Garmin Virb 360 app update upgrades live streaming to 4K

An update to the Garmin Virb 360 app for iOS has increased its live streaming resolution to 4K.

Garmin Virb 360 ($799) is a prosumer 360 camera with the highest video quality I’ve found so far among consumer and prosumer cameras up to around $1,000 or less. It features stabilized 4K 360 video and many other features, including live streaming.

Originally, the Virb 360’s live streaming resolution was limited to 720p. However, Garmin just updated the iOS app to version 4.0.3, which now allows streaming up to 4K!  This makes the Virb 360 one of the very few consumer cameras able to stream at 4K resolution.

I haven’t tested it out.  Please note also that Virb uses your phone’s Wi-Fi signal to connect to your phone, therefore the stream has to be transmitted over your phone’s LTE signal which will likely be the practical limit for the streaming resolution.

Live streaming on the Virb 360 is only on iOS so far.  Garmin hasn’t said anything about enabling streaming for Android phones.  There are rumors that Garmin and Google (which of course owns Android) have some kind of disagreement, which is reportedly why Virb 360 photos can’t be used directly for Google Maps because of its nonstandard aspect ratio.