Best Action Cameras in the UK (2026)

A 360 camera records everything around it and lets you pick the shot later, which changes how you film. Mounted on a bike or a helmet there is no aiming to get wrong, and the selfie stick holding it becomes invisible in the finished footage because the camera stitches it out, the effect that makes these cameras recognisable. It is waterproof, shoots 8K in 360 mode and works as an ordinary wide-angle action camera too. The listing pairs dual 1/1.28-inch sensors with a triple AI chip for low light, which is the specification that matters once British daylight starts going. The change that matters most over time is duller than the sensor: the lenses are now user-replaceable. Two exposed glass domes are what a 360 camera lives or dies by, and on earlier models a scratch was permanent. The listing linked here is the Get-Set bundle, sold by Insta360's own store and dispatched by Amazon. Its listing says the box holds the camera, a lens cap and a 114cm invisible selfie stick, and no memory card. The plain Standard bundle has had no featured offer for over a week, so this is the one you can buy. The costs are unchanged. Files are very large, every clip has to be reframed in editing, and final output resolution is lower than the 8K figure implies because you are cropping a sphere. That editing burden is the real cost of a 360 camera, and it is not for everyone.

Two things here are unusual. The sensor is square, which means vertical video for social platforms is a crop of the full sensor rather than a crop of a wide frame, so nothing is thrown away, a real advantage if you post vertically. And it has a variable aperture, which almost no action camera has, giving genuine control over exposure and motion blur in bright conditions. At 1/1.1 inches the sensor is the largest of the conventional action cameras here, and 8K capture leaves substantial room to reframe in editing. It costs roughly twice the Osmo Action 4, and for most footage the difference does not justify that. If you post vertically or film in bright sun, it does.

The Pocket 4 is the Pocket 3's successor and adds two things worth having: two-times lossless zoom, which lets you change framing without moving or losing resolution, and 4K at 240fps for slow motion well beyond what any other camera here offers. This is the Creator Combo, so it arrives with the microphone and accessories a vlogger would otherwise buy separately, which is a large part of why the price looks as it does against the Pocket 3. The Pocket 3 does the same core job for considerably less, and for most people that is the better purchase. This is the pick if vlogging is the point rather than a by-product.

This is a different tool from the action cameras above and it is better at the job most people actually film: talking to camera while moving. The three-axis mechanical gimbal removes the walking bounce that electronic stabilisation only reduces, and the screen rotates to face you so framing is not guesswork. The one-inch sensor is the largest on this page by a considerable margin, which shows immediately in indoor and evening footage where the action cameras struggle. The trade is that it is not waterproof and not rugged: the motorised arm cannot be sealed. For vlogging, travel and events it is the best camera here. For a helmet or a surfboard it is the wrong one entirely.