Is the DJI Osmo Action Still WORTH Buying?! 3 Months Later Review!

Three months ago DJI released their very first action camera the aptly named DJI Osmo action actually came out onto the market swinging it's matched the current reigning champion GoPro spec 4 spec while also having a few neat additions under the hood that have made it a really attractive options out there for those of us creating online content but after all this time there are some problems and do I still have as rosy an opinion of the action as I did in the first couple of months since its release let's find out what's up everyone I'm the everyday dad and if I can figure it out you can figure it out

It's nothing new here on the channel that I love action cameras they absolutely fascinate me and in my younger days before cell phone cameras really kind of took over I solved these as status symbol and you can't really ever get over that I mean that stays in my brain to this day like that's just something that I can't shake off now I've been using the DJI Osmo action for the past three months as less of an action camera and more of an oh crap I really need to get this shot and I can't bring a tripod or gimbal and I want to be as discreet as possible or an OC irn

TGT SAIC BT og camera keep all that right now hope you took notes but that's where I really start to have problems with the camera first up I do want to mention that if you're looking for a spec overview or a more in-depth look at the Osmo action this is not the video for that but in the description below I will leave more in-depth videos including comparisons to other popular and awesome cameras in their own right I'll leave a link to that playlist down in the description below so you can you can check out those spicy topics this is a what do I like and not like after

Three months video no long acronym for that so let's start off with the negatives for a camera called the Osmo action I can't really ever see myself using this as an action camera nor have I used this as an action camera since the first couple of videos I mean sure it's waterproof sure it's durable and heck it's even got really great stabilization much more on this later both good and bad but the biggest negative and one that would be a deal-breaker to me if I needed to use this to record my mountain biking or to record underwater stuff I mean the

Problem is the field of view one of the things that action cameras after GoPro I mean after the GoPro really the thing that you're looking at is their obnoxiously fish-eyed view of the world but that gives you a view of everything like everything in a huge angle which works really well when you are doing my preferred method of action running or mountain biking like those two really need like a wide it lets you be like part of the environment when you can see everything the Osmo action has two basic views the uncropped and unn corrected which is basically GoPros wide field of

View I mean that works okay and it's got the corrected one that's cropped in a little bit to remove that fisheye distortion which falls in somewhere between GoPros wide and linear modes now either works if you're using the camera to vlog I would recommend using the cropped inversion without all the weird warping lines in it you want everything to be like linear as possible but if I'm out on the trails I want everything to show up and the Osmo action doesn't give that to you like I did say the stabilization is both a plus and a negative to me so while you

Have the camera in its basic format with its auto settings the stabilization is awesome and something we'll talk about much more here in a little bit but I've recently purchased a set of magnetic ND filters for the camera which these are a definite plus if you're gonna get this you should get these I bought these and they are amazing the problem is when I'm trying to dial in the exposure manually to take advantage of the 180 degree rule that basically just means keep your shutter speed twice your resolution so we're recording in 30 frames per second right now our shutter speed is 60 if you

Want to do the same thing here I get the exact same wobbles I get from my GoPro doing the same thing so this clip that you're currently seeing is the Osmo action set the 4k 30 frames per second at 60 shutter speed with an ND filter on and you can see there's like a bounce that goes along with it almost like it's a cell phone camera that's like overriding its optical image stabilization the next clip will make this go away when I put it back into auto mode and I take off the ND filter and I think that's something to do with the algorithm and needing more frames to

Calculate the good Rocksteady stabilization but that's totally yes I don't actually know I just know that it in fact has the problem I'm not an engineer my other real negative with the action is something that sounds silly and I did catch a lot of flack for this when I complained about it in the original video but I still get have a but I still have a problem with it this little port door that covers the SD card it gets torn off all of the time now I don't keep very long fingernails so I use my thumb to pop the SD card in and out and every single time I put the SD

Card in or out the port gets yanked off and in the months my fear has come true it's really starting to come loose I mean you saw I barely had to put any pressure on it at all for it to finally come off and if this little piece of plastic breaks the benefit of the camera being waterproof goes away which sucks I mean it's hard to have a waterproof camera if part of the camera is missing now those are the specific problems I have the overarching issue I have like we already mentioned is the action really isn't the best action camera plus you combine that with the existence of

