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The DJI Osmo Pocket 4 Is Incredible… With A Few Exceptions
Join me for an honest, real-world test of the DJI Osmo Pocket 4 as I take it from unboxing to the streets of Vancouver and a late-night run. I’m sharing my first impressions on the new hardware, including the unexpected microphone issues I faced while filming.
✨ 🔗 DJI Osmo Pocket 4: https://geni.us/dji-pocket-4
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- DJI Pocket 3 Review: https://loicba.me/yt/9YS8oojc26M
- My first review! https://loicba.me/yt/jx6I8kxApqU
- Filters for the DJI Pocket 3-4: https://loicba.me/yt/KgPv019mdos
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#djipocket4 #djipocket #djiosmopocket4
► CHAPTERS
00:00 - Introduction
00:22 - Unboxing of the DJI Osmo Pocket 4
01:05 - Initial Setup of the DJI Osmo Pocket 4
01:33 - Testing the DJI Osmo Pocket 4 for the first time!
02:07 - First vlogging test!
03:07 - Microphone Setup
04:24 - Feature I'm the most excited about!
04:59 - Closeup focusing issue?
05:22 - New menus!
07:20 - The new light accessory
09:05 - A zoom issue?
10:24 - Low light DJI Pocket 3 vs DJI Pocket 4 comparison
10:47 - Travelling to Vancouver
14:59 - Microphone/Audio settings
16:58 - Setting up picture profiles
18:20 - Testing the microphone noise reduction
20:11 - The feature that saved me!
21:13 - Visiting Ikea!!
22:49 - It's a wrap!
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- 0:00 Introduction
- 0:22 Unboxing of the DJI Osmo Pocket 4
- 1:05 Initial Setup of the DJI Osmo Pocket 4
- 1:33 Testing the DJI Osmo Pocket 4 for the first time!
- 2:07 First vlogging test!
- 3:07 Microphone Setup
- 4:24 Feature I'm the most excited about!
- 4:59 Closeup focusing issue?
- 5:22 New menus!
- 7:20 The new light accessory
- 9:05 A zoom issue?
- 10:24 Low light DJI Pocket 3 vs DJI Pocket 4 comparison
- 10:47 Travelling to Vancouver
- 14:59 Microphone/Audio settings
- 16:58 Setting up picture profiles
- 18:20 Testing the microphone noise reduction
- 20:11 The feature that saved me!
- 21:13 Visiting Ikea!!
- 22:49 It's a wrap!
Hello everyone. I finally got this DJI Osmo Pocket 4 and no, I do not receive it before anybody else. I have to wait like everybody to get it. I'm really excited to unbox this camera, set it up, and go start shooting some footage so we can know if this camera is as good as its predecessor. Let's get started right away by rolling the intro. For those of you new to this channel, I'm not Ben Mahalford, a young photographer and filmmaker on the journey to become better at this art. I always recommend getting the Croer Combo Kit because it has a bunch of accessories that will allow you to get the most out of this camera. Now, let's get started right away with this unboxing. Here it is. Here's the new little flash that simply clicks on the camera right here. Very excited to test this little one. Okay, so now let's get this camera set up for the very first time. So we're first going to open the camera here. Select the language, open the DJI Mimo app, connect the Pocket 4. Let's make sure the code match. Activate. Activate DJI refresh and start shooting. So it seems like it's doing an update right now. Okay, so the firmware update is officially done. Now, let's head outside to go and test this camera in the real world. Okay, so right before it gets too dark, it's a perfect time to boot up this camera and start taking some footage. One of the most exciting things I want to test is how well it's going to perform in low light conditions. So, while I'm doing my run tonight is a perfect time to test this out. Okay, so the very first thing we're going to do right here is flick this on right here and change the video resolution. By default, it's in 1080p 30 frames per second, but I want to be filming in 4K 24 frames per second. I wouldn't really mind 40 frames per second, but for now, these are the settings I'll be using for this video. Okay, so this is my very first vlogging test using the DJI Osmo Pocket. It's all in the default settings, so I didn't change anything else except changing the frame rate. So, I'm really curious to see how it looks. I'll probably not be filming most of my videos like this, but I want to see how it looks. First of all, it is getting pretty dark already based on the screen. The colors look a little bit better on the DJI Osmo Pocket 4 than the DJI Pocket 3. Uh, but yeah, we'll see eventually for that how they compare. But yeah, how is this looking? I will say one little thing I already noticed is that the joystick is kind of very different compared to the Awesome Pocket 3. First of all, it only goes up, down, and left to right. It doesn't go in diagonal anymore, which is a little bit annoying. But the good thing is that it's a bit more responsive. So you can easily now go through and uh tweak it to go slower or faster and it will only go horizontally or vertically depending on how you started at the beginning. So you could see this as being a pro or a con depending on the situation. Okay, so next thing we're going to do here is connect this little wireless microphone. One of the things I love with DJI Awesome Pocket cameras is that they have these wireless microphones that allow to get really good audio and basically take no space on you and they work really well. So, for this one, we simply have to press the button on the side here. It should vibrate and get on and we should be getting really good audio on the DJI Osmo Pocket 4. Okay, so I must say that it was a little bit more complex than I expected to get this wireless microphone connected. I had to follow the right instructions and then just wait and it magically connected. Uh, I would have preferred if this process was a lot easier, but it wasn't that bad overall. So, now that it's