DJI Osmo Pocket 4P vs Insta360 Luna Ultra: The Differences That Actually Matter

The DJI Osmo Pocket 4P doesn’t beat the Insta360 Luna Ultra in all the ways that you might think. So let’s go test and compare, see if you can figure out which one of these cameras is which, and then break down the major differences between these two cameras to figure out which one might be right for you.

Just to be clear, this is not a sponsored comparison. I did have a contract when DJI asked me about this, but it was very clear that I could not do any sponsored comparisons. So they sent me the Pocket 4P. Insta360 sent me the Luna Ultra. Both of them sent me those units for the original reviews that I did, which are on this channel. Neither one of them has anything to do with this video.

I originally went into this thinking there would be a much bigger difference between these two cameras, and there definitely are some places where there’s a big difference between the two. But when I started putting this video together, a few of the areas I thought would be the really big differences didn’t end up being as big a difference as I thought. Really, it’s going to come down to a couple of different things: how you use the camera, how you want to interact with the camera, and probably really whether you’ve already purchased or bought into an ecosystem from DJI or an ecosystem from Insta360.

Log Profiles: D-Log 2 Is Where the Pocket 4P Pulls Ahead

When it comes to image quality, there are a few different ways we need to look at this. One is log profiles. Insta360 introduced their 10-bit log profile, I-Log, and it works really well. It looks really good, and if you set the camera manually then you’re going to get some great results. DJI in the Pocket 4 series and the Pocket 4P has D-Log, and that is also an excellent 10-bit color profile. In those two log modes, they’re both very similar. Both cameras can shoot those log modes, and the dynamic range — it just looks very close to the same.

A split-frame test pits the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P in 4K 30fps D-Log against the Insta360 Luna Ultra in 4K 30fps I-Log over a coastal river delta. Photo credit: Jake Sloan

But a big way that the Pocket 4P wins is when you switch to D-Log 2. Now, this is only available in the main 20mm camera because it has that new sensor tech in that one sensor in that one camera. It doesn’t have it across the board, but in this mode you can see a difference in dynamic range between the two cameras. You can see here where, yeah, the sun definitely is blowing out — the highlights are blowing out a little earlier on the Insta360 Luna Ultra. So if you want the maximum amount of dynamic range, then D-Log 2 in the Pocket 4P is going to be where you want to go. And it does have insane amounts of dynamic range. Now, how much of that translates to your finished product really depends on how you color grade it and stuff like that.

And speaking of color grading, I’ve been using LUTs by Gamut.io here. They are some of the best looking finished-product LUTs that I’ve ever used. They make these two cameras look incredible. I purchased the Insta360 ones, and they sent me the Pocket 4P ones to try out, and I have been thrilled with them and how they look — so much so that I bought a few more for my drones and other cameras I have.

But then if we look at mostly just the regular log footage, the D-Log footage from the Pocket 4P and the I-Log footage from the Luna Ultra, they look very similar as far as dynamic range goes, as far as the quality goes. So if you’re using the log modes and you want to color grade, obviously that’s where you’re going to get the most amount of dynamic range out of both of these cameras. And D-Log 2 definitely holds the most dynamic range out of any camera that I’ve shot in — I mean, just period. It’s insane. It does have almost 17 stops of dynamic range according to the CVP test.

A side-by-side 4K 30fps 10-bit comparison pits the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P against the Insta360 Luna Ultra on the same rack of red canoes. Photo credit: Jake Sloan

HDR, Dolby Vision and 8K

Both of these cameras also feature an HDR mode. I haven’t had the chance to shoot with it on the Pocket 4P because it just got it via firmware update, so I haven’t been able to go out with it yet. The Luna Ultra has an HDR workflow with Dolby Vision, which is essentially a Rec. 2020 HLG wide dynamic range color gamut that you can work with if you want to get the most amount of dynamic range and be able to film and shoot HDR content. I don’t really do that, but it definitely does have a very wide dynamic range when you film in Dolby Vision.

Aside from the Pocket 4P winning in D-Log 2, the Luna Ultra has an 8K mode, and you can film 8K, which is, yes, a little more detailed. I have found that most of the time I shoot at 4K60 because it’s plenty of detail. It looks really good, and I feel like you get the most dynamic range in 4K30 or 4K60 — but you can film in up to 8K.

These Are Fantastic Dad Cameras

While both of these cameras are getting to be much closer to pro-level tools — if there is such a thing in a form factor this size — I have used these on professional shoots and people have been very happy with what they’ve shot. I think that most people buying a pocket gimbal camera like this are people who are just walking and talking, vlogging. They’re great dad cameras. If you want to film your kids with these as a dad, they’re fantastic for that.