The DJI Osmo pocket I mean that is also a better stabilized camera so I'm not exactly sure what I would recommend the action to do now that might seem like I think the Osmo action is a bad camera but that's not the case I know the beginning of this video is like man this guy's really dogged on the Osmo action but I actually don't think it's a bad camera I do really like it for very specific things so let's talk about those things that I really like because honestly there's a lot of them first up and much like we talked with the a6 400 video from earlier in the week the main

Benefit of the Osmo action over every other camera of this kind for the most part I mean the rx0 mark 2 does have a flip up screen is this front monitor can be switched to actually being a front-facing monitor vlogging style now it's not perfect it doesn't have zebras histograms or other exposure methods and it has a pretty significant delay between reality and then what the monitor is showing like a second of a delay which is pretty substantial but having a little screen that will give you framing options and basic exposure information is actually really darn

Useful and honestly this monitor right here this little piece of glass is the whole reason I keep the Osmo action around now I do wish it kind of retained the touchscreen functionality from the back but if you put the camera into Auto mode you don't really need to mess around with the set and the monitor can just stay in front and it's actually really useful just to know what's going on in front of the camera like that's very important like the two cameras I'm using right now the rx100 mark 7 and the GH 5 both have flip screens that I can see what's going on

Right now another really good thing about the action which is surprising because this took GoPro 3 attempts to finally get right and that's the internal microphones the internal microphones on the action are surprisingly good and I actually think the audio sounds better than on my GoPro Hero 7 black which like I said that's very surprising to me because GoPro has much more hands-on experience making action cameras compared to the mostly drone and gimbal producing DJI will the disappoint the GoPro Hero 7 black is like the best the best action camera

Will have to figure that out I'm not necessarily sure yet on whether I will replace my GoPro entirely it's still amazing to me that a camera can be waterproof down to about 33 feet with all sorts of seals and gaskets and just ways of keeping stuff out that it actually has very usable internal mics and preamps and that speaks very highly for DJI at least they were able to backwards engineer what GoPro had done right and it does work really well something else I like that only really makes sense when you compare to the previously mentioned Osmo pocket is

Where the Osmo pocket has a very similarly sized sensor it has a depth of field so part of the image is in focus while the other isn't like on the gh 5 right now I am in focus the background is not that like plane of focus is called depth of field and when that works it looks really good like right now but when I use the pocket I had some serious focusing problems because it's just such a small camera and it doesn't have a good auto focusing system the action has everything in focus which in my opinion is how a camera of this size should operate you can't get really good

Phase detection autofocus built into tiny sensors like these you couldn't do it in 2019 so future hopefully so I'd rather have everything be in focus and just not have to worry about it and bringing it back to earlier that's another thing that makes this screen so useful you don't have to actually worry if the image is in focus what this points at will be in focus and while I complained about it earlier I do want to mention how good the stabilization inside of this camera is now when the camera set to autumn and the Rocksteady has turned on the

Stabilization is very very impressive now Rocksteady does seem to work slightly differently than GoPros hyper smooth because when you use this device in stability compromising ways like running that's where I take this out all the time the the footage looks like it was in a gimbal like it's crazy impressive especially when you realize that this kind of tech didn't exist even two years ago without a big bulky gimbal you can handhold this or just have it in a simple tripod and get crazy results like yeah so this is the next thing it's kind of a nerdy thing to really like and

Thankfully I'm a nerd that likes this thing the overall design philosophy of the user interface now that's probably one of my favorite of any action camera ever it's very intuitively laid out it gives you quick swiping access to the manual controls the flat picture profile the frame rates the resolution it's just darn quick and easy to get any of the settings you might need now I've used a lot of action cameras since starting this YouTube channel I've use expensive ones budget ones 360 ones built-in gimbal once and the Osmo action has by

Far the best interface of any of them and I really hope they start moving some of this design philosophy over to there less action ii products too because i don't necessarily like the menu system the Osmo pocket I really like this menu system so three months later is the Osmel action still worth buying maybe I mean I know that doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement but my issue with the action camera isn't that it's a bad camera it's just that other cameras exist to do the specific niche things better the Osmo POC is the better stabilized travel camera as it actually

Has a gimbal built into it plus it has a better assortment of accessories from external microphones to wireless modules to much better and easier integration with your cell phone and if you need an action camera the GoPro Hero 7 black is still the best action camera ever made it's got wider fov better action stabilization and better overall action accessories compatibility I mean it I mean there's a reason why it's like the og of action cameras the Osmo action is really worth it if you have a specific need for a tiny vlogging camera that has everything in focus is more of like the

Jack of all but master of none thanks for watching