on me, I'm very curious how does it sound. It's so small compared to the other one that I really wonder is it going to sound good or not. Two things I realized on the camera right away are first of all, right now it keeps telling me that it enabled the low light mode. So, I don't know if this is something that happened automatically. I guess so, uh, because it's low light right now. And the second thing is also that there's a box around my face. So, right now when I'm moving around and I look at the screen, there's a box showing my face. And I guess this is for automatically tracking if I wanted to. But it's kind of nice to know that they have a face here. And they're probably focusing on my face right now as it should. One of the features I'm the most excited about on this new camera is this new button right here that allows us to zoom in very easily. So, if I click it one time, it's going to zoom in two times. If I click it two times, it's going to zoom in four times. Uh, it's very convenient and very fast to zoom in and out. One thing I did realize right away is that they did remove the option to be able to zoom using the screen here. So, it will not work anymore, which is a little bit annoying because I'm kind of used to go and zoom using the screen and I'll have to get used to this new way of zooming instead. One little bummer here is I was trying to get this close-up shot with the leaf in front and it just wouldn't focus. I then tried it on my Jim Pocket 3 and it focused no problem. So, I hope this is just a firmware issue that they can fix later on. Uh because if this is the case, I love taking close-up shots. It will be a big bummer if it cannot do it properly here. I was looking for the brightness option inside of the menus and realized that now there's three different pages in the quick access menu. I do think they moved a lot of things there that make sense, but it's a totally redesign of the menu system. So, I'll probably do another video where I'll go in depth about a lot more differences because I'm starting to realize there's a lot more things that are different inside of this camera than I thought by only looking at the release videos and looking at some information on the website. Okay, so I've been talking about running, but I haven't actually started running. So, let's go. 1 2 3. Here we go. It might seem silly that I decided to test this camera while running, but the reason why the DJ Pocket cameras are great is because they have a gimbal. In situations like this, it should help keeping the image stable. I can say that while running right now, the camera is wobbling all around. Okay, so I kind of forgot how hard it is to talk and also run at the same time, especially when I'm going uphill. So, I'll stop recording the video right now and then join you once we're at the top of the mountain because there's some beautiful views to see from there. See you then. Last up time. I'm almost at the top here. I made it. Time to show you the views and catch up my breath. Now, let's talk about what I think is the most interesting accessory, and this little light right here. It simply comes on the back here, clips on, and will turn on right away. But that's not it. If you come here on the top, you can actually change its strength. You can turn it off by clicking a few seconds. Okay, so wrong button. So you really see this is my first time for me doing this because I didn't align it quite perfectly. But if you come on the top here, we can switch first of all the strength. We can have three different strengths. So lower, medium, and high. But you can also change the color temperature. You can have it cool, can have it normal, or you can have it warm. Maybe not the right order here, but you get the general idea. This is so cool, and I'm really excited to see how it's going to look on the DJI Awesome Pocket 4. Okay, so now let's do a little test to see how well this light works. So there's no light right now. Let's turn it on. Okay, so now this is the light on at the slowest setting. Turn it up one more. Another another. I don't think I would go full strength. It's a little bit too much in my opinion. But I do like just the little fill here just to see me better when I'm vlogging at night. But then let's also see the different color temperatures. This is pretty cool. I'm not sure I love it. This is a little bit better. But I definitely like the warm tones here where you can see me really well at nighttime. But you can also see the background here with all the lights of the city. So now it's time for me to continue running and talk more about this. I'm very curious to know what do you think about this footage up to now. I haven't seen any of it on my computer. I've only seen it on the screen up to now. So, I have no idea at all how it's turning out. A weird little thing I just discovered here is if I try zooming while it's in low light mode here, while I'm filming, it won't zoom in or out. If you stop the recording and then zoom, there's no problem. So, this is a little bit of a weird thing. Not the end of the world, but it's kind of sad that you cannot zoom in while filming in the nighttime mode. Okay, so this is a wrap for my run and time to head back home and get some sleep. I won't have much time to film the next few days, but I'll still try to test the camera during the daytime to get a better feel of how it's working. There's so much new stuff inside of it. So, I'm definitely going to be doing a in-depth video comparing this to the DJI Awesome Pocket 3 with all the new features. Uh, I also have an in-depth review of this camera coming soon. So, if you're enjoying this content, definitely hit the like button below uh and subscribe to the channel so you can know when the next video is coming out. If you were wondering, here