And in that mode, I would say that most people are probably going to just film in the normal color profile. Both of these cameras look really good in normal color profile. They both have about the same dynamic range in normal color profile, and their colors seem to be very similar — although I feel like the Luna Ultra leans a little bit green and the Pocket 4P leans a little bit magenta. Both of those are easily correctable in post, or you know, just tweaking a little bit here and there. They both look really good out of the box, honestly, and you’d be hard pressed to say that one is considerably better than the other in the normal color profile modes.

A side-by-side 4K 30fps 10-bit comparison shows how the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P and Insta360 Luna Ultra each render deep reds and magentas on the same cluster of geraniums. Photo credit: Jake Sloan

Slow Motion: The Pocket 4P’s Big Caveat

One of the areas where they differentiate themselves a lot is in slow motion. With the Pocket 4P, you have the opportunity to film up to 4K at 240 frames a second, which is insanely slow. You have to have extremely fast-moving things in order to be able to make that sort of slow motion look good — and when you do, it does look really good. The Luna Ultra is limited to 4K at 120 frames a second, or 1080 up to 240 frames a second.

But the caveat between these two cameras is that the Pocket 4P cannot film slow motion at all, in any way, in any sort of log profile — where the Luna Ultra can. So if you’re color grading and you need that little bit of slow motion, then the Luna Ultra is a better choice. And honestly, 4K120 is more than enough for most people. Then on the telephoto cameras, the Pocket 4P can film up to 200 frames a second in 4K, and the Luna Ultra again has 120 frames a second in 4K.

Zoom and Focal Lengths

Now, 20mm is pretty wide and it’s decent for walking and talking, but sometimes you want to go a little wider. Fortunately, both of these cameras do offer a wide-angle lens. That brings us to the zoom and focal lengths of both of these cameras. They both offer a 1x and a 3x, so a 20mm and a 60-ish millimeter camera, but they also both offer a 2x or a 6x lossless zoom, which is essentially just cropping in on that sensor and giving you twice that focal length. So you’d be at a 40mm, and at 100 to 120mm. And they can both also zoom into 12x.

Now, the 12x on both of these cameras, the quality is going to suffer. But if we’re comparing, there were times where the Luna Ultra seemed a little better than the Pocket 4P and times where the Pocket 4P seemed a little better than the Luna Ultra. Very hit or miss for me. I wouldn’t use the 12x very often unless I was absolutely desperate for a shot. To me, the 1x and the 3x are where it’s at, and occasionally pushing into the 2x or the 6x if you really need that extra focal range. There’s a little bit of quality loss, but if you want the most dynamic range and the best image possible, then staying with those primary cameras at 1x and 3x is going to be great. And I frankly love having the 3x on a pocket gimbal camera like this, because it just opens up so many opportunities for different ways to compose a shot and different ways to film and shoot with these cameras.

Aperture and Depth of Field: Two Opposite Approaches

One thing that I found interesting between these two cameras is the aperture on the different focal lengths. For DJI, they went with an f/2.0 on the main 20mm camera and an f/1.8 on the telephoto camera. That does help to change or keep the exposure similar when jumping between the two lenses, because the sensor sizes are different. Insta360 went the opposite way. They went f/1.8 on the main camera — I assume to get better low light — and then f/2.0 on the telephoto camera. Now, I hope that they’re able to iron out the exposure difference when you’re zooming between these two cameras, but it’s definitely a difference.

The other way this plays out is in your depth of field. Here you can see with the telephoto cameras on both of these gimbal cameras that DJI definitely has a shallower depth of field than the Insta360 does. That’s largely due to that f/1.8 aperture on the Pocket 4P compared to the f/2.0 aperture on the Luna Ultra.

Low Light Mode on Both Is Genuinely Impressive

One thing both of these cameras have is a low light mode. It’s a heavily processed mode that will do a lot of noise reduction and some sharpening, all in camera, to give you pretty good and decently usable low light imagery. You need some ambient light — you can’t shoot in complete darkness with either one of these cameras — but they both do a really good job, and both actually do a great job of having pretty accurate skin tones in very low light when you’re in mixed lighting, like you can see here.

Low light mode on these cameras is pretty impressive. It does an incredibly good job. I mean, it’s not pitch black, but it’s very low light. And there’s also a little light that you can throw on to just give yourself a little fill, which does make a big difference and fills in the light quite a bit. But overall, I’m really impressed with how these are handling the light. Just the ambient light here is really, really, really impressive.

A side-by-side low light comparison pits the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P against the Insta360 Luna Ultra, both shooting a city skyline at dusk in 4K 30fps low light mode. Photo credit: Jake Sloan

Photos Are Finally Worth Taking

One thing pocket gimbal cameras like this have lacked in the past is really good, high-quality photos. Both of these cameras are capable of taking some pretty awesome photos. If you have good subject material, if you’re out there filming or taking photos of things while you’re running around with these, you can get some really great shots. Both of them will shoot high-resolution stills and give you some spectacular results, as you can see.

