How do you follow on from one of the best selling cameras ever made? DJI’s new Pocket 4 has some big boots to fill. Simon Wyndham puts it through its paces to see if it’s a worthy upgrade.
The DJI Osmo Pocket 3 is one of the most successful cameras ever made. In fact in 2024 it held nearly 24% of video camera sales in Japan, so there's a lot riding on the release of the DJI Osmo Pocket 4, its successor. It’s long been rumoured that there would be a standard model and a ‘pro’ version with dual lenses. For now, while rumors are intensifying about a new model maybe for June, the device is a single lens affair that looks very similar in appearance to its predecessor. So, what’s new?
One of the headline new features is the 240 fps slow motion in full 4K glory. This is a pretty big deal and it's possibly one of the first consumer cameras I’m aware of that can do this.
Another very notable new feature on the Pocket 4 is 10-bit D-Log recording. Don’t be mistaken, this isn't D-Log M which is featured on the Osmo Pocket 3 and on DJI's other action cameras. D-Log M isn't really a true log mode and often has to be treated as Rec.709 in a post workflow. D-Log on the other hand is the full fat logarithmic recording that you find on higher end cameras such as the Ronin 4D.
Additionally, there’s improvements to the low light mode, the 2x lossless digital zoom can now be used with the Active Track mode, which you couldn't do on the Pocket 3. DJI has also included film tones, which we're now seeing on its other range of cameras.
The stills resolution has been increased to 37 megapixels, which is significantly higher than the 10 megapixels found on the Pocket 3. There’s also now four channel audio recording so you can hook up four wireless mics simultaneously. There's a more tactile joystick so you can achieve finer movements when you manually control the gimbal. There’s a bigger battery, and finally there's 107 GB of built-in storage as well. No small feature, given the current cost of memory!
An important consideration to bear in mind throughout this review is that the Pocket 3 is not being discontinued. It is still very much a current device, and DJI is keen to point that out. And, it now costs less than the Pocket 4, therefore vastly increasing its value for money factor. In an increasingly difficult economy, that’s not something that’s easy to ignore.
Visually, the Pocket 4 doesn't look all that different from the Pocket 3. It's ever so slightly larger in size, and it’s a few grams heavier. You need to look closely to see the differences.
One of the first differences that you’ll notice are the two extra buttons beneath the LCD screen, which allow you to control the zoom physically rather than relying on the touch screen. There’s also the custom mode button as well, which can be assigned to different functions.
The Active Track system is a lot more practical and less limited than the one found on the Pocket 3. You can now use tracking with the 2x zoom engaged, and with D-Log as well. All of this means that you have a lot more flexibility and creative control over the shots that you can capture with this camera.
I noticed that the tracking system does appear to keep up with subjects a bit better than the Pocket 3 as well as being slightly smoother. Something to bear in mind is that if you're using a custom tracking mode such as the Dynamic Framing mode, where you can choose your framing rather than keeping the subject centrally composed, you are unable to use the 2x zoom with it.
A new feature that I found incredibly useful for when I'm self-shooting is the addition of gesture controls. Once the feature is turned on, you can hold up your palm, which will lock the camera onto you as the tracked subject, then you can use a front-facing V-sign with your fingers and it will start and stop recording on command. This is an increasingly archaic but still obscene gesture in the UK, Ireland, and Australasia, which will make things interesting when it launches.
The gesture control feature is super useful, though, because with the Pocket 3 I generally always had to go into the mobile app for self shoot scenarios. That’s because, if you were standing a distance away from the camera it was easier to get you in frame, rather than going up to the camera, manually dragging a box or double tapping on your face, and hoping that the camera wouldn’t lose you. Gesture control means that it's a lot more convenient to do self-shooting, but there is one limitation to be mindful of when using it, and that’s that the gimbal can't move 360-degrees.
DJI's other gimbals, such as the Ronin RS5, can do a full 360 rotation, or rather an ‘infinite rotation’. It would have been nice to see this on the Pocket 4. The lack of it means that when you're doing self-shooting, you need to make sure that if you're walking past the camera, the system is orientated in such a way that you can use the maximum rotational ability of the gimbal. This is around the right-hand side of the camera if the screen's facing you, or the left side if it's facing away from you.
It’s a minor niggle, but there’s been a few times where I’ve set up a self-tracking shot, and then returned to the camera only to find that it reached the limit of the gimbal movement. If there is a Pocket 5 I’d like to see infinite rotation make an appearance on that camera. Another niggle that’s carried on from the Pocket 3 is that you still can't turn it off when there is a filter attached to it! This is because when the gimbal folds itself away, if you've got a filter on the front of the lens then there isn’t enough gap between the lens and the gimbal assembly to properly stow itself into the storage position.
This was a constant annoyance on the Pocket 3, because if you're using ND filters or the wide angle adaptor etc, and you don't want to take them off between shots, you have to keep taking them on and off or just deal with the fact that your lens might be left in a slightly more vulnerable position while you're carrying it around. I would have thought this would have been a design priority for the camera, because it was one of those issues a lot of people had with the Pocket 3.
If you already own a Pocket 3 and you’re considering upgrading, another thing to be aware of is that the accessories, apart from the magnetic lens filters, don't transfer over. For example, if you have the extended battery module for the Pocket 3, it’s not compatible with the Pocket 4.
One of the last things on my list of minor gripes with the Pocket 4 is that it's still not weatherproof. If you speak to a lot of people who are extensive Pocket 3 users, one of the most common things that they say they would want to see on the Pocket 4 is some kind of weatherproofing.
