DJI OM4 Smartphone Gimbal - A Review and Complete Tutorial

Let me guess, you have a pretty nice camera on your phone right now, and I'm also guessing that you use it nearly every day. So why do you continue to search for expensive camera equipment and systems and gimbal setups? Probably because you want to be more creative and make more impactful content, right? Whether it be to go viral or maybe make some money or just impress your friends and family. Search no more, because with the DJI OM4, you can do all of those things with the camera that you have in your hand right now. The OM4 is the latest smartphone gimbal from DJI, and it's slimmer, stronger, and smarter than anything we have seen before in a smartphone gimbal. Some highlights include a convenient magnetic mounting system, improved ActiveTrack 3.0, a stronger motor, and new creative effects, including one really cool one called DynamicZoom. In this video, I'm going to take you through all of the advancements from previous versions, including hardware design to software upgrades, and when I'm done, I hope you have enough information to decide if the DJI OM4 is something to add to your long list of creative gear. So first of all, let's get it out of the box. Okay, so let's take a look at what you get inside the box with the DJI OM4. Right here you're going to notice Create Magnetic Moments, and that's what the OM4 is all about, the magnetic mounting system, so pretty exciting to see how that works. Right here is the gimbal and the tripod. You're going to get the tripod first of all, and you do need this tripod because once again, the bottom of the OM4 is not flat, so it's not going to sit flat on a surface. You do need a tripod, and a very nice tripod. I've been using my old one from my previous version, Osmo Mobile, still holding up great. Nice and lightweight, nice and sturdy. Right here is the charging cable, USB-C, and this is the phone clamp. Now of course there's two ways to mount your phone to the OM4. The first way is the phone clamp, and this is for people that want to keep their case on their phone. Most people do have a case on their phone, at least I do, because I drop my phone all of the time. And the phone clamp is for people that want to leave the case on their phone, and they're going to be mounting it with this. Now there's another way that I'm going to show you, the most interesting way, in just a second, but this is for pretty much any phone except some of the smaller phones. So if you have a smaller phone like the iPhone 8 or 7 or SE2 or maybe the Samsung S8 or something like that, you do require this little extra pad right here to fill the gap there. So if you do have a smaller phone, they include that little pad right there. So this is going to mount on the outside of your case. I have the iPhone 11 Pro Max and it does fit on there, so I'll show you how that goes in just a little bit. Right here is the gimbal, and it is a little bit smaller than the previous versions. I'll put it up on the screen here what the difference is, but the grip feels great, still ergonomically great, feels comfortable in the hands. Once I get the phone on here, we'll see how it feels. But so far, I think it feels pretty good. On the right hand side, you're going to find your zoom toggle right there. On the back of the gimbal, you're going to find your joystick, your thumb stick right here for maneuvering the gimbal. Right here is your LED lights to show your battery power. Right here is your power button and menu button, and I'll show you that in just a second. And then right here is the record button for taking photos and starting your video. On the right hand side, the USB-C charging port, as well as the USB for charging your phone with the OM4 gimbal. On the front of it, you're going to find the trigger, and the trigger is, it's a lot, not a lot. It's a little bit different this time. It's a little bit smaller, and you're going to use the trigger for some extra functions. And so that's pretty exciting. I'm excited to show you how that works. So it's really cool. It feels really nice. It's not a lot smaller, but it is definitely smaller than the previous version. Folds up pretty much the same. The advantage here, it doesn't have that mounting system, it just has this magnetic system. So it's going to be a lot quicker, a lot more convenient, fits in pretty much any bag. You know, you don't have anything snagging. It's nice and smooth and streamlined. And so that's pretty nice. So let's show you what comes in this part of the package. This is the little create magnetic moments part of the pack. And on the left hand side right here, this is the star of the show. This is the magnetic mounting system. This is for people that don't typically use a phone case. And this is going to mount directly on the back of your phone. Now that's why I have a quarter here. You may be wondering why I have a quarter. Just to kind of show you the comparison of size. It's just a little bit bigger than a quarter. It's about the same thickness, maybe a little bit thicker and just a tiny bit heavier. So that kind of shows you how slim it is. I was kind of worried about it when they told me this is how it was going to work. I thought it was going to be like a pop socket, but it's not. It's actually really thin, really lightweight. And so I'm interested to see how that's going to work. I know the magnet is very, very strong. One thing, if you're going to mount this on the back of your phone, if you're a person that doesn't use a phone case, and you're going to put this on the back of your glass backed phone, which most phones are, you do have to use one of the stickers that comes with it. They do include these two, three M stickers, and you need to adhere the sticker to your phone first. And then this goes on top of the sticker. So I'm going to show you how that works with my old phone. I'm going to mount it to my Google Pixel 3 XL just to show you how it looks on there. I'm going to use the clamp because I like to keep my case on my phone as much as possible. As clumsy as I am, I don't like to take my phone out of the case too often. So I'm going to use the phone