Again, it depends on what you’re taking photos of, but they both will do a great job. And both of them have panorama photos. With Insta360, you can actually do a 360-degree photo if you want to — I have no way to display that here, but you can. It really showcases what both of these cameras are excellent at, which is just run-and-gun content creation: taking photos, dad cameras, family stuff, where you just want to be able to capture things quickly on the fly. Both of these do a great job at that.

Internal Mics and Wireless Audio

I also wanted to test the onboard audio between both of these cameras, because you can also wirelessly connect a mic directly to both of them — but we’ll get into that. So this is a good test of the internal mics of both of these cameras. Right now, you’re hearing the Insta360 Luna Ultra, which I think might have an advantage because it has this big mesh-filled screen in front of the built-in mics. And then this is the Osmo Pocket 4P. There’s a pretty strong wind blowing this way from about 12, 13, 14, 15 mph depending on the moment, but it’s pretty decent winds. I’ve had to weigh my selfie stick down quite a bit here to keep these things from falling over. How do they sound? This is the Luna Ultra again, pretty decent wind. This is the Pocket 4P, and I’m about a meter away from both cameras.

Of course, both of these cameras do offer wireless mic systems. You can use the Mic Air or the Mic Pro with the Luna Ultra. With the Pocket 4P, you can use the DJI Mic 2, Mic Mini, Mic 3, and I think probably any future mics that DJI puts out as well. This is the same test — there’s a pretty decent amount of wind coming from right there, so I’m very curious to see how these guys do. Again, no noise cancelling on anything, because with the little fuzzy windscreens they should do okay by themselves. And the nice thing with the mics is that you can start and stop recording remotely by pushing various buttons on them.

Tracking: DJI Has One Trick the Luna Doesn’t

Another way I wanted to test both these cameras is their tracking capability, because both of them do boast some very strong tracking. You can see here that both of the cameras track very well. They can place you in any part of the frame if you want them to, and even recover a subject when you walk behind an object or your subject goes behind an object. Both do really well.

But I think one area where DJI has the advantage right now, at least on the Pocket 4P, is that you can program in a subject that it will look for in a crowd of people. That could be an advantage if you’re filming in large crowds and you have lots of other people walking in front, etc. And it does work really well. I tested it here with Kelly, and you could see that it kept me in the active track, which was pretty impressive considering we were both actually dressed pretty similarly as well.

Internal Storage and Button Placement

When it comes to how you interact with both of these cameras, the menu systems on them are quite similar. Both of these cameras have built-in internal memory. The Luna Ultra has 47GB, where the Pocket 4P has 103GB. So if you use internal memory a lot, the Pocket 4P is going to win. But if you forget an SD card, either one of these cameras is going to be able to help save your shoot — and thank God, because I have definitely never forgotten an SD card before. Well, I am super glad that these cameras have built-in memory, because true to form, I wasn’t in a hurry to get out here today since the wind wasn’t blowing, which is a rarity on this lake, and I forgot any extra microSD cards.

A way that these two cameras separate themselves quite a bit, actually, is the placement of the buttons. On the Pocket 4P, the buttons are down here under the screen, which is hidden if your screen is in vertical mode. On the Luna Ultra, you still have these two buttons on the screen regardless of whether your screen is vertical or horizontal.

Two pocket gimbal cameras compared side by side on a sunlit gravel trail. Photo credit: Jake Sloan

FrameTap vs. the Detachable Screen: The Biggest Difference of All

Another huge difference between these two is that you can get the Osmo FrameTap remote for the Pocket 4P. Insta360 went with a detachable face plate, which honestly is super cool, because this face plate also has a microphone built in and it sounds pretty dang good. So one of the coolest things is the fact that this little remote detaches, and it’s a first among any cameras like this — being able to control the camera, the tracking, and even get the audio from out here. Although the audio probably doesn’t sound great, because there’s a little microphone in here and there’s a lot of wind and a lot of other noise around me.

But a big difference between these two is how far away you can go. This is pretty limited to about 10 meters. So what is that, 30-something feet, maybe 40 feet if you don’t have a lot of interference? The FrameTap remote will go much farther. With the Pocket 4P you can get this little remote, called FrameTap, and it has a little screen on there, and you can use the remote joystick and the button and stuff like that. But I’m kind of curious to see how far this thing goes. So that’s pretty ridiculous — I am 300-something, 400 feet away, maybe more. I guess I should probably be saying that in meters.

Another big difference between the two is that FrameTap has pretty limited controls over what you can control on the camera and how you can control it, where the detachable face plate basically retains full control over every setting, over everything on the camera, just like it is when it’s attached to the camera. So if you like being able to have a lot of control, then the Luna Ultra is a better option. But if you have to go farther away, the Pocket 4P is a better option.

