DJI Osmo Pocket 4P Launched in China with 1-Inch Sensor, 4K/240fps Slow-Mo

After a brief debut at the Cannes film festival last month, DJI announced all the details of its Osmo Pocket 4P stabilized camera today as part of its initial launch in China. While it doesn’t match the 8K capabilities of the Insta360 Luna Ultra, the Pocket 4P features a new 1-inch sensor with improved dynamic range and impressive 4K slow-mo capabilities.

The Pocket 4P is now available for preorder from DJI’s Chinese website for ¥3799, or around $562. That’s cheaper than Insta360’s $769.99 Luna Ultra, however, a simple currency conversion doesn’t accurately reflect what the Pocket 4P will be priced at globally. Like the single camera Pocket 4 that debuted two months ago there’s little chance DJI will directly sell the Pocket 4P in the US. But while the Luna Ultra made its global debut last week, it still may be worth the hassle of trying to import DJI’s latest.

The primary wide-angle camera on the Pocket 4P features a new 1-inch 4K sensor paired with a 20mm-equivalent focal length f/2.0 lens offering 17-stops of dynamic range. That’s a small but useful bump over the cheaper Pocket 4’s 14-stops of range when capturing footage using DJI’s D-Log 2 color profile. The Pocket 4P’s secondary camera pairs a much smaller 1/1.28-inch sensor with a 60mm-equivalent f/1.8 telephoto lens with 3X optical zoom, 6X lossless zoom using sensor cropping, and 12X zoom using digital enhancements.

The Luna Ultra’s primary camera features a 1-inch 8K sensor and a secondary telephoto camera with similar zoom capabilities but a 1/1.3-inch sensor that’s slightly smaller than what the Pocket 4P uses. While the Luna Ultra has an advantage when it comes to overall resolution (allowing for more freedom in post production when it comes to cropping or stabilizing footage) it can only capture 8K footage at 30fps, and 4K footage at up to 120fps. The Pocket 4P is limited to 4K but at up to 240fps using its primary camera, potentially making it a better option for capturing slow motion footage. Both devices can capture still images at up to 37-megapixels.

DJI includes 103GB of built-in storage with the Pocket 4P, which is more than twice the 47GB of storage included with the Luna Ultra. You can expand the 4P’s storage with a microSD card, but with 103GB you can capture over 200 minutes of 4K/60fps footage, so an extra card may not be necessary.

Both devices are nearly identical in weight without accessories attached, with the Pocket 4P weighing 230 grams, and the lightest version of the Luna Ultra weighing 233 grams. They also each offer advanced tracking capabilities including the ability to reframe and zoom to keep individuals or groups of people in the shot, but DJI has been refining the tracking capabilities of its stabilized cameras for a decade now, and the Pocket 4P comes with its latest ActiveTrack/Smart Follow 8.0 technology.

The most innovative feature on Insta360’s Luna Ultra is its touchscreen and controls that can be removed and used as a wireless remote with livestreamed previews. The entry-level version of the Pocket 4P can’t do that, but DJI is offering the camera in a pricier ¥4299 ($636) “Vlog Kit” bundle that includes the wireless Osmo FrameTap viewfinder remote that was introduced with the Osmo Mobile 8 Pro smartphone gimbal last April. Like the Luna Ultra’s remote, the FrameTap includes a touchscreen for selecting what the camera should focus on and track plus controls for manually controlling the camera and recording.