clamp, and you don't even have to balance it. You just put the phone clamp on and the OM4 can handle it. Just put it generally in the center of your phone and it's going to work great. So like I said, this is the iPhone 11 Pro Max, and it fits around there just fine. Okay, just a couple of updates, you guys. One thing that I want to show you, I had a silicone case on here, that clear silicone case, and that was not working with the clamp. The clamp would go on there, but then what would happen with that silicone, because it was slippery, it would slide right off of there. So the clamp was not holding on to that clear silicone. So I wanted an OtterBox case anyway, so I took back the silicone one and I got the OtterBox case. So just be aware if you have a soft silicone case and a larger phone, it's probably not going to work. It'll work with a smaller phone, but not with the bigger phones. The other thing that I mentioned is if you have a glass-backed phone, that you're supposed to use the sticker first. Actually for any phone, you want to put on this sticker first, whether it's a plastic-backed phone or a glass-backed. So before you mount the ring holder, you want to put this sticker on first and then put the ring holder on the sticker just like this. You know, it's not going to be as convenient as having this always attached to your phone, but I think the trade-off for me is being able to leave the case on my phone. So this is your guide. This is going to show you how to mount it on the back of your phone. Also in this part of the package, you're going to find all your reading materials, your safety guidelines, your quick start guide, and your full manual right there. On this side, you're going to find your carrying bag as well as the wrist strap. So there's everything that you get in the box. What I want to do now, I'm going to download the DJI Mimo app. There are some upgrades to the Mimo app now for the OM4 and it has a lot of fun new features. One of the most important ones I think is being able to start active track simply by tapping the trigger. All you have to do is hit the trigger once and it's going to start active tracking rather than just swiping on the screen. I think you can still do that, but now you can simply pull the trigger and start tracking right away. So it's going to be a lot more efficient and we're going to check it out and see how well it works. Okay, next thing is to download or upgrade the DJI Mimo app on your mobile device. While that's installing, go ahead and install the phone clamp or the ring holder on your phone, whichever one that you prefer to use. Like I mentioned, this clutch right here requires a case as much as possible. So I'm choosing to use the clamp setup. Once you have your attachment of choice installed, you can go ahead and connect your phone to the OM4. How do you connect it? Just like that. That's it. And you remove it the same way. And when you remove the phone, the OM4 goes into standby mode and you can easily fold it into its compact form. No more fumbling around to get it back into its folded position. Now once it's mounted, go ahead and hit the M button until the OM4 turns on. Open up the Mimo app and you're ready to go. Okay, before we get to the hardware overview, I want to show you one of the greatest features, probably the coolest feature of the OM4 and it's called dynamic zoom. The dynamic zoom effect is very popular right now and it can be kind of a challenging thing to get it done right. So to make it easier, DJI just made it a function of the OM4. All you have to do is choose your subject, select it on the screen, hit record and walk backwards or forwards. The software does all of the work for you. It's a really easy way to add some interest to any video. Now I will tell you that right now at the making of this video, this effect does work much better if you have an iPhone. If you have an Android device, it's still going to work, but it just looks better on the iPhone. Now hopefully that will be fixed sometime in a future firmware update. Okay, so let's take a look at the hardware. The grip is smaller and it's more ergonomic. Overall the gimbal is very light. It's a little bit lighter than the previous version at 385 grams. The trigger is your friend. Now the trigger is used for five different things. If you click the trigger once, it's going to enter into active tracking mode right away. No longer do you have to swipe on the screen on your subject to engage active track. All you have to do is just hit the trigger once and it starts working. It's pretty amazing. Now you can still swipe to select on the screen, but this is just so much more convenient. And then also active track 3.0 is much improved and it's way better at tracking smaller subjects like children and pets. Now two taps of the trigger re-centers the gimbal. Three taps of the trigger changes the camera view from the back to the front and vice versa. If you hold the trigger, that's going to put the gimbal into lock mode. So no matter how you move the gimbal, the camera, the phone is just going to stay right in the same position all the time. And finally, if you tap it once and hold it, that puts the gimbal into sport mode, which allows you to follow quick moving subjects. And I will tell you that it is much faster and much better than the previous versions of this device. Now the M button is your mode button. Tapping it once switches between the photo and video mode, and you can also program it to bring up the quick menu. What's the quick menu? Well, it's just like it sounds and it's extremely efficient. It's a new feature of the software and I love it. Tapping the M button two times switches between portrait mode and landscape mode. And if you press and hold the button for one beep, the gimbal goes into standby mode. So it doesn't actually shut off. It just goes into standby mode. And if you hold it for two beeps, it will turn off. The red button, of course, is the shutter button for taking photos and starting and stopping videos. And this right here is your zoom toggle for zooming in and out. You can adjust the zoom speed in the menu. Now speaking of the menu, let's go through