Something I discovered when working with the Pocket 4P to film some car stuff is that you can only have the FrameTap remote actively controlling and previewing the Pocket 4P, or the app on your phone. You can’t have them both connected at the same time, which is unfortunate. With the Luna Ultra, you can still have the screen connected — you can’t see the preview when you connect the app with your phone, but you can still connect your phone and still be able to use the remote at the same time.

Accessories: Handles, Lights and Mic Ecosystems

A reviewer compares two pocket-sized handheld gimbal cameras side by side, with accessories and batteries laid out on the desk. Photo credit: Jake Sloan

And that brings us to accessories. Both of them have a battery handle, and if you already have a Pocket 3, the Pocket 3 handle does work with the Pocket 4P. The Luna Ultra also has an extended battery handle that works really well. They both will give you, I don’t know, 50, 60, 70 percent more runtime. I haven’t actually measured it, but it’s a fair amount more runtime.

Both of them offer a light option, and they took a different approach. With the Pocket 4P, you basically attach the light to the camera and it’s powered from the Pocket 4P, and you can remote control it from the camera. For convenience’s sake, that is really nice, because you really don’t have to worry about it. Insta360 took a slightly different approach, where you attach this frame to the gimbal and then this light magnetically attaches to the top. There’s no remote control, and the light is charged via USB-C — but because the light uses its own battery, I guess in theory you could put it a different place than directly on the Luna if you wanted to.

And then for audio accessories, they both have kind of extensive microphone ecosystems. Insta360 has the Mic Air for very small, compact microphones, and the Mic Pro for larger, more professional applications. Both work really well, they pair really well, and they give you a ton of range. With DJI, you have the DJI Mic 2, the DJI Mic Mini, the DJI Mic 3, and I believe the other iterations that are out there will all work with the Pocket 4P. So there are lots of options there. And if you’re walking with two people, yes, both of these cameras can connect directly to two different microphones and have two different audio channels, as well as record the stereo internal tracks so you can have more ambient audio if you want.

Filters, Zoom Rockers and the Case DJI Forgot

The rest of the differences, I didn’t see a large amount. Both of these stabilize really well. Both the gimbals work really well.

Other differences between these two: the way the Luna Ultra parks the gimbal head protects the lenses somewhat, and your ND filters and wide-angle lens will attach to the front magnetically. So it makes it pretty quick to change your ND filters, mist filter, lenses, whatever you want to change like that. The Pocket 4P is actually a little bit more like the DJI Air 3S, where you have to unclip the filters. More secure if you’re going to run it on a car rig or something like I have, but also it takes just a little bit more work to be able to change the filters out.

Another difference between the two is that the Luna Ultra has this zoom rocker here, whereas on the Pocket 4P you have to switch this joystick to be able to either control the gimbal tilt and pan or to control the zoom. Both of the joysticks on both of these work pretty well. I would say the DJI one is a little bit nicer, because it’s a little bit more raised.

And then the other thing, which I don’t understand, is that Insta360 has this really nice molded case that protects the camera if you’re going to throw it into your bag, and also gives you the option to store the wide-angle lens and a filter in there, or two filters, depending on what you want to put in there. DJI doesn’t offer anything like that for the Pocket 4P. So I’ve been trying to find a third-party solution. Haven’t really found one just yet, but hopefully one from K&F Concept or SmallRig or somebody like that comes on the horizon really soon.

The Pocket 4P’s Biggest Problem in the United States

Now, the biggest issue with the Pocket 4P, at least for those of us in the United States, is that it’s not officially released here. It’s not approved for sale here. You can find them on eBay, and I think you can find them in a few other places as well, but just be advised: there’s no official support for it here. There’s no warranty here, anything like that. I do have links to eBay and other places where you can find the Pocket 4P if you’re really intent on getting one. The Insta360 Luna Ultra is available here and worldwide.

Which One Should You Buy?

To be honest, both of these cameras are incredible. It’s amazing the tools that we have in tiny little packages like this. We’re really starting to split hairs. They’re both amazing little creation machines. I’ve been using a Pocket 3 as my main camera for YouTube ever since it was released, because it’s so small, so lightweight and easy for me to carry around the mountains, and it does the job. And now either one of these cameras is a big step up from the Pocket 3. So I’m not going to complain if I was only limited to one or the other.

Is there anything I missed? Let me know in the comments. And if you want to have more of a conversation about these two cameras, you can join my live stream, which happens most Wednesday nights at 4:00 p.m. Alaska time, 8:00 p.m. Eastern, where we can get a little more in depth. Or if you’ve got a specific question about these cameras, you can ask it there.

This article is adapted from Jake Sloan’s full video comparison of the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P and the Insta360 Luna Ultra. Watch more of his camera and drone coverage on the Jake Sloan YouTube channel, and find his other articles on his DroneXL author page.