Scuba Divers, Before You Consider the Insta360 X4 Be Aware of This Major Flaw

Last Updated on August 9, 2024 by Candice Landau

Lately, a lot of scuba divers have been asking me about my experience with the Insta360 X4 camera. It has after all just launched and divers, readers and subscribers are wondering: is it worth it? 

The answer is yes and no. I’ll get into why I say that below but in short: if you’re using it for topside activities, it’s great. If you’re using it below the surface, well, Thre is one major drawback that may just turn you entirely off.

Initial impressions of the Insta360 X4

On my recent trip to dive the Galapagos islands, I had the opportunity to try the new Insta360 x4 camera. I had purchased it after my Insta360 x3 flooded thanks to a leaky button on the underwater housing.

I was hoping it would be a level-up on the X3 which seemed to struggle with low lighting and had underwater housing that was easily scratched and visible in videos—a surprise given even the Amazon knock-offs had figured out a way around a crescent of acrylic appearing in your 360 underwater footage. 

When the Insta360 X4 arrived it came bundled with a few accessories, one of which was a handy lens protector for topside use. However, to my disappointment, once again there was no lens cover for underwater use, that would ultimately protect the $100 “invisible” dive case—a separate purchase. When you consider how easy it is to scratch a very bulky bubble of acrylic (this thing is enormous), it’s a little surprising they haven’t made a removable cover.

That said, I’d learned my lesson with Insta360’s X3 underwater housing—the most scratch-attractive acrylic out there. Hang it off your BCD and it’s scratched, hand it up to someone getting out of the dive boat and they put it on a table or in a shared rinse bucket—scratched. Lend it to someone to try—scratched. 

My attempted workaround

I decided I needed to make my own dome protector before heading out on my dives. And so, I purchased a large coffee cup/beer koozie and placed it safely over the housing.Of course, the concern would be what to do with it when it came time to actually dive… I chewed my nails and hoped they’d crafted this one of tougher stuff.

I already knew I couldn’t hang the Insta360 X4 in its underwater housing off my BCD as it would likely get scratched on my dive gear and so, as the others on my Galapagos liveaboard did, I mounted it on an arm on my camera housing. That would surely keep it safe and out of the way of bumps and scrapes.

For a few days it was fine as I was super careful with it—I put the koozie back on as soon as I was out of the water. We were zodiac diving from the liveaboard so at least I didn’t have to hand it off to someone who would then subsequently disappear with it (and potentially scratch it).  

I returned to Florida and immediately jumped on a coral reef restoration trip in the Florida Keys. On the second day of diving, it happened. I noticed a huge scratch across the acrylic dome of the invisible dive case. My heart sank. When had that happened? I hadn’t recalled hitting it on anything. Perhaps when I handed it up on the boat? I had no idea.

The invisible dive case alone isn’t quite what it’s marketed to be either. You can’t quite remove the glimmer of the case as you dive but this…the scratches on it now…they’d be impossible to remove. Or would they? Could I buff them out with the Novus buff I’d purchased for my Aquatica dome port?

Asking for help

After the weekend, I decided to reach out to Insta360 themselves to ask about this issue. I couldn’t after all keep buying their housing for scuba as it wasn’t cheap. I sent pictures and shared what had happened. 

The response was incredibly disappointing: “We do not recommend attempting to polish the scratches as this may compromise its structural integrity and affect its assembly.”

They did inform me that they’d shared my “very useful feedback” with their R&D team but all they offered to help me fix the issue was half-off shipping, which, frankly felt almost more insulting. $9 off $117 after taxes. 

The whole exchange left a bad taste in my mouth. It suggested the company wasn’t willing to replace yet another product with similar flaws, or even offer a half-off discount on a replacement (DJI helped me more than that when my drone was stolen and that was no fault of their own). 

As a marketer myself I’ll never understand how you can turn a possible brand advocate with wide reach in a niche industry into a lost customer (I love the 360 experience and feel very disheartened writing this). All I can think of is that multiple others have reached out to them with the same issue and it’s become a large enough issue that they’re no longer willing to deal with it. 

Exchange aside, I cannot spend time worrying about when (not if) my underwater housing is going to get scratched and therefore ruin my videos.

What’s next?

I will be attempting to buff out the scratches (in spite of their recommendations) as I haven’t got much more to lose. I’ll let you know how that goes.

If you have questions about my experience, about the actual underwater footage, or anything else relating to this product, please email me, or leave a comment below. I’m happy to share more details. 

Update as of August 2024: I did leave a review about my experience with the underwater housing on the Amazon listing. It turns out other people have had these same issues as the review quickly jumped to the top. Fortunately, the customer care team responsible for the Amazon listing reached out to me and offered me a new case. This has gone a long way toward improving my sentiment for the brand. It doesn’t of course fix the problem but hopefully this has escalated the issue to the R&D team. I don’t like writing negative reviews of products but I also don’t appreciate how little honesty there is in the gear review sector because everyone is getting a product for free, or hasn’t put in the time to really put the gear through its paces.