Insta360 reinvented its action cam by taking inspiration from a legendary compact camera

Action cams are not dead. They have evolved into something more surprising. And they did so by stopping pretending they were meant for everyone. For a few years they looked like the ultimate gadget of contemporary life: small, rugged devices capable of turning anyone into the protagonist of a mountain bike descent, a dive, or a trip documented entirely in first person.

Then their imaginary world narrowed. Or perhaps it specialized.

Today they mostly inhabit the territory of extreme sports, adrenaline and performance. But the fascination of the tiny, almost invisible camera designed to record the world from a first-person perspective never really disappeared. It simply moved somewhere else.

In recent months, however, something seems to be shifting again. GoPro has tried to reinvent itself by even embracing the Micro Four Thirds format, unexpectedly moving closer to the mirrorless camera world. DJI, on the other hand, has continued exploring the hybrid territory opened up by the Osmo Pocket — which is, after all, already a sophisticated evolution of the action cam — pushing things further with its modular, wearable and genuinely fun “Nano”, an object that feels almost more like an accessory than a camera.

Wearable, too, is Insta360’s GO 3S, a brand that in recent years has started occupying an increasingly interesting space: the ambiguous, still largely undefined territory between action cams, street photography and design objects.

This was already evident with the Ace Pro 2 developed alongside Leica, and especially with the incredible “shells” designed to completely transform it. Not simple covers, but accessories capable of changing the very relationship between user and camera, both aesthetically and functionally. And it will likely become even clearer with the highly anticipated Luna, a gimbal camera heavily rumored online and also developed with Leica.

This is exactly where Insta360 is playing its most interesting game: in the suspended space between action cams and reportage photography. A territory where the language of classic photography is recombined with that of ultra-compact video cameras, and where Leica’s influence no longer feels like mere marketing, but rather like an attempt to redefine the very gesture of taking pictures. Sometimes with surprising results, sometimes with inevitably more naive ones. Because using such an aggressive wide-angle lens, so close to the body and movement, is far less intuitive than it might seem.

Insta360’s latest invention pushes even further in this nostalgic direction. Called the GO 3S Retro Bundle, it is, quite literally, a retro reinterpretation of its tiny 39-gram action cam capable of recording stabilized 4K footage through the company’s FlowState system. But the most interesting part is not technical. It is cultural.

At the center of the kit is an extremely simple waist-level viewfinder module that almost shamelessly recalls the one found on the Yashica T5, one of the most beloved — and expensive — compact cameras on today’s second-hand market. An object that was never just about taking pictures: it was about changing the way people physically moved through space while photographing.

The idea here is similar. The GO 3S is transformed into a kind of instinctive, almost toy-like camera designed to shoot without attracting too much attention. Even the aesthetic openly insists on the past: the white body crossed by a colored stripe immediately recalls Polaroid, while the tiny viewfinder restores a physical relationship with the image that today feels almost alien in an era dominated by screens.

The bundle also includes a charging dock, a wearable magnetic mount and a series of small accessories reinforcing the idea of the camera as an everyday object: always with you, always ready. Even though, of course, the real interface ultimately remains the smartphone. You shoot, monitor and edit everything through the app. And it is precisely this contradiction that makes the project interesting. On one side there is the desire to slow down, to recover a certain analog physicality and even a degree of imperfection. On the other there is total dependence on the contemporary mobile ecosystem.

The final result is curious: an action cam that, instead of chasing cinematic aesthetics, seems much closer to the world of toy cameras, 1990s compact cameras and disposable cameras. More than nostalgia for “serious” analog photography, what emerges here is nostalgia for a casual, spontaneous and less intimidating kind of photography. A kind of photography that had not yet developed an obsession with perfection.

So what is this “camera” actually like? Fun, first of all. And also surprisingly intelligent in its own naivety. Because the viewfinder is imprecise, the response times have absolutely nothing to do with those of a Leica M6, and the experience remains inevitably distant from traditional photography. But perhaps that is exactly the point. The GO 3S Retro Bundle is not really trying to replace a serious camera: it is trying instead to transform the act of shooting photos and videos into something lighter, faster and even playful.

The most enjoyable thing to capture? Short, very short clips capable either of perfectly freezing a moment or missing it in a completely ironic way. A strange hybrid between photography and video, much like the philosophy behind the device itself. And perhaps, in a historical moment in which every image seems required to be perfect, controlled and immediately optimized for a screen, even a tiny action cam with a fake 1990s-style viewfinder can become a way to have fun with photography again.