it briefly. But before I do that, let's take a look at another really popular feature that you only used to be able to see on expensive gimbal systems. And that's called the spin shot. So what you want to do first is head into the menu and switch from follow mode to spin shot. And now when you push the joystick left or right, the phone will spin, which results in a very creative look. Before you could only see this in the movies, but now you can achieve it with hardly any effort at all. Looking at the MIMO app menu, I'm not going to get into too much detail in this video, but I do want to briefly touch on what each icon does. So if you happen to get one of these, you can get started right away. For future reference, I suggest putting this video in your watch later playlist. That way, when you do get your OM4, you can come back to it for a refresher course. Starting with the video function in the upper left hand corner, the home button takes you back out to the main MIMO screen. Hit the camera to get back to the menu. The camera icon allows you to choose auto or adjust your camera settings manually, adjust your resolution and frame rates. Now these are going to vary depending on your phone. You can also add glamour effects to your videos, but only in 1080p or 30 frames per second or less. The three dashes take you to the white balance adjustment screen where you can also turn on your flash and you can also choose to show a grid on your screen. The gimbal icon is where you make all of the gimbal adjustments like follow mode, zoom speed, control stick settings and gimbal calibration and much more. And then the general icon gets you to the identifying information of your OM4. When you enter the photo mode, you're going to see a timer button on the left hand side of the screen. Now you can take a 3x3 panoramic photo with the OM4 and they look amazing. It does such a great job. And also, check out this effect. Another really fun effect with endless creative possibilities. The slow motion effect combined with this incredible stability, it looks wonderful. Now I already showed you the dyna zoom and I can't wait to see what people create with that. I have a feeling that Instagram pretty soon is going to be flooded with dynamic zoom videos. The time lapse and hyperlapse features are as impressive as always and two of the most fun things you can do with a smartphone gimbal. Now this right here, this is where you can enable the gesture control, which allows you to start and stop recording or take a photo by holding your hand up in front of you. It's really nice for group photos or if you're out shooting solo. Now when you're done shooting with the OM4, simply take the phone off and it goes into sleep mode and you can fold it up, hold the M button until you hear two beeps to turn it off and be happy with all of the impressive things that you've just captured and created. Okay, so here are my final thoughts on the DJI OM4. Now most people are going to be talking about the magnetic mounting system because it's new and it's exciting and it's actually really convenient and we've never seen anything like it before. But I think it goes way beyond that. I think the biggest takeaway for me after using this for a couple of weeks is the fun to value ratio. For everything that you get for the price for less than $150, DJI packed so many features into the OM4 and I think it's a great investment for anyone. If you're a vlogger or a professional creator or just simply someone that wants to capture stable fun footage with your family and your friends. Now as far as the mounting systems, like I said, I prefer the clamp mount because I have to leave the case on my phone at all times. I'm terrible with my phones and so I think that's going to be probably most people are going to appreciate and use this one more than the ring mount. The ring mount is convenient. It's really nice to not have to put the clamp on and off if you use the ring mount and for those of you that use a ring mount already, you can just replace that with this one and it might actually be better because this is really light and really thin, but if you're going to use your case all of the time on your phone, definitely the clamp is going to be the better option. Now I do have one small negative that I found. It's on every OM. They don't make this flat. I don't understand why they don't make the bottom of it flat, but you can't set it up straight. It's crooked, so you have to use the tripod, which isn't that big of a deal, but sometimes you might not want to carry this with you and you might just want to set this down. You can't do that. You have to use the tripod, so that's the only negative that I could find so far about it. I'm going to continue to use this. I'm going to continue to post content on it right here on the channel as well as my other platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and my Patreon page. If you want to join my Patreon, I'll put a link right up here. You can go and check it out. It's just $2 a month and I post extra bonus content over there on a regular basis, so I appreciate it if you do consider that and also TikTok. I just started my TikTok not too long ago and I'm going to start posting more stuff on there. Quick tutorials. You know, videos can be either 15 seconds or a minute over there, so less than one minute tutorials on things. I'm going to do a lot on there on the OM4, some different gimbal moves that you can do and some of my most fun features I'm going to put on my TikTok, so check me out over there if you want to. Hopefully it sticks around. TikTok is, you know, we'll see what happens over the future, but I hope it sticks with us. So check it out. I'm at 51 Drones over there. Hit that thumbs up button if I did give you any information of value today. Hey, one more thing. Comment down below. What do you think of the OM4? Do you think it's worth the investment? Do you think it's something that you would use on a regular basis? I'm interested to know. Be sure to subscribe if you want to see more content just like this. Thank you for watching the entire video today. Have a great day and we'll see you next time.