna Ultra switches to a second lens that the Pro doesn’t have. We’ll come back to that later, it’s the whole story of this model.

Oh, and the PureVideo mode switches automatically, just like on the Ultra. The camera detects that it doesn’t have enough light, it switches by itself, and it goes back to normal mode when the light returns. On a rooftop at the end of the day, that’s exactly what we want: we film, we don’t think about settings.

The vertical format is native, and no one says it

If you deliver vertical content, this is THE point to remember. The Luna Pro films in 9:16 natively, up to 4K (2160 × 3840). It’s not a horizontal image cropped afterward, it’s the sensor working in this format.

One nuance though, and I prefer to give it to you rather than let you discover it on your own. In vertical, 4K tops out at 30 frames per second. To go up to 60, you need to drop down to 3K or 1080p. And a note that applies to all the figures in this article: these are the definitions offered by the camera at the time I’m writing. A software update may very well unlock others or change the available frame rates, it has already happened on other devices from the brand. A look at the menus remains the only truth of the day.

And above all, the trick to know before shooting your first Reel. This vertical 4K, you still need to be able to trigger it. By default, rotating the screen to portrait doesn’t change the framing: it turns off the camera, and putting it back in landscape turns it on again. The rotation serves as a switch, not a format selector. You need to go into the settings to activate the option that automatically switches between portrait and landscape based on the screen orientation. Until that’s done, you’ll mainly be turning the camera on and off in a loop, and when filming vertically all day, it quickly becomes annoying.

By the way, a little free self-deprecation: when I dug through the menus the first time, I thought the camera was capped at 4K 60 and didn’t do 8K at all. I almost wrote that. In reality, I was just stupidly in portrait mode, and the screen was just showing me the limits of that format… there you go, the tester tested, and the tester messed up.

Is it annoying? Frankly no, not for the intended use. A Reel or a TikTok is broadcast in 1080p, and the vertical 1080p goes up to 60 without any discussion. The limit only bites if you absolutely want 4K 60 in vertical, which doesn’t concern many people. But it’s good to know, rather than believing that the figures on the marketing sheet apply everywhere.

The detachable screen, or why it went to Caroline

And here’s the real topic. The touchscreen detaches from the camera body and becomes a remote control with image feedback. You place the camera, step back, and you see yourself. Or you hold it at arm’s length and frame yourself without guessing (gone are the days when we filmed for three minutes only to discover in editing that we had cut off our forehead).

It’s exactly the gesture of someone whose subject is themselves. And that’s Caroline’s daily life: UGC is her job, she spends her days in front of the lens filming for brands. The camera went into her hands without us discussing it, and in hindsight, it was obvious. The tracking does the rest: a press on the joystick and the device keeps you in frame, three presses and you switch to selfie mode. You don’t waste the moment looking for a menu, and that, when filming alone, is all that matters.

The corollary is that she doesn’t need to look for a detail thirty meters away. The zoom stops at 4×, in digital, with 2× lossless, and that’s more than enough when you’re at arm’s length.

The sound: good, until it gets complicated

The camera has four microphones, one of which is on the detachable screen (which matters more than you think when you’re filming with the screen in hand, it’s the one that captures). For regular use, it’s good, there’s nothing to complain about.

In a festival crowd, however, I switch back to the Insta360 wireless microphones, the Mic Air and Mic Pro. They connect without an adapter, which seems like a detail until the day you struggle with a dongle at 10 PM in the dark. Be careful, it’s not a workaround for a weak built-in microphone, it’s just a notch above when the environment is busy.

Battery life: a whole evening without thinking about it

From 5 PM to midnight in Castro Marim, filming shot after shot, the battery was never an issue. The announced battery life is 240 minutes, and for once the manufacturer’s figure isn’t too far off from real usage (that happens so rarely that it deserves to be noted).

