DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro Review: Long Battery Life and Great 4K Footage

Industry-leading artillery life. Built-in representation (plus SD card). Excellent low-light footage. Subject tracking. Smaller, lighter than a GoPro. Works seamlessly with DJI Mic 2.

Default colour rendering isn’t the best.

DJI's caller Osmo Action 5 Pro is present to vie with the caller GoPro Hero 13 Black. The company's latest action camera is smaller and lighter, has 47 GB of built-in storage, and has artillery beingness that GoPro owners don't adjacent situation to imagination about.

Throw successful a new, higher-resolution representation sensor, improved low-light capabilities, taxable tracking, and out-of-the-box enactment for the DJI Mic 2 wireless microphone, and you person a camera that's not lone susceptible of getting that changeable but has the artillery beingness to support getting the changeable agelong aft the contention has unopen down.

Go Longer

The Osmo Action 5 Pro stands retired from the remainder of the action camera market for its artillery life. It tin sprout good implicit 2 hours astatine 4K solution and 60 frames per second, which is acold and distant the longest tally clip of immoderate enactment camera I've ever tested (and I've tested a lot). I notation this archetypal due to the fact that thing that often gets mislaid successful reviews and spec comparisons is the elemental information that immoderate footage is amended than nary footage.

To supply a factual example, I don't emotion the colour rendering of the Osmo Action 5 Pro successful 10-bit Normal colour mode, but I'll instrumentality it implicit nary footage astatine all, which is what the GoPro Hero 13 would connection maine aft the 1-hour-and-45-minute signaling people erstwhile its artillery would dice and the camera would unopen off. Battery beingness matters, and successful the lawsuit of enactment cameras, fixed that each else—sensors, stabilization, ergonomics—can beryllium truthful similar, it mightiness beryllium the astir important origin successful getting the shots you want.

The Osmo's camera plan hasn't changed—the assemblage is lightly textured, making it casual to hold, and it remains the aforesaid size, retaining the magnetic mounting system. (I've ever liked that the cage for the Action bid allows some vertical and horizontal mounting.) While I don't person immoderate accessories different than immoderate neutral-density (ND) filters, everything that fits your Action 4 should proceed to enactment with the Action 5. And the much susceptible battery? It's backward compatible with the Action 4.

While the plan is mostly unchanged, the beforehand and backmost screens are new. Both are larger and present person OLED panels. Whether it's the OLED oregon the information that they're brighter I'm not sure, but they're fantastic adjacent successful sunny conditions.

The Action 5 Pro uses a astir 40-megapixel 1/1.3 sensor, which is the aforesaid size arsenic the erstwhile model, but with astir 4 times the pixel density, making it notably sharper. It's besides larger than the 1/1.9 sensor you get successful the GoPro. I cognize those numbers look abstract, truthful see what our metric friends know: the DJI sensor is 10 x 7.5 mm portion the GoPro sensor is lone 6.3 x 5.5 mm. A larger sensor usually means brighter and much elaborate shots.

DJI is claiming that this sensor tin seizure up to 13.5 stops of dynamic range, and so it is present that I portion ways with the Osmo Action 5 Pro. I wholly judge DJI's claim, but I don't similar the results. Out of the box, the Action 5 Pro successful mean colour mode looks similar it's shooting successful HDR, and I don't mean that successful a bully way. Shadows are unnaturally light, colors are oversaturated, and the results look fake to maine successful the mode that overdone HDR photos look fake.

The bully quality is that this is not the lone mode to shoot. The Osmo Action 5 Pro supports a wide scope of preset colour profiles arsenic good arsenic D-Log video, truthful aft playing astir with different modes to spot what they were like, I changeable everything successful Log and did my coloring utilizing desktop software. I besides recovered shooting successful D-Log superior successful low-light situations; it was adjacent amended than DJI's caller Super Night Mode. I notation this not truthful overmuch to ding DJI for its colour rendering, which I see chiefly a substance of taste, but to constituent retired that default settings aren't ever the close choice.

Sharp and Stable

Speaking of debased light, I happened to beryllium investigating the Action 5 Pro alongside the GoPro Hero 13, and successful debased light—by which I mean everything from twilight to conscionable indoors during the daytime—the Action 5 Pro consistently had better-looking footage. Significantly better. In immoderate situations, the GoPro footage became truthful pixelated and mushy that it was useless, but the Action 5 Pro had nary issues. You tin argue, arsenic GoPro likes to, that debased airy is not the spot for an enactment camera, but if you're shooting your kid's sports practice, for example, which is often precocious successful the evening, past debased airy matters and the Action 5 Pro is the superior camera successful that regard.

The Action 5 Pro lens has a fixed aperture of f/2.8 with a 155-degree tract of presumption and a adjacent absorption region of 14 inches. The second is simply a flimsy betterment implicit the Action 4 and should marque it a small amended for vlog-style shots. The 1 disadvantage of the larger sensor is that the adjacent absorption region isn't rather arsenic adjacent arsenic it is with a GoPro. This means sometimes you extremity up with out-of-focus footage (I ne'er had this contented with the Action 4, though I did tally into it with Insta360's Ace Pro and I person seen users complaining astir it successful the Action 4).

Other tiny but invited additions see a unit sensor that tells you however heavy you're diving oregon however precocious you are erstwhile skydiving oregon conscionable hiking successful the mountains, the built-in 47 GB of retention (which works retired to astir an hr of 4K footage), and the quality to sprout 4K astatine 120 fps successful 4:3 facet ratio.

One of my favourite things astir the enactment camera marketplace close present is that determination is nary atrocious stabilization anymore. GoPro, DJI, and Insta360 each usage somewhat antithetic stabilization software, but wide they're each excellent, and the Action 5 Pro is nary exception. I had nary issues with stabilization investigating it portion hiking, biking, sailing, paddleboarding, and escaped diving. It conscionable works.

The Action 5 Pro is 1 of the champion enactment cameras I've ever used. It has the artillery beingness others lone imagination of, shoots precise sharp, elaborate video, and seamlessly pairs with the DJI Mic 2 for large wireless audio. Compared to the GoPro Hero 13, it's a pugnacious call. Both are precise capable, and the caller interchangeable lenses for the GoPro are compelling, but if you request the low-light show and privation the larger sensor, the Action 5 Pro is the camera to get.