Best Action Camera in 2026

GoPro has gone downhill these days.

Go with a DJI Action 6, they are the best quality and great bang for buck. If you don’t want to spend as much the DJI Action 4&5 are great too, you can pick them up cheap on Marketplace.

What a time to be in the market. I have been a GoPro guy for years, but fed up with recordings stopped mid race, I picked up an Ace Pro 2. Well, it turns out almost everything you see online is paid. Don’t get me wrong it does some things good, but the color is just always off. My hero 11 always looks better than the AP2.

DJI has some real issues here and has been effectively banned from sale in the US. To counter act that, they created a shell company called Xtra. I just bought an Xtra Edge Pro which is an osmo action 5. Haven’t given it a good shakedown yet, but reports of the long run time and stable operation should be excellent if true. 

Dji and insta360 are both better options than gopro these days. Either way you go, you'll have a great camera. 

We have a 360 and gopro's. My gopro 10's cutting of videos was the final push for me to switch l. 

Use the same mount as GoPro. I 3d printed a chin mount for my moto 9 that has held up well so far

Just picked up a DJI 5, here’s a video of me following a buddy around on my 500excf 

Was getting ready to buy an insta ace 2 for my kid 

Is the DJI 4 or 5 easy to use, and easy to edit videos?

Also, I forgot the exact rules. Can these all be used at big races like Loretta’s and stuff as long as they are not on your helmet? What’s the best mounting option? The chest one?

Also, for the dji, does it not have to be in a case while riding? Does the Lens need a cover at all? Or just the camera out the box, attached is good to go for roost?

I wanted to try something other than a GoPro so I bought a DJI Osmo 6. I think colors and distortion due to wide angle on the DJI are better on Osmo 6 than the GoPro. the only place GoPro is better is stabilization. I’ve been playing around with ND filters, 1/60 shutter and locking iso.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYCpzVgJMQd/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

DJI has an app to download to you phone, I use I movie to edit videos. But yeah easy enough to use. The lens screws off, I broke one crashing my mtb but it was easy to replace. They sell cases but I don’t run one

The question "Is it easy to edit videos" is a loaded question. The camera is just the tip of the iceberg. And possibly the cheapest part of making a video. For kids just getting into it, the apps may be a quick resource, but Apple and PC both have their own free editors that will offer a bit more flexibility. Past that, youll start needing a computer with some nuts behind it to process video and run the software. The distance in between pressing record and The Deegans channel on YT is a million miles. 

Been using chest mounts these days in races. If you mount the cams high enough up on your sternum, it gets pretty close to chin mount vision. Maybe better in some cases. When dealing with little kids though (50/65), they dont have enough torso to really run a chest mount and then running a bike mount makes more sense.

Cool, I see the dji 5 on Amazon for $250 for a renewed one, I’ll buy one of those and the chest strap for the kid to play with. He’s just wanting to capture his take outs and stuff 

Insta 360 ace pro 2 with chin mount on helmet is the best quality recording setup you can get. 

The people above talking about color being off etc have not adjusted their settings properly. Watch Jeff Walker or Alex Heckmans videos on youtube they have videos comparing all Go pro, Insta and DJI the ace pro 2 smokes them in every category. 

Jeff Walker's videos on the AP2 helped sell me on picking one up, but Im going to say, its underwhelming. I grabbed the Xplorer Pro Camera grip with it and Ill swear, I have yet to take a picture I couldnt have done better on my old iphone 13. I think a big problem is Insta loaded in a dozen custom color presets and they all suck. Using the generic Vivid preset seems to be the most comparable to GoPro bold color. I do like using it for 3rd person clips. Films pretty good at 4K120 so you can have 25% speed slow motion look great. Battery life seemed really good at 4K30. I ran it last week at an enduro. I did 2-45-50min tests and swapped to a fresh battery and did 2 more tests about the same. Dont have enough time on the Xtra to endorse it yet, but I tossed it on my mtb handlebar today over lunch, put over 80min on it at 4K60 and still had about 38% battery left. No crashes. GoPro would have ran out of battery or over heated well before that. 

The Ace Pro 2 design looks great with flip LCD, large tally light on the front, and great battery life.  Win, win, win.  Now it will just come down to sensor/shadow performance and stabilization, which seems fairly close across the board.  You can only squeeze so much out of those little sensors, for now.  GoPro used to absolutely own this space back in the day and it sounds like they really shit the bed.  I'm still rocking my old GoPro10 Blacks on my chin mounts and they work fine for the intended use but when I'm ready to upgrade someday I'll definitely be looking at other brands.

I film shorter clips from sections of trail I like. The insta 360 go ultra is incredible. It’s so small when detached, incredibly easy to use, no wind buffeting and quality is amazing. You don’t feel or see it at all. 

But wouldn’t be great for filming longer recordings and full motos if that’s your thing. I get 20+ mins recording time when detached from the doc. Pop it back in the doc (camera) and it charges back to full very quick. 

I just bought a GoPro Hero 13 last week. I wanted GPS, which the insta 360 camera I wanted did not have. The DJI Osmo Action is a better camera than the GoPro hero series, but I got a deal on the GoPro for about half off. If I had to pay full price I would have gotten the DJI Action. 
If money is not in the equation, the GoPro Mission is the best action camera without a doubt.

Back to the xtra edge pro (action 5), I just ran it for 102 min at 4k60 10bit normal stabilization. My hero 11’s would be luck to run for 10min at those settings. Still going to probably run 4K30 8 bit next scramble for max life. I rarely to never make slo mo clips from first person