u/Glittering_Bar6460

Hi,

Your friendly neighborhood Canadian born dude that has lived in the USA for 22+ years here.

I thought you would find this mildly interesting, but Canadian kids are taught a major lie when they are in elementary or middle school (they call that Jr. High School in Canada).

We are taught that in the War of 1812 that Canada “burned down the White House.”

Now was the White House burned down during the War of 1812?

YES. Yes it was.

Was it Canada that did it?

NO. No it was NOT.

See, what the teachers fail to explain the the kids, but they do eventually teach, is that in 1812:

1. There was no “Canada.” Instead was a territory called Upper and Lower Canada. This was loosely controlled by the BRITISH.

2. There were no Canadian militia members involved AT ALL, and no one from Canada marched down from Canada. Instead the British sent veteran solders - most of which had just fought in the Napoleonic wars in Europe over… These solders went from Bermuda to Chesapeake Bay. They landed and went on to attack Washington.

Still, they teach kids in Canada that in the War of 1812 “Canada burned down the White House” and this myth still exists and is parroted back time and time again by people that hold onto this like it is a sign of one countries excellence.

So here are some fun FACTS about Canada “as a country.”

1. Canada began as a labor camp. Basically the British sent low level laborers to Canada AFTER France had already been there to mine resources.

2. Canada did not even EXIST until 1867. This was the “Dominion of Canada” but it was not autonomous. It was four provinces and Great Britain still controlled it until the 1900s.

3. Canada was not fully self governing until 1931… yes 1931! This is when after WW1 where Canada refused to immediately join Britain in fighting, Britain took notice. After the war, they gave autonomy to Canada in 1931.

4. Canada was not “technically” complete until 1949 when Newfoundland and Labrador joined Canada and the country was “complete.”

In the pursuit of people knowing everything they can about camera companies, I thought I would share this.

So I reached out to each company, these are the respective experiences I had:

1. GoPro

First time - I had the Hero 11 and it lost an entire days shoot with file corruption.

I reached out to customer support, and they told me that the SD card was not up to spec.

However I sent photos of the card, it was the same one they suggested, and I bought it at BEST BUY.

They said I had a counterfeit card not a real one, and that was the issue.

Second time - This was the Mission 1 Pro. I was trying to use larger chapters in GoPro Labs, but each time the camera tried to record with a mic (be it wireless or USB-C) it would reboot. Recording native raw audio with on board mics was fine.

I posted here. Several people recommended I reach out to a particular person on GitHub, he had his email public on his profile so I did.

He told me that emailing him was INAPPROPRIATE.

He found the thread, said I should not have emailed (I mean... public email address...) and then said that they could not reproduce the issue. Made it sound like user error.

2. Insta360

First time - They released an update for their X5 camera last fall, it was a HUGE update and added many features, but it also KILLED ALL 3RD PARTY MIC SUPPORT.

This camera needs particular mics with tiny receivers or else you "see" the plug in receiver in the videos.

I posted on their sub about this, they reached back out and said they would investigate.

A MONTH LATER I get this private message that they have a temporary firmware that they made so I could roll back and get my mic working again.

Second time - They released an update to the Luna Ultra. It had a strange pulsing pattern in LOG at certain zoom levels.

I made a post and support gets to me in private messaging asking for the clip on Google Drive and the details so I sent it.

Three days later they get back to me and ask me my address, and they send me a $79 accessory and apologize.

I did not ask for anything but a fix to the firmware.

Then someone via email picks up the chat, gives me the FedEx tracking and follows through that I got it and asks how it is working etc.

These are two very different experiences.

I would be curious to know if my GoPro experience was just a few isolated incidents or if others find it hard to deal with them.

I see many success stories here about replacement cameras etc, so this may just be me and on my end.

Just as it reads. I have to go away from where I live to film them, but happy to help.

Or you can just ask me a question. The influencer crowd left a lot to be desired in the “reviews.”

I can’t be bothered to read this sub these days with people coming in and bitching and moaning about “pervert glasses.”

Just stop it… if you like the glasses, stop letting people mandate how YOU live YOUR life and wear your glasses.

People that will criticize you for wearing them or judge you aren’t worth your time.

You would inevitably run into some sort of conflict with someone as small minded as this eventually.

The TLDR here is that you are (presumably) an adult. Make your choices, but be at peace with YOURSELF.

And don’t let others rob your life of joy because they heard what the big bad news said about something that YOU BOUGHT and YOU ENJOY.

I thought it would be useful for us to create a megathread for delivery experiences with orders made directly from Insta360 in 2026.

DO NOT ORDER FROM THE COMPANY DIRECTLY WHATEVER YOU DO. If you do, chances are that you will get slow shipping, items that do not ship on time from reports here, or strange couriers (read below on my experience)

I will start

MY DIRECT 2026 INSTA360 ORDERS:

Order 1 - TERRIBLE RESULT:

Ordered two Ace Pro 2 lenses in late December 2025.

NIGHTMARE ORDER.

The company did NOT use FedEx. They instead used some regional Mainland China courier that you needed to use strange websites to track.

