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Rylo 360-Degree Camera
Price: $500
The compact/action/selfie/360/VR camera market has a lot of newcomers as of late. Many are first generation and though they have interesting features, rarely do they do everything well.
The Rylo camera has pretty much nailed it. In addition to offering 360-degree filming, Rylo seems to be rolling out new features daily: stop motion with blur effect, tiny planet (see below), spot-track editing, action-tracking, front-back window views and a plethora of more editing features.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about the camera is the built-in stabilization—super handy for runners— that can be toggled on or off. The cameras are 208° Field Of View (there are two: one on the front and one on the back, to capture all 360 degrees). The aperture is fixed: f/2.8. The battery lasts for about an hour with continuous video recording and the camera without accessories weighs 3.8 ounces. There is a case and accessory hand-held mount—yes, you’ll have to get comfortable running with something that looks like a mini selfie-stick.
The downsides to the technology are that everything is done with the Rylo app on your smartphone. This translates to draining the battery life on your phone and using up a lot of storage. The videos need to first be saved to your phone before they are shared elsewhere. For folks without much phone storage, it may be hard to even export one video.
We made some sample videos to give an idea of the options with this little camera.
- 4X speed and point tracking (in editing mode, you select points for the video to focus on. I selected tracking on the trail ahead and then at the end of the video did a 360-degree pan). Watch here.
- 2X speed and Tiny Planet Zoom. Watch here.
- 5X speed and blurred effect. Watch here.
- 360-degree, scrollable video (you can even pause the video and pan with your cursor). Watch here.
When sharing a 360-scrollable video, it may take a few tries. Instagram reportedly doesn’t have compatible technology, and Facebook can take several attempts.
—Megan Janssen is the Assistant Editor of Trail Runner Magazine.