Two things to know, though. The detachable screen has its own battery, seven times smaller than that of the body, so if you leave it separated permanently, it’s the one that will run out first, of course. And above all, the brightness of the screen is what costs you the most battery life: lower it, and you really gain shooting time. That’s personally the most concrete advice I can give you about this camera.

What annoyed me

Two things, and neither is a dealbreaker, but hey, might as well mention them.

The provided protection doesn’t cover the screen. You have a silicone cover that protects the gimbal head and the lens, it comes off and goes back on very easily, and it does its job well. But the screen, on the other hand, is left exposed. On the Luna Ultra, we have a whole plastic block that surrounds the device and protects both, and I prefer that a hundred times, honestly. It takes up a bit more space, okay, but it protects so much better in a bag.

So the pouch provided in the box isn’t a packaging bonus, it’s what really protects the device. I have no desire to carry this camera around in the middle of a keychain hoping the touchscreen survives.

The recording mode remains armed. It happened to me on the Luna Ultra, while filming an unboxing: I had placed it high up to capture the desk above, I forgot to switch it back to video, and I ended up with a completely unusable timelapse. It’s not the software’s fault, it’s mine. But since both cameras run on the same software, the trap is exactly the same here. But the reflex to take is simple: a quick look at the mode before pressing.

Luna Pro or Luna Ultra?

So the question boils down to one line: do you need to reach far?

The Luna Ultra has two lenses, including a telephoto lens, and pushes the zoom up to 12×. This allows you to isolate a detail, an animal, a bell tower, without cropping everything in editing. The Luna Pro stops at 4×, in digital. On everything else, they play in the same league, and that’s the point of this model: the same base, without the reach, for a more accessible price.

We’re preparing a complete comparison of the two, with images side by side, because the subject deserves more than a paragraph stuck at the end of the article. In the meantime, if you want the details of the big sister, it’s over here.

Who it’s really for: UGC creators

And here we are, and this is where the sharing with Caroline makes perfect sense. I’ll say it again because it matters for what’s next: Caroline is a UGC creator by profession, it’s part of her job, she delivers content to brands. So when I say this camera is made for UGC, it’s not a tester’s whim, it’s the result of a decision we made at home without even thinking about it. For me, this camera is made for UGC content creators (for those who are new: UGC is the content you shoot for a brand, often in vertical, often facing the camera, and which ends up as advertising on social media). Personally, it’s even the ultimate camera for this type of creator.

Why? Because everything it does well corresponds exactly to this job, point by point.

It saves you from using your phone. That’s the first thing. In UGC, we film a lot with smartphones, and no matter how recent your model is, you’ll never have a 1-inch sensor or a real mechanical gimbal. Here, you change the image category without changing your job.

You don’t need a massive zoom. The Luna Ultra goes up to 12×, and that’s great for pulling a detail from far away… except that in UGC we couldn’t care less. You film yourself arm’s length, you’re not looking for anything at thirty metres. The 4× of the Pro is more than enough, and you aren’t paying for a lens you’ll never use.

It tracks your face. A press of the joystick and it keeps you in the frame. When you shoot solo, with no one behind the camera, that’s what makes the difference between a usable shot and one where you drift out of frame after ten seconds.

The remote control is perfect for that. You see yourself, you trigger, you adjust, without having your nose glued to the device and without pulling out your phone.

It does portrait AND landscape. Vertical natively for socials, horizontal when the brand wants a classic format. You don’t have to pick your camera based on the deliverable.

And it’s tiny. I slip it into a pocket or a fanny pack, and I can pull it out whenever I want. Add to that that it connects to the mic with astonishing ease, and you’ve got a complete kit that fits on you.

Where the Luna Ultra really shines is for travel content creators, those who film landscapes, wildlife, high‑up details, and who truly need the reach of a telephoto lens. That’s my line of work, and that’s why it stayed in my hands.

There you have it, two cameras, two ways of working, and just one real difference between them.

Our code VANTOUR gives you a free accessory on the Insta360 store.