What They Say

“Rylo is a powerful little 360° camera powered by innovative software to create larger-than-life, cinematic video. It captures everything around you with breakthrough stabilization technology.

“When you’re done shooting, simply connect Rylo to your smartphone and use the Rylo app to easily edit and create a video you’re proud to share.”

What We Say

Our first impressions are that this thing is small. Like, really small. Half the weight of the GoPro Fusion in fact. The old adage is that the best camera is the one you have with you, and unlike a bulkier 360 cam from Nikon that we’ve tested, we had no qualms just throwing it in a pocket before going up the hill.

They’ve obviously spent a lot of time on the ergonomics here. There’s a small vibration as well as visual and audio signals when you turn it on or hit record, which is super useful while you’re riding – in fact, now we’ve experienced it, we can’t understand why all action cameras don’t come similarly equipped. The two buttons (on/off/record and video/photo mode) are chunky and easy to click, and the small screen clearly shows battery life and storage space – all good so far.

• Price: $499
• Weight: 108 grams
• Battery life: They say 1 hour of continuous recording
• Website: rylo.com

They can afford to strip down the camera so much because they’ve built the usage around pairing it with a smartphone. The app is cleanly designed and is simple to use (more on that later) but for us, the best bit is that you connect it to your device via a cable.

We’ve read some other reviews that criticise this, but c’mon, what the hell? Have you ever tried to wirelessly connect a GoPro to an iPhone? It’s a fucking nightmare that combines Bluetooth and WiFi failures, forgotten passwords and dodgy connections – not to mention it’s slow when you’re trying to transfer 4k video files. The cable Rylo provide in the box is tiny, slips right into the carrying pouch and makes the whole business of changing camera settings and downloading footage so simple you’ll wonder why you just bought those nonsense BT headphones instead of the good old wired ones. Fantastic. Just bear in mind that you need to choose either an Android or iPhone version of the camera – if you switch phone platform, you’ll no longer be able to connect it.

Using it is simple – you just turn it on, press record and point it vaguely in the direction of your subject or face hole whilst keeping it reasonably steady. This is 360 video, you can worry about the rest later. The software stabilisation is pretty remarkable. Once processed, you’d be hard pressed to tell what was shot on a gimbal and what was done with the Rylo – this is probably the biggest selling point of it for us.

In Conclusion

Again, we really liked this. Really. From not knowing much about shooting 360 video to taking this out for a couple of laps, we were seriously impressed with not only how well it shot and stabilised footage, but how easy it was to use. There are a ton of creative ways this could be used and we’re excited to start exploring them. As someone who makes his living from using cameras, I haven’t been this stoked about using a new one since I saved and saved and bought my first DSLR.

But that price…

Again, this isn’t a professional tool, but $499 is pushing past the price point of a flashy toy and into the start of pro money. You’d have to really want to up your Instagram game to justify getting one of these, and for an extra $200 you could get a GoPro Fusion which does come with the pro features that this skips over.

“As someone who makes his living from using cameras, I haven’t been this excited about using a new one since I saved and saved and bought my first DSLR”

The accessory options are strangely priced too: you can snag an extra battery for $24 which is insanely good value for camera shiz, but getting a protective plastic case (similar to the one that comes free with most other action cameras) will set you back $69. We can’t quite figure out how any of that works.

If you’re the kind of person who has a spare five hundred bucks to burn on a toy, get one. We can’t convey quite how much fun this thing is to use, exploring a whole new way of shooting is exciting to anyone who likes making imagery and telling stories. We had a total blast with it.

But if that money isn’t burning a hole in your pocket… Well.