Insta360, Leica and Tilta have created one of the most aesthetically significant objects of recent years

Insta360 is a brand you may not know. Chinese, founded in 2015, and based in Shenzhen, China’s tech megalopolis, it owes its name to 360° cameras and has, for some years now, been one of the most respected producers of action cams. You probably do know Leica, the century-old (this year) photography brand, famous for its red dot and rangefinder cameras. With Insta360 it collaborated on the Ace Pro and the more recent Ace Pro 2, accompanied by Tilta’s Explorer Kit – a grip that changes its aesthetic identity, creating a hybrid object that in fact bridges the traditional camera and the action cam, speaking volumes about our present.

Leica is known for the superb quality of its lenses, and for the poetry of their names – Summicron, Elmarit, Noctilux; for the mechanical precision of its camera bodies; and also for their intrinsic beauty, from the early models through the M series up to the most recent ones. It’s hard to imagine a more beautiful camera than a Leica M6. The same cannot be said for action cams: from the first GoPros until today, they’ve been little cubes with a lens on one side and a screen on the other. The strength of their design lies in their versatility and the ease with which they integrate with accessories that allow you to mount them on a surfboard, a backpack strap, a helmet, or a drone.

The design of today’s technology appears banal, all converging toward a flat aesthetic horizon and a certain ideal “invisibility.” This is one of the reasons for the success of the Y2K aesthetic, which brings us back to the early 2000s, a moment of great acceleration for consumer electronics, when experimentation on forms and modes of interaction was flourishing.

Today’s flat aesthetics are certainly not helped by the mostly derivative approach of Chinese design. When a form works, or appeals, companies in Shenzhen are unlikely to revolutionize it. They will pack it with every possible feature, even the unnecessary ones, boost its specs, wrap it in the most technologically advanced (and garish) finish. But they rarely intervene on design in the pure sense. If the reference hairdryer is shaped like the Dyson Supersonic, then that’s how it will be made; the fact that smartphones are now all the same we have discussed more than once; and action cams haven’t moved much further. At a time when most everyday objects come from China, this can only lead to a certain aesthetic stasis.

The Ace Pro 2 is Insta360’s flagship action cam, developed with Leica: compact, waterproof up to 12 meters, it records in 8K with a 1/1.3" sensor and Summarit lens. FlowState stabilization, PureVideo mode, and a front screen make it a versatile tool that, as The Verge wrote, “takes the action cam into a more photographic territory than that of a simple gadget.” This is demonstrated by the beautiful underwater shots of creator Kim Giho (on Instagram @geek___tv and @_ranii.editor_rani).

This “photographic” identity finds its fulfillment with the Explorer Kit, created to transform the Ace Pro 2 “into a professional tool for street photography and urban travel.” Configured this way, the action cam becomes one of the most sincere and aesthetically powerful objects seen in recent years. It’s a metal cage that wraps the cam. It was created by Tilta, another Shenzhen-based company, specializing in photo and video accessories. But here the approach is astounding, with a form that redesigns the function without ever slipping into banality. Whereas the action cam is a gadget reduced to the extreme in its design – even if the Ace Pro 2 is, within its field, among the most attractive – Tilta’s kit roughs up its aesthetic identity.

The inspiration is that of a camera. The lines may recall some mirrorless or compact models from the 2010s. The metal body, built with discontinuous elements and broken lines, adds further complexity to the visual language of the object.

The action cam thus becomes a capsule that slots into a mech. Somehow, this overlap is also metaphorical: it represents today’s extreme simplification of technology and the dream of making it more complex, or simply different. “Think bold,” reads the decorative cover on the hot shoe.

From a functional standpoint, the grip leaves open access to memory card and USB port, overlays a metal button on the power switch that also allows switching between photo, video, or timelapse modes, and adopts a lever as shutter release mechanism, introducing an analog feeling that was missing and that we associate more with an old camera than with an action cam. There’s also a cord for hanging it on the wrist or backpack. In addition, the grip offers three attachment points for different types of accessories. Holding it is pleasant and – like old cameras – it encourages landscape use, for horizontal photos and videos. Of course, it is not a pure camera and the ultra-wide lens, which turns into a milder wide-angle with a double tap on the screen, invites you to move closer. After all, as one of Leica’s early masters used to say, “if your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”

The action cam, an object always reduced to the minimum in aesthetic terms compared to its functions, one of the symbols of that anonymous, pervasive aesthetic that has accompanied us in recent years, thus becomes a maximalist device. No longer an action cam, but not exactly a camera either: an in-between, a strange hybrid object aligned with a mixed Insta360 and Leica identity – and, of course, Tilta, which created it. A small object that shows how design, even today, can still surprise. Even technological design. Even when it comes from Shenzhen.

This review is based on the new white version just launched, which keeps intact the technical and stylistic qualities of the Ace Pro 2, adding an even more essential aesthetic, and on the silver version of Tilta’s Explorer Kit. The action cam and its accessories were supplied directly by Insta360.