- Check it out!
I got the Osmo Action right here
and this is actually my second time buying this camera.
First time I bought it right when it came out,
made a review about it.
And I thought it was a pretty good camera,
but I just felt there was a lot of room for improvement.
Eventually I did a giveaway with it.
But my buddy Mark has one, loves it,
and he says there's been a bunch of firmware updates
making this camera a lot better,
so I bought it again. (chuckles)
Let's check out what we have here:
our camera, of course.
This is my favorite part,
we're gonna have to zoom in for this.
(crackles) (snaps)
Ahh!
I never realized this,
but the case that the battery comes in
has a little slot for a microSD card.
It's actually kinda clever,
'cause if you're carrying around a spare battery,
you might need a spare card.
But this is one of the main reasons
I repurchased this Osmo Action:
CY-NOVA, CYN-OVA, or whatever.
Osmo Action Dual 3.5 millimeter USB-C adapter.
This is made for the Osmo Action.
It is super compact and it gives me what I need,
which is this mic jack.
And it also has another USB port on here.
But I think I just pop this off,
so this just fits in right here.
But it's a super simple solution
and apparently if you're using older firmware,
the audio from this sounds terrible,
but once you update it to the latest version
it's supposed to sound great.
And the other accessory that I'm really excited about
is this case by PGYTECH.
Now it's a case for your Osmo Action,
but it comes with two cold shoes.
Now the back just slides off like that.
We're gonna feed this through,
click that back in,
and then the adapter fits in.
Next I'm gonna attach this microphone here to the side
and plug that in right there.
And check that out,
one of the most compact vlogging setups
with a good microphone.
Now the Insta360 ONE R does have
that reversible flip screen as well,
but the audio quality just isn't 100% there.
I'm gonna go ahead and mount this up here, bang!
I just wanna leave this Osmo Action in the car
as a very simple vlogging option.
- Oh, man!
- (laughs) I don't know if you guys just saw that,
but Kari just walked up and she didn't
know I was in the car,
and she got so spooked.
- Oh, man!
- [Gene] You had no idea I was in here?
- I had no idea you were in the car.
- (laughs) The camera is arms length away right now
and it's actually good 'cause it can show me,
Kari and Sam in the back.
And the little screen on the front of this Osmo Action,
it's very useful.
I mean it's small,
but I can at least tell that
this is my edge of frame on the left,
and Kari's totally in the frame.
If it was the GoPro,
I'd still be guessing.
And if the angle gets shifted like that or somethin',
I might not realize that the angle's not working
until it's too late.
With the picture quality here,
I'm not necessarily looking for amazing image quality,
but what I do care about is the sound quality right here.
I just want good audio.
One of my biggest issues with the Osmo Action
when it first came out
was that there was a terrible lag in the display
when you had RockSteady on.
It was almost like a second delay,
so if you were tryin' to track any sort of action,
you'd be following way behind.
Now the lag is very minimal,
it's about the same as what you would get out of a GoPro,
so that's awesome.
Now the Osmo always had a larger display in the back
so that's a win,
and also of course is the display up here,
I mean that's a really big selling point for the Osmo.
I was thinking that the Eight
was gonna have somethin' like that,
but instead they came out with the add-on,
but GoPro's been so slow at rolling out those accessories,
that who knows when we'll see it. (laughs)
I feel like they've announced that a year ago.
Actually I don't know how long it's been specific...
This is how long ago they've announced it.
And I still can't get ahold of one.
When I made the original video on this,
the GoPro Hero Eight wasn't out yet,
so I didn't realize that this is such a great feature;
takin' this off.
That means if you scratch it accidentally,
you just swap this piece out.
Opposed to the Hero Eight,
where you can no longer do that!
Probably because GoPro wants to sell more cameras (chuckles)
once you scratch the lens.
But I thought that was the worst thing
that they did on the Hero Eight.
That little feature of being able to remove that lens
is one that I took for granted,
but now I appreciate you.
So with the new firmware updates that they've done to this,
it makes this camera a lot more appealing.
But there's still that one big advantage
that the GoPro has that the Osmo doesn't.
So what I'm gonna do is record
at the widest possible field of view
on both of these cameras.
On the Osmo Action it's gonna be 4K four-by-three,
and that is a full sensor readout.
And on the GoPro that mode is,
four-by-three mode, or SuperView.
And if you compare the two,
they're actually pretty close.
GoPro is wider,
but not by that much.
It's just a little bit,
so the sensor is actually very wide on the Osmo Action.
And that's great,
because I love my ultra wide field of views,
but neither of these currently have any stabilization.
To add stabilization it's going to have to crop in.
Looking at the GoPro's field of view,
you have our SuperView,
which is the full sensor
and then we add in HyperSmooth to that
and we get a very slight crop in.
So now we have a stabilized shot
that's still very, very wide.
So SuperView with HyperSmooth is the mode
I'm usually using if I'm doing POV.
If I have it mounted onto my helmet,
I want it to capture as much as possible,
so whatever I see the camera's also seeing.
And then after that we have wide and then linear,
and then we could also do linear with Boost stabilization,
so that's awesome.
