GoPro Camera Fusion – 360 Waterproof Digital VR Camera with Spherical 5.2K HD Video 18MP Photos

360 is just a part of a video, as using After Effects / Premiere Pro you can create extremely innovative videos, as 360 gives you an opportunity to frame you shot however you want.

Basic flow is record => stitch on PC (this is not a camera for mobile phone) => export 5.2k for editing => open Premiere Pro, use VR plugin to frame shots using keyframes and viola.

You will need at least GTX 1080 / i7 9700k (I have water cooled i9 9900k with all limits turned off (those gives boost up to 60% in AE / PP)) as it will use ~ 80% of GPU / 98% CPU.

Definitely not a technology for laptops (TDP is killing even gaming laptops with i9, as it will horribly throttle with some of instructions (actual Wattage use only by my CPU is getting up to 280W, therefore you need to have a very good water cooling system)).

1 minute of 4k PP material takes up to 2-3 minutes, on some weaker machines (not mentioning laptops) it will take up to an hour !!!

You need fast, water cooled CPU with all thermal limits off (so you also need a good motherboard which allows to turned off all limits, has great voltage section), at least 8 cores @ 5GHz, 32GB DDR4 is minimum, and minimum GTX 1080 (better 2080 or Titanium).

Otherwise you won’t be able to use it, unless you’re willing to wait a day for rendering 30 minutes 4k output framed from 360 video.

Of course you can also use it only for 360, but it seems like a waste of technology.

So the ad doesn’t lie. You can shoot 360 degree video, you can do all sorts of things with this amazing camera it seems, however (and this is a big however) if you own an Android device, congratulations, you’ve just bought a very expensive door stop.
There is very very limited support for Android devices at the moment, in fact this isn’t supported at all on the Galaxy S5, my cheapo Chinese Android tablet, my galaxy S8+ nor is it supported on my Galaxy Tab 3. The only android device I can get it to work with is a Galaxy S7. Even then, the most you can do is download short 30 second video clips. You cannot even download or edit any of the video or photos it takes with your android device. However, don’t worry, as according to gopro, you can use the desktop PC app “Fusion Studio” to retrieve and edit your footage. Great for all of those on the go people who want to take photo’s or shoot short video’s, just bring your entire desktop PC with you… However that Laptop or PC better be running Windows 10, it better have 8GB of ram because if not, even the GoPro fusion studio itself won’t work. Seriously, until this device gets full Android support, I would honestly skip on buying it for now. There are cheaper and more compatible options out there.

**updated 6/26/2018**
Finally some updates worth talking about. Android does have some support at this time, however the app is a bit strange to deal with. You first of all have to download the 360 footage to your phone via the app (and you can only download it directly to the phone and not the SD card, this means that you’re limited to about a 33 second clip). You then have to exit out of the camera on the app, go into the splash screen, select “media”, select the “local” tab and then edit your footage from there. You can take a screen shot (photo) and re-frame it, then upload to facebook or instagram. You can also do the same with 33 seconds of 360 footage. You basically record the angle you want, but while recording you can pinch to zoom in or out or you can turn your phone around in your hands in the internal gyroscope will track your movement. This however can lead to slightly jerky looking footage, you may want to sit yourself in an office chair and spin around slowly for a panning effect. On one hand the inability to do smooth pans via the app is bad, on the other hand, who ever thought you could use an office chair as a video editing tool? That’s actually kinda fun. The main problem though is the lack of video stabilization, you only get that by using Fusion Studio on your PC. You also can’t put any graphs on your footage (info taken from the GPS) unless your run it through the Fusion Studio either.

I raised my review by one star for finally getting some android support, but I still think this camera is too big, too square and lacking in proper hardware based solutions to be a true 360 breakthrough camera. I hope that if GoPro do another version, they address these issues and improve the usability of their app.

UPDATED: 8/31/2018:

So I’ve updated my review after owning this camera for quite a while and now I have to say, it’s my favorite gopro to shoot video with. I find that the ability to reframe shots after you’ve recorded them to be immense fun as well as hugely practical. It’s like having multiple cameras set up for a shoot. However the problem with this camera is that you’ll get back exactly what you put into it. If you just buy the camera and only expect to use your android device to edit video with, then you’re going to end up with shakey video, poor pans and the ability to only export 33 seconds at a time. To get better use out of the camera, you’re going to have to get either a PC or Laptop with some very decent specs and use the Go Pro Fusion Studio software. That gives you full camera stabilization (which borders on supernatural at times it can be so smooth) but you’re looking at quite a cost (I spent about $1300 on my setup). However, the fusion software only lets you export a static view (so no active panning or zooming shots). Which means to get full use out of the software and footage, you’re going to have to export your footage as a 360 degree video and then import it into something like Adobe Premier Pro (which will cost you about $25 per month for a license). Only then will you be able to make the stunning video’s you want. So shooting in 360 gets awfully expensive fast…………… and yet… I’m finding it’s worth it. Not only is the video footage stunning but the options for your finished product are endless. Although I love the image quality produced by the GoPro Hero 6, it’s the ability to reframe, pan and zoom in post production that makes the GoPro fusion really stand out. I wasn’t impressed when I first got it, but now that I’ve owned it for a while, I’m loving what I can do with this camera and what lies down the road for me. It may not be 5 stars due to the costs involved, but it’s a very well earned 4 stars.
Updated 3/5/2019:
So after owning this camera for quite some time, I’m finally updating my review to finalize it at 4 stars.
Pro’s:
Can shoot some stunning video
You realize just how versatile a 360 degree camera is when it comes to editing and reframing shots.
It’s hard not to be impressed when you see your final footage.
Your footage put’s other (non Fusion) action cam shots to shame!
New updated Firmware brings 5.6K resolution at 24FPS
I love video editing and this camera makes it fun!

Cons:
PC software can experience random crashes with some clips (GoPro Fusion Studio 1.4).
Android software needs updating (last Jan 2019 update actually had a fault that resulted in me being unable to download photo’s or video to my phone, had to revert to December 2018 version of app).
You really do need the hardware (PC) to render footage which can be expensive and a subscription to Adobe Premier to get full editing capabilities (active pans and zooms with keyframes as opposed to static camera angles).
You need yet another separate 3rd party software package to pull GPS data from the camera.

At the end of the day, this camera isn’t really suited to those who want to spend a minimum amount of time making “point and shoot” clips. However for those willing to invest the time, energy and money into producing stunning footage, then you can’t go wrong with this camera. GoPro need to throw their resources into providing stable easy to use software that takes full advantage of the Fusions capabilities as this is where most of the flaws and bad user experiences stem from. If they did that, then they’d easily have a 5 star product that anyone could use. Until then, this camera earns itself a solid four star rating.

Great piece of hardware which is totally let down by software. Rendering the footage is near impossible. Only 1 of 3 of my computers would talk to the camera. To this point if have not managed to render a single clip of footage. My Mac Pro (£5k machine) is unable to render a 2 min bit of footage. Whereas it handles every other project I through at it with ease! Very disappointed. Many many people in the same boat. If I can’t sort soon will have to return.