is how both of these cameras compare. So, I have the DJI Awesome Pocket 3 and the DJI Pocket 4 both side by side uh in low light condition. So, I really wonder if there's going to be a visible improvement between these two. But again, I'll do an in-depth review with more information about all of this. made it to coffee before heading back home. I did not have time to film much in the last few days, so I'll try to film a lot today because I have beautiful landscapes in Vancouver's before heading back down to Seattle. Perfect. The directions follow the security step. I made it to Vancouver. I love this airport right here. It's a beautiful one. Now, time to go get my car and get going for the rest of the day. There's so much to do today. Next up, a good brunch with some food at Gem Cafe place here in Vancou. I'm now in Vancouver and walking towards the brunch spot. It's really beautiful right now with all the flowers coming out here and perfect weather with a nice blue sky. So, I'm very happy that we can test the camera in these perfect conditions. I did notice on the plane that my settings were switched to DLOG. I did not want to film most of the video in DLog. I want to keep the normal settings so you get an idea how this camera the normal settings with no settings that were customized or any color grading or things like that. Uh so I'll do my best to try and match that when I'm editing. But I'm back on normal colors and filmed about half of what I had on the plane on normal colors too. So we're back with the default settings right now. Everything is default on the camera just out of the box to see how good it looks with these settings. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. I just made it here to one of my favorite places in all of Vancouver, which is Spanish Banks Beach. Uh, it's a beautiful location that I've definitely shown in some of videos before, and I'm very curious to know, how do you like the footage right now? I've seen the footage at night, but I haven't seen the footage during the daytime. So, I have no idea how this is looking, especially in all the normal settings. Is it looking good? Is it looking bad? Let me know down in the comments below. Okay, now let's talk about some of the settings I've set up on the DJ Osmo 4 to get the most out of this little microphone because the default settings will not get the best results out of it. So, first of all, we're going to come down here in the quick menu. And I love that they moved the microphone options out of the quick menu. And now if you come down here, we're going to want to enable the 32-bit float option. This is basically going to allow that if you start shouting or you're very low in your microphone, it's going to have to capture all the information and allow you to fix it in post afterwards. It's a bit like if you had a raw photo instead of JPEG photo when you're taking photographs. Now, if you go lower down, I also like enabling the audio to video sync. Basically, it's going to allow that when you start recording, it's going to create a file on the the DJI microphone and then when you stop, it's also going to stop. And this is a great backup option if by accident something happens in transmission. Here you'll get that file. By default, this microphone will be recording all the time or whenever you manually press on it. So, I just like having the option of having everything synchronized automatically. I just realized I forgot to mention another audio feature that I enabled right away when I got the DJI Oso Pocket 4, and it's the audio backup option. Basically, this allows you to get both audio from the camera and also the microphone. So, it will use the microphone as being the main input if it's connected to the camera, but will also get some backup audio from the DJI Osmo Pocket 3. The reason this is great is if there's an issue with the microphone, you can still use the audio from the camera. So, for example, if the microphone is in my pocket and it'll get the good audio, I might still have good audio from the DJ Awesome Pocket 4. So, that's a very important one to enable right away. There's so many more options inside of this audio menu, too. And the great thing with which button does things because I didn't like that on the new microphone sometimes you would press a button and would do something that you were not expecting and it did not use all the features on the microphone and all the possibilities of different button combinations. So I love that now we can tweak this to our own liking. One thing you absolutely want to set up right away when you get the DJI Awesome Pocket 4 are the different custom modes. Basically, these allow to save a bunch of different settings inside of the video modes and then access them very quickly. For me, this is going to be 4K and DLOG using 24 frames per second. Then I'm going to do a second one with the same settings, but for 120 frames per second, a further one for 60 frames per second, and the last one for 240 frames per second. The cool thing is that with the DJ Pocket 4 is I can also assign this new custom button to be able to quickly switch between them without having to go through the menus. And I'm very excited to have this set up. Okay, so there's two little things I want to mention that I realized while setting up this right away. The first one is when you select DLOG, there's now an option to have color recovery, and this basically allows you to get a proper preview instead of having this washed out or gray image when you're filming on the camera, which makes it a lot easier to see what you're filming. The second one is a pretty big bummer, and it's that there's no DLOG for 120 frames per second. This was an option on the older camera, so I don't know why they removed it in this one. I understand