DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro review: A longer-lasting action camera

Action cameras like the new DJI Osmo Action 5 have come on a lot over the years. Image quality has improved beyond recognition and the latest cameras now also offer impressive in-camera image stabilisation, 4K and higher resolution and a mind-boggling array of features. But one thing that has been a constant thorn in the side of action cameras the world over is battery life and overheating.

Both of these things are aspects DJI has addressed with its latest camera, the Osmo Action 5 and, in testing, I’ve found it outlasts its main rival – the GoPro Hero 13 Black – by a significant margin. That’s not its only talent, though. It’s also more reasonably priced than the leading GoPro, it comes with a generous amount of storage built-in,  and it’s also more water resistant. The question is, should you buy one?

DJI Osmo Action 5 review: What do you get for the money?

On the face of it, the DJI doesn’t look particularly special. In fact, it’s very similar to last year’s DJI Osmo Action 4. It has the same magnetic latching mount system, which makes it super simple to clip the camera on and off mounts, it’s the same size and all the buttons and sockets and doors are all in the same places, too.

As before, the camera is available in a variety of different packages, but the prices are eminently reasonable. The cheapest is the Standard Combo, which will set you back £329. This comes with the camera itself, one battery, a curved adhesive mount for popping on a helmet and a protective frame that adds an extra magnetic point for shooting vertical videos. It’s a lot cheaper than the basic GoPro Hero 13 Black, which starts at £399.

Next up is the £409 Adventure Combo, which comes with three batteries and a storage box that can charge all of them simultaneously, plus a 1.5m selfie stick. Other packages include a motorbike/mountain biking combo, a more expensive vlogging combo that comes with an external wireless microphone and a charging handle, a diving pack and one for snow sports.

At the heart of all these packages lies the camera itself and although it looks the same from the outside, inside it’s all change. Internally, the new DJI is powered by a Qualcomm chip, not the usual custom DJI silicon, and this – combined with a larger 1,950mAh battery – delivers battery life of up to a claimed four hours.

DJI also says the camera’s 1/1.3in sensor can deliver a dynamic range of 13.5 stops, and it really packs in the features elsewhere, too. There’s new subject centering and tracking and 47GB of built-in storage, so even if you leave your storage card at home, there will always be somewhere to store any footage you need to capture. Plus, for underwater use, the camera comes with a pressure gauge, certification to the EN13319 diving equipment standard and can be submerged to a depth of 20m without a case. That’s 10m deeper than the GoPro Hero 13 Black. Inevitably, there’s also a dose of AI goodness in here – the new SuperNight mode uses AI to process footage in really dark environments.

Resolution capture hasn’t changed all that much. The DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro can capture 4K footage at up to 120fps for 4x slow motion, and at aspect ratios of 4:3 or 16:9. It can record at 2.7K (2,688 x 1,512) at up to 120fps and 1080p at up to 240fps for 8x slow motion footage. As for the bitrate, it records at around 80Mbits/sec in Standard mode, but I recommend you up that for all your recordings to the high bitrate mode, which gets you 110Mbits/sec.

For comparison, the GoPro Hero 13 Black delivers 60Mbits/sec in its standard bitrate mode and 120Mbits/sec in high bitrate mode, while its highest resolution and frame rate combination is 5.3K at 60fps in 16:9. The GoPro can also record 4K footage at up to 120fps and has a near-square aspect ratio mode of 8:7 that you can use to capture vertical and horizontal video simultaneously.

DJI Osmo Action 5 review: What did we like?

The one thing the DJI does really well is battery life. I ran a few basic tests with it and managed to get up to a total of 3hrs 14mins from a single charge in 4K 25fps with stabilisation turned off and high bitrate mode enabled. That beats the GoPro Hero 13 Black by a factor of around two, which lasted 2hrs 10mins in the same test.

That’s a major advantage for the DJI and ensures, more often than not, that the camera will be ready to shoot whenever you grab it from your pocket, with much less need for battery swapping. It’s especially useful for long time lapses where the DJI will just sit there and record for hours and hours without needing to be attended to.

Another positive for the DJI Osmo Action 5 is low-light image quality. In dim or dark conditions, it produces marginally less noisy results than the GoPro, although it’s no silver bullet. If you want to make the best of any action camera, you should be shooting in daylight – low light shots are always going to look grainy when captured with a small sensor.

In fact, image quality in general is pretty darned good, with sharp detail capture, very good image stabilisation – including 360-degree horizon levelling in some modes – and exceptional auto-exposure and colours. Indeed, I found that the Action 5 Pro exposed for shadows brilliantly and balanced exposure far better than the GoPro Hero 13 Black in default mode and while that’s less of a concern for professionals using the camera, it’s great news for most people.

And you don’t have to stick with just the default settings if you don’t like them, either. There’s also the option to shoot in “normal” 10-bit colour, HLG 10-bit and flat profile D-Log M 10-bit colour for easier grading in post.

I’m also a huge fan of the front and rear OLED displays on the DJI. They’re larger, brighter and more colourful than those on the GoPro, and the front display is touch-compatible – especially handy for loggers who won’t have to continually flip the camera around to change settings.

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DJI Osmo Action 5 review: What doesn’t it do well?

I didn’t much care for the quality of the built-in microphone – it picks up the spoken voice clearly enough but with a thinner, more metallic quality than that of the GoPro Hero 13 Black. And the image stabilisation does start to struggle more than I’d like in marginal lighting. On a sunny, early winter’s morning in London, I saw plenty of stabilisation shimmer and jitter when all I was doing was walking along the street – to the extent that it was quite distracting.

Point the camera anywhere near the sun or a light source, meanwhile, and you’ll see a fair bit of lens flare; it’s certainly a lot worse than it is on the GoPro. Now, it is possible to avoid this if you’re aware of it, but I’d rather it was minimised off the bat than have to think about where I am pointing the camera in relation to the sun all the time.

And I have to say that the UI on the Action 5 Pro is just plain fiddly and badly in need of a rethink. It’s simple enough to flip modes – swiping right and left lets you switch from camera to video to night mode and so on – but wrapping your head around where to find important settings can be a challenge, especially when you’re out on a shoot. GoPro does this a lot better, collecting most of the settings crucial to image quality in one simple, vertically scrolling menu.

On a similar theme, I really, really don’t like the way the Osmo Action 5 handles custom profiles. You can create five of these, which appear alongside the main shooting modes, and the process is simple enough, but you can’t give them a name – you’re limited to picking from a selection of icons to represent each one.

Also, I’m yet to be convinced that subject tracking is actually useful for an action camera like this. It seems to work quite well, detecting your main subject automatically and highlighting it with a yellow box but I’ve never really had much trouble keeping my subject in frame with an action camera and I’m not sure it adds much. Plus, because it makes use of a heavy crop to work, you can only use the mode in 2.7K or 1080p resolution anyway.

DJI Osmo Action 5 review: Should you buy one?

Deciding on which action camera to buy really depends on what you’re going to use it for. If you need to use it for professional purposes, the GoPro Hero 13 Black remains the best choice. Its slight superiority on general image quality and particularly stabilisation, its ease of use and broader range of accessories gives it the edge over the DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro and should persuade you to stick with what you know.

However, the DJI Osmo Action 5 makes a great case for itself as the best action camera around for the casual user. Battery life is stellar, it’s more reasonably priced than the GoPro and image quality is great in most scenarios, particularly its automatic exposure and colours.

It has its weaknesses – image stabilisation does get jittery when the light fades and lens flare can be problematic. I’m not a huge fan of the way the UI is organised, either, but largely this is a camera that matches the best in the business, for less money and for those reasons, it’s well worth considering.