Each field of view is very useful
in different circumstances,
so I love that.
Now looking at the Osmo field of view,
sure that four-by-three is wide,
but we punch into that 4K with RockSteady
and look how much it punches into the frame.
I mean you can get that a little bit wider
by pulling off the D.WARP,
so you are going to get a little bit more distortion,
but we get a bigger field of view.
And then the other option is to go to 2.7K,
four-by-three aspect ratio,
where you're getting a little bit less information
from the sides,
but more information vertically,
and that is also stabilized.
What I would love to see in a future firmware update
is a mode that utilizes a majority of the sensor
so that we have a stabilized wide shot,
that would be awesome!
But as of right now,
if you wanted the widest setting that's stabilized
on the GoPro; nice and wide.
Opposed to the Osmo's widest settings,
with stabilization,
that's in way, way tighter.
So what I don't like is that with the Osmo,
if you want any stabilization,
you have to get way in there.
Knowing that the Osmo Action does have a very wide sensor
in four-by-three mode,
they might be able to add it in a software update,
we'll see.
What's interesting that if you record high frame rates,
like 122 under 40 frames per second,
then it does use a big chunk of that sensor.
But again in that mode there is no RockSteady
and it's not really a mode that you would use all the time.
It's just more for specialty slo-mo shots.
Another thing I wanna test
is the minimum focus distance of the DGI Osmo Action
as well as the GoPro.
Both of these lenses have a fixed focused lens,
so at a certain distance I should go out of focus,
so right now I'm about a foot away.
How is my clarity?
This is how Sam looks at about two feet.
I get pretty close.
This is about a foot away;
little bit uncomfortably close here.
But there we go,
that's what that looks like.
How is the focus?
When the Osmo Action came out almost a year ago,
I thought it was a good camera,
but I felt like there were still more cons than pros.
It felt like it just needed work.
The biggest issue they had to fix
was the amount of lag that you used to get out of this,
but that is gone.
There used to also be this issue
where if you record for a long time,
the audio will lose sync, that's fixed.
There's also a hyperlapse mode that's stabilized,
that used to not be in here.
So a lot of improvements all across the board.
I also did a temperature test
where I put both of these cameras
in an incubator at 104 degrees.
And the Osmo Action actually lasted longer
than the Hero Eight,
so I was surprised about that.
I did also see that the GoPro's Hero Eight's price
just dropped down to $300.
The Osmo's street price
is still a little bit less than that.
But if your intention is to do some vlogging,
you already have this built-in front-facing display,
which is nice.
I'm sure the GoPro will eventually release
that flip-up display,
but that's another 80 bucks
and you also need the Media Mod,
which is another 80 bucks
to make that front-facing display work,
so you're dealin' with another 160 bucks in accessories.
GoPro always had an advantage in accessories,
but you could really mount this to anything
that mounts a GoPro.
But also now with companies like PGYTECH making this case
and also, (chuckles)
I don't know how to say the brand of this,
but this is an awesome little accessory.
Look how small it is.
It fits in right there and gives you a nice audio jack,
so that is awesome!
You still get 4K 60,
just like the GoPro.
You get 240 frames per second, in 1080p,
just like the GoPro.
But at 2.7K, this caps out at 60,
but the GoPro can shoot 2.7K at 120,
so the GoPro does have
a slight frame rate advantage at 2.7K.
The Osmo does still have that larger display
which is definitely nice.
The GoPro still does have that GoPro look that I love
and it's basically very saturated blues and oranges
so the skies always look real nice.
But I do like how the Osmo Action
handles skin tones a little bit better.
I will continue to use the Hero Eight
as my helmet camera though,
because of that SuperView with stabilization.
I love having that.
I love being able to get a very wide view
when I'm out riding.
Of course there are still advantages to the GoPro.
If I turn on stabilization with the Osmo Action,
I feel like everything's just in a little bit too tight
for my liking as a helmet camera.
But really digging the updates that DGI
has done to this camera over time.
Let's wrap this up,
read some comments from my last video
which is all about the Zhiyun CRANE 3S.
Hero Dirt says,
"You could stabilize a small child."
(laughs) I'm pretty sure you could.
If only this gimbal could stabilize them emotionally,
then Zhiyun would become a Fortune 500 company.
Jean says, "This sucker can balance anything!"
"Me, okay. What about my bank account?"
I'm gonna email Zhiyun right now
and just give 'em some of these recommendations.
I mean, if you really wanna bring value to your customers.
"It doesn't look right having such a big camera,
"like a red on such a small looking gimbal."
I was a little bit sketched out a couple times,
but it actually did fine.
"My first time leaving a comment here, so here we go."
"I'm not sure what to say actually."
(laughs)
Well congratulations for leaving your very first comment.
Is that what people do if you buy an Apple product
for the first time,
they all applaud you in the store or something?
They actually do that when you go and buy a Harley.
They ring a bell and the whole store goes,
"Woo!"
As you stand there ringing this bell.
I think it's meant to make you feel excited and all,
but I felt very uncomfortable. (laughs)
(lo-fi music)