 Technology's changed the way we capture images and videos a lot in the last couple decades. First there was a shift from film to digital, then there was things like 3D and 4k, and now virtual reality's here. And so companies are starting to take the tech that makes that possible and put it into cameras like this Gear 360 from Samsung. Stuff that you and I can use. Now it lets us capture 360 degree videos and photos. This is actually a 360 degree video right now. You can click and drag around your video player or take your phone and move it around or even put your phone in a VR headset like a Gear VR or Google Cardboard and view it that way. Now Samsung's camera is not the first one on the market that does this but it's definitely one of the easiest and it's probably one of the best, at least for now. So what makes it so good? It's dead simple to use. If you've ever used something like a GoPro or anything like it, it's as easy if not easier than that. It has just three buttons, a power button, a menu button, and a record button and that's basically all you need to know. It captures pretty good quality video too, at a time when most of the other competitors on the market are still only shooting 1080p. This captures just about 4k, which looks pretty good on browsers and decent in headsets. It uses two lenses, one on each side, and they're tied to 15 megapixel sensors so you can capture a 30 megapixel still or 3840 by 1920 video. Now it's not 4k in the same way that we think about it with regular video because here those pixels are spread around this whole sphere as opposed to just confined to a little box. But that's a good thing for now because it cuts down on file size and makes it easier to share the stuff that you shoot with the Gear 360. And it is really easy to share footage that you shoot with this camera because Samsung built Facebook and YouTube integration right into the app that it comes with. So all you have to do is take the file from your camera, put it on your phone, and post it. You don't have to mess with any advanced editing programs or anything like that if you don't want to. But that does bring us to one of the first big problems with this camera and it's that if you shoot anything longer than two or three minutes, it can take a long time, sometimes 10-20 minutes to transfer that file from the camera to your phone. And then on top of that you have to wait for the phone to stitch the two images together that the camera is actually capturing, which brings us to the next problem, which is that stitching can sometimes be pretty imperfect. You can probably see it now, it's sort of splitting me in half. Now you can get around this if you keep the camera kind of farther away from your subjects, but you really want to have this camera in the middle of whatever you're shooting, which brings us to another problem with this camera. And it's that it's splash proof and it's dust proof, but it's not rugged in any sort of way. And Samsung right now doesn't sell any cases to protect it. I mean I had this thing for maybe two weeks to play around with and I already dinged the lens pretty bad here. And that was just because it got knocked over on the ground at a dog park. It's something that they have to work on and probably will in future generations, but you really have to treat this thing with kid gloves and it doesn't make it easy to shoot really compelling stuff with this camera. There are a couple other issues of this camera too, like it's not really that good in low light. The tripod that Samsung ships with it is really kind of a joke and you really need a newer Samsung smartphone just to use it in the first place. But this is a first-generation product so I'm hoping that Samsung will iron out a lot of these issues by the next version or the one after that. And they better. There's a lot of competition coming into this space from big companies like GoPro and Nikon. What that means for the version of the Gear 360 that you can buy right now is it's really more of Samsung's way of helping us answer the question of what even is a good 360 degree video in the first place. So if you want to start playing around with 360 degree video and answering these questions for yourself, this is probably the best camera you can buy to do that. It's just not going to be that way for long. Thank you guys so much for watching. If you liked the video give us a thumbs up and head down to the comments and tell us what else we should shoot in 360 degrees. And if you're not subscribed go to youtube.com slash the verge click subscribe.
 Technology's changed the way we capture images and videos a lot in the last
 couple decades. First there was a shift from film to digital, then there was
 things like 3D and 4k, and now virtual reality's here. And so companies are
 starting to take the tech that makes that possible and put it into cameras
 like this Gear 360 from Samsung. Stuff that you and I can use. Now it lets us
 capture 360 degree videos and photos. This is actually a 360 degree video
 right now. You can click and drag around your video player or take your phone and
 move it around or even put your phone in a VR headset like a Gear VR or Google
 Cardboard and view it that way. Now Samsung's camera is not the first one on
 the market that does this but it's definitely one of the easiest and it's
 probably one of the best, at least for now. So what makes it so good? It's dead
 simple to use. If you've ever used something like a GoPro or anything like
 it, it's as easy if not easier than that. It has just three buttons, a power button,
 a menu button, and a record button and that's basically all you need to know. It
 captures pretty good quality video too, at a time when most of the other competitors
 on the market are still only shooting 1080p. This captures just about 4k, which
 looks pretty good on browsers and decent in headsets. It uses two lenses, one on
 each side, and they're tied to 15 megapixel sensors so you can capture a 30
 megapixel still or 3840 by 1920 video. Now it's not 4k in the same way that we
 think about it with regular video because here those pixels are spread
 around this whole sphere as opposed to just confined to a little box. But that's
 a good thing for now because it cuts down on file size and makes it easier to
 share the stuff that you shoot with the Gear 360. And it is really easy to share
 footage that you shoot with this camera because Samsung built Facebook and
 YouTube integration right into the app that it comes with. So all you have to do
 is take the file from your camera, put it on your phone, and post it. You don't have
 to mess with any advanced editing programs or anything like that if you
 don't want to. But that does bring us to one of the first big problems with this
 camera and it's that if you shoot anything longer than two or three
 minutes, it can take a long time, sometimes 10-20 minutes to transfer that
 file from the camera to your phone. And then on top of that you have to wait for
 the phone to stitch the two images together that the camera is actually
 capturing, which brings us to the next problem, which is that stitching can
 sometimes be pretty imperfect. You can probably see it now, it's sort of
 splitting me in half. Now you can get around this if you keep the camera kind
 of farther away from your subjects, but you really want to have this camera in
 the middle of whatever you're shooting, which brings us to another problem with
 this camera. And it's that it's splash proof and it's dust proof, but it's not
 rugged in any sort of way. And Samsung right now doesn't sell any cases to
 protect it. I mean I had this thing for maybe two weeks to play around with and
 I already dinged the lens pretty bad here. And that was just because it got
 knocked over on the ground at a dog park. It's something that they have to work on
 and probably will in future generations, but you really have to treat this thing
 with kid gloves and it doesn't make it easy to shoot really compelling stuff
 with this camera. There are a couple other issues of this camera too, like it's
 not really that good in low light. The tripod that Samsung ships with it is
 really kind of a joke and you really need a newer Samsung smartphone just to
 use it in the first place. But this is a first-generation product so I'm hoping
 that Samsung will iron out a lot of these issues by the next version or the
 one after that. And they better. There's a lot of competition coming into this
 space from big companies like GoPro and Nikon. What that means for the version
 of the Gear 360 that you can buy right now is it's really more of Samsung's way
 of helping us answer the question of what even is a good 360 degree video in
 the first place. So if you want to start playing around with 360 degree video and
 answering these questions for yourself, this is probably the best camera you can
 buy to do that. It's just not going to be that way for long. Thank you guys so much
 for watching. If you liked the video give us a thumbs up and head down to the
 comments and tell us what else we should shoot in 360 degrees. And if you're not
 subscribed go to youtube.com slash the verge click subscribe.