Item went to New Jersey, USA first even though I am on the west coast, and took close to TWO WEEKS to get to me.

The company had ZERO tracking after it got to NJ, it just STOPPED entirely.

The ONLY reason I ever found the item delivered was pure chance. They dropped it at my front door (very small package) in a wind storm. I happened to open that door that day, otherwise it likely would have blown away as I use the garage to drive the car in and out and enter the house that day

Order 2 - AMAZING RESULT:

I ordered the Luna Ultra Extended Battery from Insta360 directly on in June.

The order was made at 6am PST. The item shipped out same day.

FedEx said I would get it two days later, but it showed up the NEXT DAY somehow.

Order 3 - VERY BAD SO FAR. NOT INSTA360’S FAULT

I ordered an X6 lens kit directly from Insta360 because you literally cannot get them anywhere else at all. They only exist from the company right now.

I ordered August 13th, they promise “shipping in 2-7 days”

The order put in on August 13th was picked up by FedEx the VERY SAME DAY.

FedEx has had the order stuck in a warehouse now for the better part of 36 hours.

NOT MOVING. The item said like the June order it would deliver NEXT DAY, but now I have moved to “whenever we feel like it.”

Got the notification today… 127 is available.

I am on Ray Ban Meta Wayfarer Gen2

The very FIRST LINE in the update is 5 minute videos and 1080 60fps.

Spoiler alert… no 5 minute videos option. No 60fps option.

This is just about the dumbest tech product I have ever owned.

What is crazier is that I had these features when I first activated the glasses on a very old firmware as being part of the early access list form my Display models.

Then they took away.

Then firmware 127 announced it.

And yet it is still missing.

Can you imagine how the WORLD would end if PlayStation or a real brand that mattered to a large company did this?

I am pretty technical but can't fix this on my own.

I need 64gb chapter support because I do long talks and I have had the bluetooth fail to work after the first 12GB file leads into the next one.

What is worse is that the chaters created after the first completely lack any audio tracks at all. They just do not exist, but the camera has an audio meter happily bouncing the entire time, so you can't tell it stopped recording at all.

At 230mbps this is only 6-7 minutes of video.

GoPro Labs has a 64GB chapter variant, but it does NOT record with any sort of mic support, bluetooth or USB-C.

I am using the official GoPro bluetooth mic kit too.

The camera simply gives a hard long beep and restarts when you try.

Disconnecting the mic will allow it to record normally.

Any tips or way to get this working?

https://preview.redd.it/hcq4tqj21ohh1.png?width=936&format=png&auto=webp&s=c7081fba25e050f70b99083f05521ed20aa467a8

I honestly thought it was common logic that the roads shut down.

I finally got my Rx in my glasses properly, and yesterday was driving to a meeting.

I had to refresh myself on a pretty complicated topic, so I started asking MetaAI about it on the drive in.

What resulted was pleasantly surpising.

Before we start, MetaAI still is the weakest of the major AI models. It does not hold a candle to Claude, but might have an edge to GPT for this ONE use case.

What use case?

The ability to hold a decently paced CONTEXTUAL conversation.

My chat with it was about an economics principle (The K-shaped economy) and was specific to where I live, Las Vegas.

How it differed from ChatGPT voice conversations.

ChatGPT has TWO modes... the text mode which gives you a ton of information and output, and the voice model which they brag now has more of a conversational flow with its new "GPT Live" feature that claims it is like chatting with Jarvis from Iron Man.

The PROBLEM is that to generate that speech, OpenAI has to burn a lot of tokens (tokens are the currency of AI models). The more tokens, the more it costs OpenAI while you sit here and pay $20 a month regardless.

So with GPT, the answers in voice tend to be shorter, more to the point, and the "GPT Live" service tries to add "umm" or "ahh" to sound human, but really just gets in the way.

Shorter responses = not always complete responses.

MetaAI chat through the glasses however gave proper length replies where it was merited, never felt short, and always felt "right" and complete.

The GOOD things that surprised me:

It was FAST. When it needed to do more research, the "searching" tone lasted maybe a second or so, and then it had its answer.

When it did not need to search things, it was even faster getting back to me.

You can also interrupt it mid sentence, and unlike GPT it listens better and does not keep going on and on.

It was also CORRECT in what it was saying.

Again, we were having a conversation in something I personally spent hundreds of hours researching and making content on, so it simply nailed the stuff I needed a refresher on.

The BAD things that make this an 8/10 and not 10/10

Once in the conversation it had some sort of issue where the conversation closed for no reason and it was not listening to me.

It feels very tuned to having a strong internet connection. When I went into a parking garage and both my Verizon and Tmobile service was 1 bar, it could not give me answers and would complain that I needed to restart the Meta app when it was really the signal strength.

Even then though, when I invoked it with "Hey Meta" and told it to pick up the last conversation, it still had all the context and was able to start again with me.

MetaAI to be clear is not a GOOD AI model.

It hallucinates a lot. It tells you thinks about its own feature set that are not true, about how to do things that are not true.

