The Insta360 X5 World Tour: 20 Cities, 5 Continents, 1 Camera

🇹🇭 Bangkok

It sounds like the opening of a movie, but it's true. The earthquake shook Bangkok, and two days later I walked into a camera shop and bought the X5. Feeling the ground move makes you realize how fast everything can change. I thought: I want to record everything. Not just one trip — the whole world, every angle, no misses. That's the beauty of a 360 camera. So I made the decision right there: this isn't a holiday, it's a 20-city global video project.

PURE VIDEO is the X5's super high-quality lighting and shooting option — its cinema mode. Maximum dynamic range, minimum noise, the cleanest possible 360 footage. But here's the trade-off, and it became the theme of the whole trip: bigger files, faster battery drain, and a lot more heat. Almost every problem I had traces back to that.

🇰🇪 Nairobi

Camera-wise? Perfect. Around 24°C. The Giraffe Center sits next to Nairobi National Park — a UNESCO-recognized wildlife area on the edge of the capital — and the 360 format was born for that place. Giraffes approaching from every direction, and I never had to turn the camera. But the internet was impossible. I tried uploading to Insta360 Cloud and the progress bar barely moved. I waited 45 minutes and gave up. In East Africa, the cloud doesn't exist for 360 files. You need a portable SSD, full stop.

🇧🇷 Rio de Janeiro🇵🇪 Lima🇨🇴 Bogotá🇲🇽 Mexico City

(laughs) It's real. Rio's internet was better than Nairobi's, but the heat was brutal — 38 degrees. About 30 minutes into a session near Copacabana, the camera flashed a temperature warning and switched itself off. Then, uploading the remaining files, the app showed 999 hours. It's not a bug — it's the app saying "this file is too big for this connection."

Things improved fast after that. Lima and Bogotá had solid internet — 20 to 40 minutes per file on hotel WiFi. And Mexico City was a pleasant surprise: the high altitude keeps it mild around 22°C, so the camera never overheated and I could record for ages. Carlos from my City Through the Lens series there once told me "your first 100 videos will be bad" — standing in the Zócalo with the X5, I finally felt like they weren't.

🇨🇷 San José

San José, Costa Rica — the surprise winner of that leg. I pushed a full 360 video to the cloud in under 10 minutes. The capital's fiber infrastructure is seriously impressive. If you're a traveling creator who depends on cloud backup, San José is your best friend.

🇦🇪 Dubai🇲🇻 Maldives

Forget using the X5 outdoors in Dubai during the day. The desert hit 40 Celsius and the camera switched off within 15 minutes. Here's the irony: Dubai had some of the fastest internet of the entire trip — uploads that took 40 minutes elsewhere finished in under 5. But what's the point of the world's fastest upload when the camera can't survive long enough to record?

The Maldives was paradise for your eyes, hell for your camera. Equatorial sun, high humidity, white reflective sand — it overheated in about 10 minutes. I filmed in 8-minute bursts, cooled it in the shade, then went again.

🇲🇦 Marrakech🇸🇬 Singapore

Marrakech was hot but survivable — around 35°C, so I could manage short bursts in the medina, though the dust got into every crevice. Amara from my City Through the Lens episode there, a food-tourism specialist, warned me: "Film at dawn, or don't film."

Singapore is the strangest case of the whole trip. It had the fastest internet I measured — even faster than Dubai. I uploaded everything in minutes. But it's hot AND humid, so the X5 still overheated. Best upload city on Earth, and I could barely record. The universe has a sense of humor.

🇮🇩 Bali🇻🇳 Hanoi🇯🇵 Tokyo🇵🇹 Lisbon

Four cities earned the title. Bali and Hanoi: cloud cover, shade, moderate temperatures — I recorded 30 to 45 minute sessions without a single shutdown.

Tokyo was excellent too. Cherry blossom season, mild spring air, and Yuki — from my City Through the Lens episode there — showed me the quiet streets where I could set up a long 360 capture without crowds. The camera loved it, and so did I.

And Lisbon was the sleeper hit. The Atlantic keeps it mild, the light is gorgeous, and Marco — who shot his first paid gig on a phone there — let me film the miradouros at golden hour. Forty-minute sessions, no shutdowns, perfect footage. If your project needs long-form 360 recording, these four cities are the answer.

🇬🇧 London🇮🇸 Reykjavik

Like a dream, honestly. Low temperatures are far easier on this camera than heat. In London the drizzle never caused an overheating shutdown — the enemy there is the rain itself, so I kept a rain cover on and wiped the lens between takes. The X5 never once got hot.

Reykjavik was the coldest stop of the whole tour, and the camera never overheated — obviously. The only issue is that cold drains batteries about 30% faster, so I carried spares in my jacket, close to my body. It's the same lesson from my Iceland guide: cold is manageable, heat is the killer. If you're heading somewhere chilly, the X5 is a genuinely reliable companion.

🇨🇳 Macao–Zhuhai🇻🇳 Da Nang

This is the part people need to hear. At the Chinese border crossing between Macao and Zhuhai, 360 cameras are effectively forbidden. The police will not let you use one — even for a moment. The penalty is a heavy fine taken straight from your bank account, or confiscation of the camera. Treated like a drone.

And in Da Nang, Vietnam, drones are banned outright — I watched them get confiscated on the beach. A 360 camera on a selfie stick attracts the same suspicion. My rule now: research local filming laws before you fly, not after you land.

🇹🇷 Istanbul

Istanbul is a grey area rather than a hard ban. The climate was fine and the camera behaved perfectly. But at the major historic sites — Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, inside the cisterns — tripod and 360 filming requires a permit or is restricted. Security will stop you if you set up without permission. I filmed handheld in the open squares and used a local guide for interior shots. The lesson: it's not illegal, but you need permission in the right places. Do your homework.

7.2 out of 10. Image quality in PURE VIDEO: 9 out of 10 when conditions are right. Heat management: 5. Cloud ecosystem in slow-internet regions: 4. It's a brilliant camera when the world cooperates — and the world often doesn't cooperate.

My advice after 20 cities: know your destination before you pack it. Film in the right conditions and it's magic. Push it into 40-degree deserts, past border police who treat it like a drone, or into humid megacities, and it becomes an expensive paperweight. The camera never lied to me. The spec sheet just left out the parts about heat, internet, and laws.