that the old one was not proper DLOG, but I really hope that they bring this back because it really sucks not having the full flexibility of DLOG when you're filming inside of 120 frames per second or 240 frames per second. One thing I haven't tested up to now, and I think it's a good time to test right now, is how well the noise cancellation works on this little microphone. So, if I understood correctly, I double click on the button here and it should switch it on. So, now it should be on. Uh, does it help with the noise of the wood chipper they have in the background here? They're cutting down some trees and also the wind like you can see in my hair uh all around here. So, I'm very curious to see if this helps or not. Usually, I tend to prefer recording the audio without using wind reduction inside of here and then doing it in post because I feel sometimes it works a little bit better. But if this one works well, why not use it if it's already built in inside of here? So yeah, uh let me know if you think it look it sounds good or not, if I should be using this more or not in my upcoming videos. Okay, so let's talk about the feature that got me the most excited about this DJI Osmo Pocket 4, and it's this button right here to zoom inside. So, it's going to apply a two times or four times digital zoom. I usually don't love digital zoom, but I did realize in my DJI Pocket 3, I'd zoom quite a lot at two times. Now, the question is, is it any good at four times? I'm not sure it's going to be great. I did test a bunch of times today, but again, I haven't seen the footage. So, if you think it looks good, let me know. If you think it's horrible and I shouldn't use it, also let me know down in the comments below. Time for me to start heading back home. But one thing I forgot to mention that is actually the built-in storage. I totally forgot to bring extra SD cards when I went back to Montreal. So, when I got the camera, I didn't have an extra SD card to put inside of it. But, because it has 100 gigs built inside of the camera, I could just start recording right away. And that's what I've been using since the beginning of filming this video, and I still have about an hour left of footage I can film on it. So, it's been a huge saver in this situation, and I'm sure it's going to save me a bunch of times in the future. But now it's time to say bye to this beautiful landscape and start heading back down to Seattle. I have a last stop to do at IKEA to get some furniture and then I'm actually going back home. I made it here to IKEA. It's kind of crazy right now because of the tires in the US. Basically, everything is more expensive at IKEA in the US than in Canada. I didn't realize it until not long ago. So, I'm here to get a few photo frames for my office and then also getting a bunch of smart home things for my apartment. So, very excited to get all of this cuz these are all kinds of things I actually wanted to get. This is dangerous. I think I could fall asleep in these little chairs here. This is so cool. This was a successful wrap here at IKEA. And it's also time for me to wrap up this video. There's so many more differences between the DJI Pocket 3 and the DJI Pocket 4. So, I'll have a full in-depth review where I'll compare every single new thing or differences between the DJI Pocket 3 and the DJI Pocket 4. I'll also do a more in-depth review of the DJ Pocket 4 after using it for a few months to really get a good idea of how good this camera is. So, there's a lot more content about this camera coming on my channel. If you enjoyed this video, please let me know by hitting the like button below and definitely subscribe for more content on photography and film making. See you in the next one.
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What is this video about?
I finally got my hands on the DJI Osmo Pocket 4, and I wanted to test it the way I always do: right out of the box, in real-world conditions. So I unboxed it, set it up, and immediately headed outside to see how it performs in low light, while running, and across Vancouver's best-looking spots.
The first thing that struck me was how much sharper and more detailed the footage looks compared to the Pocket 3, especially in darker conditions. The new zoom button is genuinely convenient—click once for 2x, twice for 4x. The built-in light accessory is a nice touch for fill lighting while vlogging at night, and you can adjust both the brightness and color temperature, which is thoughtful. I also appreciate the 100GB of internal storage; I actually relied on it since I didn't bring extra SD cards.
But I ran into some real issues. The joystick now only moves horizontally or vertically, not diagonally anymore—which took some getting used to. More annoying was the close-up focusing problem. I couldn't get sharp focus on a leaf in front of me, while the Pocket 3 nailed it instantly. I'm hoping that's a firmware fix waiting to happen. There's also a weird limitation where you can't zoom in while recording in low-light mode; you have to stop recording first.
The wireless microphone setup was more convoluted than I expected, and I spent time digging through audio settings to get the best results. But once configured—enabling 32-bit float recording, audio backup, and the noise-reduction feature—the audio quality is solid. The new custom picture profiles and the ability to save multiple shooting modes with a quick button is excellent for workflow.
I'm planning a full in-depth comparison with the Pocket 3 and a longer-term review after I've spent more time with it. There's genuinely a lot more to explore here than I initially thought, both in terms of what's improved and what needs attention. So far, I'm impressed, but this camera definitely has a few exceptions worth knowing about.