If you're vlogging and you’re doing lots of traveling, you're going to come into situations where it might be raining really hard or unexpectedly. Although the Pocket 3 did demonstrate that it could take a bit of rain, there was no official confirmation of any weatherproofing. It’s a similar situation with the Pocket 4. It's not officially weatherproof, so it would have been good to have official assurance that the camera could withstand different weather conditions such as rain and snow, and even sand.
Now that I've had a little bit of a rant about stuff that I think could have been made better, let's talk about slow motion. 240 fps slow motion in 4K is going to be a much talked about feature on the Pocket 4, and it’s likely we'll see it on other models of action camera from different manufacturers as the year goes on, but the Pocket 4 got there first.
It’s not without some limitation in the current firmware, however. It’s notable that you can't currently use the 240 fps mode with D-Log. But, before you despair too much, I have heard on the rumour mill that it's possible that DJI will add D-Log to the slow motion mode in a firmware update. I sincerely hope that is the case because it would certainly open up the usefulness of the feature for me and lots of other users.
I did find that the standard colour profile that is used in 240 fps mode, and indeed the standard colour profile in normal frame rate shooting is a bit too over sharp and electronic looking, even if you dial down the sharpness settings. On the plus side you can use active track in 240 fps, which you couldn’t do at 120 fps on the Pocket 3. Likewise, the low light mode is also impressive, although as per any of these low light modes it can look a bit overprocessed with very aggressive noise reduction. It does, however, mean that you can shoot in extremely low light levels when you need to.
That said, I've tested the camera using the standard video mode in the same very low light conditions, and to my eye I don't think you're even going to need the low light mode most of the time. Once the footage has been graded, I found that D-Log in low light looks much more realistic and closer to how it was in the real situation. The noise levels are very well controlled as well.
So, just like the Pocket 3, it copes enormously well in low light conditions without even needing that low light mode. This makes the camera incredibly flexible if you're going to be shooting in all sorts of different, and sometimes very difficult, lighting conditions while also wanting the flexibility to grade the image in post as well.
So, what’s the image quality like on the Pocket 4, and how well does it grade? Now that I've had a play around with the D-log recordings, I’ve found that you can pull a heck of a lot of colour information out of it. It exhibits a really deep colour at times, that, although it looks very saturated, it's not even close to being oversaturated when you look at the vectorscope.
As a result, there's a lot of flexible grading potential there and that's in no small part down to the fact that it's got full D-Log now. Having full fat D-Log on the Pocket 4 means that it can be used seamlessly in colour managed workflows within Resolve. It’s a lot easier to deal with when you're using colour space transforms as well, because a D-Log profile is built into Resolve. On the other side of the coin, if you're using D-Log M from the Pocket 3 you have to treat it like Rec.709.
That said, the Pocket 3 is by no means a slouch when it comes to image quality. It’s just that D-Log gives you two stops more dynamic range and allows the camera more flexibility in grading. That's not to say the Pocket 3 is redundant, because it's still a great camera.
One thing that I did notice was that if I dialled down both the sharpness and the noise reduction to minimum, the camera can appear a bit noisy in the shadows. So my advice would be if you're not going to be doing a lot of grading and you're not prepared to do your noise reduction in post, by all means dial down the sharpness but keep the noise reduction levels at the default so you're less likely to suffer from noisy shadows. I did find that the shadows are noticeably more noisy than the rest of the image, even when you're shooting in good light and at low ISO settings.
If I'm being really finicky about the image quality noticed that in some very fine detail situations Moiré could be present. I’m not sure why this is. Perhaps it could be a lack of OLPF filter, or it could be down to the method of downsampling from the high resolution of the sensor.
When it comes to comparing the Pocket 4 to the Pocket 3 in terms of which one you should buy, or whether you should upgrade, most of the advantages of the Pocket 4 are related to practical things such as the ability to have Active Track in more modes, and the ability to use D-log while you're using the 2x zoom.
You've also got physical buttons to control the zoom as well so it's also a lot quicker to operate in that regard. The gesture control means that it's a lot easier and faster to set up for self-shooting. Most of the new features on the Pocket 4 do tend to suit more advanced users, which is possibly why the Pocket 3 will remain part of DJI’s lineup.
I should mention that the Pocket 4 has the ability to lock on to recognised subjects. You can store your face profile as a registered subject and you can set the autofocus system to lock on to those registered subjects. For example if you are in a crowded place, this means that the camera focus isn't going to lock on to any other face around you. Instead, it will keep solely on you or the registered subject you have chosen, which should reduce focus errors in situations where you're in a city or you're with lots of other people around.
The focus lock mode isn't just restricted to registered subjects. You can also set the focus to lock on to whatever subject you have selected to follow in your shot as well. Once again, hopefully this should reduce any focus hunting or focus issues that might arise from shooting in a complicated environment.
The Pocket 4 is very much an evolution from the Pocket 3. I do hope that DJI will include D-Log with the slow motion mode in a future firmware update, but the Pocket 3 is still a very powerful and capable camera. The fact that it will now have its price reduced will make it even more value for money if you don’t need the added facilities of its successor. The Pocket 4 is going to suit people who need maximum versatility, and need those more powerful picture options to perhaps integrate with other cameras as well.
To sum up, the DJI Pocket 4, while very much being evolutionary rather than revolutionary, continues the legacy of the Pocket series of cameras in a way that gives even more power to the user. Let’s just see some weatherproofing next time around!
The DJI Pocket 4 will be available from April 22 for £445/ €499. It's not officially available in the US, but you should be able to find it for $499 or thereabouts.