This is arguably personal taste. Certainly if you’re looking to stop eyeballs mid-scroll with oversaturated, eye-popping color, the Insta360 X5 is your friend. Personally though, I like the color coming from the GoPro much better, even when shooting in 8-bit color. It’s probably worth checking out some video from both to see which look you prefer before you invest. One advantage of the GoPro is that if you do want to get into postproduction coloring in apps like DaVinci Resolve, the 10-bit color option gives you a lot more latitude.
I also found that, in bright light, shooting the sort of things I generally use an action camera for (bike rides, hikes, etc.), the Max 2 footage was sharper than the same scenes shot with the X5. The difference is not huge, but especially in scenes with a lot of foliage, the Max 2 comes out ahead with sharper edges and better contrast.
Like most 360 cameras, the Max 2 offers a single-lens mode, which is handy for times when you know you don’t want the second lens (for example, if you have it mounted to your chest). In single lens mode the Max 2 essentially becomes a 4K Hero 13. All the same lens modes are available, most of the video options as well. The big difference being that you’re capped at 4K rather than the Hero 13 Black’s 5.2K. But single-lens mode is handy because it saves you from having to reframe that footage.
While the Max 2 wins on image quality (slightly) and color science (including 10-bit support), it unfortunately does not win in audio. The Max 2 manages to pack in 6 microphones, which it then intelligently uses (for example when there’s wind coming from the left it should dampen that mic and rely more on the right-side mic). That all sounds very nice, but unfortunately in my testing the audio was subpar no matter what I did. It was noticeably quiet and flat compared to the X5, shooting side-by-side in the same conditions.
