The DJI Osmo 360 delivers the company’s first big shot at 360-degree spherical media capture — can it battle the best in the business?
DJI is looking to make a splash with its new Osmo 360 camera. For the past several years, the consumer 360 camera market has been almost exclusively the domain of Insta360, but competition is clearly starting to kick into gear. The big standout feature which DJI has in their corner is that the Osmo 360 features a 1-inch sensor. That should give it an advantage over most other consumer 360 cameras when it comes to image quality, and larger sensors are a key selling point for many creators. It remains to be seen, however, if that larger sensor will produce the results we have all come to expect from increased sensor sizes.
There are a lot of questions to be answered about the Osmo 360 (provided here by DJI for this review). Unlike its rivals such as Insta360 and GoPro, DJI doesn’t have years of experience with 360 cameras, and this matters both in terms of hardware and software. Unlike traditional single-lens cameras, 360 cameras need to stitch two wide angle images together into as seamless a sphere as possible, and then after that image is captured and processed in-camera, it has to be edited on a mobile device or a computer to achieve a final product. This complex problem makes for one very deep pool which newcomers to the 360 camera spaces must face, and so it must be seen if DJI can nail every angle of a 360 camera right out of the gate.Excellent image quality
A big question for me going into testing the Osmo 360 was whether or not the vaunted 1-inch sensor would provide the hoped-for improvement to image quality. I used the camera in as many varied scenarios as possible, and pitted it side-by-side with the Insta360 X5 to make sure I came away with an accurate assessment. I’m happy to report that the DJI Osmo 360 does in fact deliver on its promise of superior image quality, though it perhaps doesn’t stand out as much as I might have hoped.
Photos and video from the Osmo 360 look very sharp and natural, and it does a great job of handling noise in low light, but where it really shines is color accuracy. This is why my initial impression of the imagery captured with this camera was so positive, because the color science at work here is just so good. As of this writing, DJI has inched ahead with the best looking image quality in a 360 camera.
The capabilities of the Osmo 360 are really very impressive, with still photo capture up to 120 MP (No RAW capture, sadly), and 8K 50fps video recording capability, as well as 4K 120fps in single lens mode, or 4K 100fps in panoramic video mode. Having the capacity to do some limited slow-mo in 8K panoramic recording mode is great, and it enables you to capture more realistic 50fps footage, which is a particular boon for playback using a VR headset.
The Osmo 360 can record in 10-bit and D-LogM, so it’s a very useful tool if you want to do a lot of editing in post-processing software. I was pleasantly surprised by how nice footage from this camera is to work with in post.Tough enough, but with a serious flaw
If the Osmo 360 had been launched in 2024, I would have had nothing to complain about the durability of this device, but unfortunately it’s not 2024 any more, and merely being a well-built, waterproof, durable camera isn’t enough for a 360 camera in 2025. The Insta360 X5 introduced user-replaceable lenses to their flagship camera earlier this year, and that’s a real game changer for the entire genre.