But in this case, it seemed to work in a way that as an AI would say "hit differently" vs other times I would be just talking into my phone.

Say the following in this order:
"Hey Meta, can you set location based reminders?"

MetaAI will come back and tell you that "yes, just tell me what you want to to and when you want the reminder, what can I help with?"

Then say:
"Hey Meta, set a reminder to ____ when I get home"

Meta will proceed to tell you that you are (probably) not wearing Prada glasses, so you actually cannot set location based reminders.

It is one of the dumbest things I have experienced ever using tech.

Imagine Apple or Samsung doing a brand colab and locking a BASIC FEATURE behind the partnership.

This is starting to be one of my dumbest purchases ever.

I really do appreciate the application and what this WILL LIKELY BECOME in the future, but as someone that edits video full time, most of what the app does it does rather poorly.

Things that any video editor with experience can do will not turn out the way you think they should...

1. Adding b-roll. Real b-roll. I asked it to add b-roll to a video that I had. It added three clips for a 22 minute video, when I asked for more, it added the same clips in various spots. One of the clips asked for a drone shot of a famous city that I use Storyblocks for that has drop dead GORGEOUS drone footage, and dozens of them. Instead, Descript chooses a drone shot that was in 480p, blurry and shaky as heck. Fighting b-roll burned a LOT of credits.
2. Replacing words is actually life changing. I believe that Resolve does this however... it is a great feature, and a feature that the AI told me can crash out exports so I had to export a second time... This burned credits.
3. The editor gets in its own way and is unintuitive. I watched several tutorials on basic tasks, and even then confusing. I ended up goofing my timeline up a few times, I had to ask the AI to fix and roll back things since "undo" doesn't really work. This burned through credits.
4. Adding music to a timeline. The AI says it can, you tell it "add background music to the entire timeline, duck the audio" and it does only half, then you point it out and it has to go back and redo things. This burned through credits.
5. Asking it to make 9x16 format vertical clips (my exact phrase "9x16 vertical clips for youtube shorts) produced the clips, but then the clips exported as 16x9. The AI argued with me that they were actually 9x16 and 4k resolution (they were 16x9 1080P) so I had to show it a screenshot. It apologized and then offered to export them again. This burned through credits and offered to sell me MORE CREDITS to get me through the month.
6. Exports are soft. It doesn't matter what you do, export them at 4k, best settings. Everything has a soft look to it. The files are also much smaller. My source file that I actually cut on my timeline to be 22 minutes long was 18gb. This was uploaded, Descript added subtitles, tweaked the audio, and the resultant export at 4K best quality was 6.6gb.

So if you notice that Descript likes to burn through credits it is something that happened to me every day for five days, to the point where I am now being asked to throw more cash at it so it can do simple things incorrectly.

To be clear, if you have zero experience at all, this can be great.

If you need to cut silences, there are other tools out there you can get, or you can do it by hand.

Depending on your internet connection speed, you won't save much time if you use large source files, and you will find it gets in your way more than it helps.

Having owned the combo since launch paid with my own money, and owning around twenty other real cameras, I wanted to post an unbiased review for you.

In short, the TLDR:
They are overselling the experience of using the camera. This is NOT a pleasant camera to shoot with for many reasons, but you may not care.

Influencers that send you to special offers can actually make upwards of $25,000+ on you buying through their link (I am an influencer, so trust me on this).

That said, they are not going to tell you the following "features" of this combo:

1. It is NOT pleasant to shoot with. The controls are terrible. Even on the newer electronic camera body, it is slow and clunky to operate.

2. Sticking with that, you will wait after EVERY SINGLE SHOT. You wait for files to be written. The camera has somehow ZERO memory buffer that all other dedicated photo cameras do. Raw files are particularly bad to have to wait for.

3. The digital zoom is largely USELESS. You will lose a ton of image data.

4. The camera cooks colors so hard, your photos will fall apart unless you are willing to spend proper time in lightroom on a desktop, with the raw file. Otherwise, the app? Forget it.

5. You are INCREDIBLY LIMITED. You have no background blur, the app can't add it (third party apps can) so that means portraits and other photos are out of the question. Basically it is a street photography camera that is locked into a super wide angle all the time.

The influencer will note how the electronics in the grip allow you to change things around without touching the screen, but what they DON'T say is how you can accidentally touch the scroll dial and change things for no reason.

They also do not tell you how when you flip the camera screen up, you lose touch points because the case gets in the way, making changes that are invoked from the bottom of the screen hard... and if you tilt the screen even 10% back, the screen goes upside down every though it is still facing you.

Camera's should melt into your hand, the process of hunting a setup and taking an image should be the goal.

They say the best camera is the one you have, but you already have a camera in your pocket.

If you start to use a camera that makes you stop after every shot and make sure you don't accidentally touch the wrong button, then you are not using the best camera you have with you, you are shooting with something that gets in your way.

Overall:

The "camera" is fun to shoot with. It nails every single shot you take, but it struggles to feel good to shoot with, and if you are a real photographer (as in someone that makes it a goal to create photos with a camera), you know how it feels when a camera gets in your way.