Comparison of Action Cameras Osmo Action vs GoPro 8 vs Xiaomi

Com­par­a­tive table of pop­u­lar action cam­eras.

Among the com­pared cam­eras, we have select­ed top mod­els and com­pared the most pop­u­lar and nec­es­sary para­me­ters that you should pay atten­tion to when choos­ing an action cam­era.

Comparison of action camera matrices

All cam­eras are 12-megapix­el 1/2.3‑inch sen­sors and shoot 4K video. Osmo Action, GoPro 7 and 8 allow you to shoot 4K video up to 60 fps. And Osmo Action, unlike every­one else, also shoots HDR video.

Lens Comparison

Just like the HERO 7 and 8 Black, Xiao­mi uses a 170° wide-angle lens. While this is com­mon with most action cam­eras, many users oppose it due to the fish­eye effect. The DJI OSMO Action Cam­era uses a slight­ly nar­row­er 145° field of view, which results in less dis­tort­ed images.

I also want to note that GoPro cam­eras have elec­tron­ic dis­tor­tion cor­rec­tion, the so-called lin­ear mode, but this func­tion is not avail­able when shoot­ing in 4K. In addi­tion to the nar­row­er field of view (FOV), the DJI action cam­era has dis­tor­tion cor­rec­tion that is avail­able even in 4K.

The Osmo Action lens, unlike the oth­ers, has a con­ve­nient fil­ter attach­ment sys­tem, just screw them on instead of stan­dard glass.

Permission

All cam­eras allow you to shoot in 4K at a max­i­mum frame rate of 60 frames per sec­ond, and you can also choose between two for­mats: NTSC or PAL. GoPro HERO7 Black and DJI OSMO Action offer 24fps mode.

At 1080p, OSMO Action and HERO7 Black can shoot at up to 240fps.

Sta­bi­liza­tion

All cam­eras have elec­tron­ic image sta­bi­liza­tion, which is sup­port­ed by a 6‑axis gyro­scope. But each of them from dif­fer­ent brands. On GoPro HERO 7 and 8, this fea­ture is called “Hyper­smooth” and “Hyper­smooth 2.0”, on DJI OSMO Action it is called “Rock­Steady”, Sony and Xiao­mi have not named it. With these two mod­els, elec­tron­ic image sta­bi­liza­tion is avail­able up to shoot­ing in 4K at 60 frames per sec­ond.

A photo

All cam­eras are equipped with a 12MP 4:3 sen­sor, so the max­i­mum res­o­lu­tion is 12MP in 4:3 for­mat. You can take pic­tures in .jpg or RAW for­mat. The GoPro HERO7 and 8 Black only offer HDR pho­to mode, while the Osmo Action can shoot HDR video but not HDR pho­tos.

Display

All cam­eras have screens on the front and back. The front dis­play on HERO7 and 8 Black shows only the infor­ma­tion you need: set­tings, shoot­ing time, remain­ing space on the mem­o­ry card, select­ed mode, and more.

The DJI OSMO Action, on the oth­er hand, offers a Live-View screen that acts as a mir­ror, which is great for self­ies or vlog­ging.

Case, but­tons, ports

The first three cam­eras are water­proof even with­out an addi­tion­al hous­ing. HERO 7 and 8 Black are pro­tect­ed up to 10 meters, OSMO Action up to 11m, Xiao­mi and Sony are not water­proof and will need a water box to dive into the water. All cam­eras have a USB‑C port that can be used to con­nect to a com­put­er, charge, and even con­nect an exter­nal micro­phone.

Useful chips

GoPro HERO 7 and 8 Black cam­eras allow you to use sev­er­al inter­est­ing fea­tures at once. Voice con­trol is very con­ve­nient for self­ies, as there is no need to con­nect the cam­era to a smart­phone or remote con­trol. It is enough to say “GoPro take a pho­to”, and she will take a pic­ture with a min­i­mum delay. Anoth­er dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture is GPS data. The cam­era remem­bers speed, accel­er­a­tion, alti­tude, G‑force and more, and you can dis­play all of this right on top of the video in post-pro­cess­ing.

DJI OSMO Action is the only action cam­era that can record HDR video. With HDR, you can increase the dynam­ic range of your video, result­ing in smooth, nat­ur­al tran­si­tions between light and dark areas. This is a huge­ly impor­tant fea­ture for con­di­tions with poor light­ing. Video-HDR is only avail­able up to 30 fps and can­not be used in con­junc­tion with Rock­Steady image sta­bi­liza­tion. Just like GoPro, OSMO Action can rec­og­nize voice com­mands.

Outcome

To sum up, each of the cam­eras has its own advan­tages.

For exam­ple, Xiao­mi always offers a low price, and Sony is great at record­ing sound. GoPro has unde­ni­ably had a huge fan base around the world for many years.

In this regard, DJI with its Osmo Action cam­era is a new­com­er but with sig­nif­i­cant fat plus­es: first­ly, it shoots HDR video, the excel­lent patent­ed Rock­Steady elec­tron­ic sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tem, water pro­tec­tion up to 11 meters and a col­or front screen. Of the minus­es of Osmo Action, a weak­er bat­tery can be dis­tin­guished, as a result of which it lasts for less shoot­ing time and some buy­ers com­plain about worse sound record­ing, but this is due to the fact that the cam­era has excel­lent water pro­tec­tion, which impos­es spe­cial require­ments on the micro­phone.
To get rid of these dis­ad­van­tages, we advise you to imme­di­ate­ly stock up on addi­tion­al bat­ter­ies and an exter­nal micro­phone that can be con­nect­ed through a spe­cial adapter.