Review: DJI Action 2

Drone maker DJI is no stranger to great and small cameras and lenses. The company's drones capture some of the best aerial footage around, which is why DJI's first stab at an action cam—the Osmo Action—was a hit. It was more or less a GoPro clone, but it added a full-color front screen, a feature GoPro copied later on.

For its second take on the genre, DJI appears to have cast a fond eye at another competitor—Insta360, which pioneered an interchangeable lens system on an action camera. DJI's GoPro clone innovated in some really clever ways, but the new Action 2 is less compelling.

On paper, its specs are solid. There's 4K video recording at 120 frames per second (fps), improved motion stabilization, and a host of automatic capture modes and features that have become standard on high-end action cams. But after weeks with the Action 2, I'm just not impressed. I can think of only one reason I'd pick it over the GoPro Hero 10 or Insta360 One R: weight.

Photograph: DJI

The Action 2 isn't strictly an Insta360 One R clone. They're both modular, but with the One R, the modularity consists of swapping different lens and sensor combos. DJI takes a different approach, with the main unit being a functioning camera. What you can add to that is either a battery pack or a dual-screen module; the latter lets you see yourself when the camera is pointed at your face. (The magnetic sides can also attach to various mounts and clips so you never need to screw anything in.)

This modular approach is welcome, but when I first unpacked the Action 2, I was most taken with the camera itself. If there's one thing that's not great about the GoPro Hero 10 Black, it's weight. Or at least, I assume it's annoying to have a 5.3-ounce weight on your head. I very rarely strap any camera to my person—I don't find the resulting footage particularly interesting—but I recognize that many people do exactly this. 

If your primary use case for an action camera is in fact strapping it to your helmet while you, as my snowboarding roommate used to say in all earnestness, "bomb the slopes," then the DJI Action 2 will probably trump the GoPro and pretty much anything else on the market. It weighs a mere 2 ounces, which is hardly even noticeable when it's on your helmet. DJI's camera is also tiny, which means less drag in wind and water.

In addition to the featherweight design, you can turn it into a more traditional action cam by adding the battery and screen modules to the mix. Here, however, is where the quirks and disadvantages of the Action 2 begin to show. 

DJI's magnetic attachment mechanism is, from a pure engineering standpoint, genius. It's simple and reliable. You put the two cubes together and they snap in place. Doesn't get much easier than that. Two clips further secure the magnet, but you can still easily get it apart even with gloved hands. But you probably shouldn't try to take it apart with gloved hands, because if you're wearing gloves, then you're probably in snow, and only the lens portion of the camera is fully waterproof. 

Divers, fear not, there is a waterproof case you can buy for an extra $65 that will make the whole camera waterproof to 196 feet (60 meters). But then you lose the advantage of the fast-change magnetic clip system. The lack of complete waterproofing is moderately annoying, but not a deal breaker unless you're planning to primarily use your action cam in the water. If so, this is definitely not what you want.

On the plus side, the magnetic clip system means there are no difficult-to-open doors or port covers. The camera lens unit is completely sealed. You can also even hot-swap the additional modules without cutting your shot, which is a trick the Insta360 One R cannot manage.

You should keep in mind that the primary battery of the stand-alone lens unit is not user-replaceable and will eventually need to be replaced somehow after a few years of battery degradation. This is alarmingly reminiscent of when laptops stopped offering user-replaceable batteries. I really hope it doesn't become a trend.

Similarly, there's no MicroSD card slot on the main camera. You get 32 gigabytes of built-in storage, but to expand that, you'll need the screen or battery pack modules, which have an SD card slot on them. This sounds limiting, and it is, but battery life will stop you long before the 32 gigabytes of built-in storage is filled up.

Shooting 4K video, I was able to get between 11 and 13 minutes out of the built-in battery. Add in the battery pack and you can easily shoot for much longer, about 40 minutes in my testing. Dropping to 1080p resolution will more than double your recording time. Recharging the whole thing takes about an hour and a half.

The modular magnetic system has one other nice feature, though I am not sure DJI would condone this: You can snap it to metal objects out in the world. Can't get your tripod close enough to that metal pole? No problem, just snap the camera directly to the pole. I must say I can't think of a recent situation where this would have been useful, but it is possible. I shot some gripping footage of my kitchen cabinets from an oven's point of view, by snapping the camera to the front of the oven.

DJI has an impressive lineup of accessories for the Action 2, though many, like the aforementioned waterproof case, are not available yet. There are magnetic mounts on headbands, tripod mounts, helmet mounts, and more. The two most interesting add-ons in my testing are the selfie stick/tripod with remote and the macro lens cover, which adds close-up video to the list of possibilities (although the video quality suffers somewhat with this attachment).

Photograph: DJI

Setting aside the odd, possibly useful-in-some-situations design, the Action 2 is a solid enough camera. Video tops out at 4K at 120 fps, which is a considerable step up from the original Osmo Action, though it doesn't match the 5.3K video output in the GoPro Hero 10 Black. For now, the only use I've had for 5.3K video is the ability to crop and still output 4K, but as monitors and TVs continue to bump the pixel specs, the higher-res video will become more important.

The sensor captures 12-megapixel images, and the lens will open up to an f/2.8 aperture. Given that most action is outdoors, the f/2.8 lens will generally be fine, but I found low-light performance—for example, shooting 4K video in a pine forest in the evening—noticeably noisier than the same scene shot with both a GoPro and the Insta360 One R. Image and video quality is good enough, but not as good as DJI's peers. 

This is just personal taste, but I find DJI's video clips to be overly contrasty. I prefer a more neutral recording that I can tone by hand later, but if you're going straight to YouTube or Instagram, the results are plenty good enough for either platform.

DJI has given its software-based features some love in this release too. RockSteady, the company's stabilization system is at version 2.0 and is really quite impressive. Between this and GoPro's recent improvements to its Hypersmooth stabilization, it's a bad time to be a gimbal maker. I can't see the need for one at this point. Which company has the better stabilization? They're close enough that in everyday use I couldn't tell any difference. If I really had to pick one I'd say DJI, but not by much.

For most people, I think the GoPro is a better choice. It's cheaper, image and video quality are marginally better, and every accessory on the market works with a GoPro. Very few accessories available are going to work with the Action 2, which makes the prospect of upgrading from a GoPro system potentially expensive.

As it stands, the DJI Action 2 "Power Combo", which adds a battery pack, is $400. That's nominally cheaper than a GoPro Hero 10, but you get no front screen. The much better value in my view is the "Dual Screen" combo, which will set you back $520 but includes a front screen.