DJI Osmo 360 II Review: A 360 Camera That Really Wants to Replace Your Action Cam

Review disclosure: The product reviewed in this article was provided on loan. Reviewer: Zachary Skinner.

360 cameras have always made a fairly convincing argument for themselves right up until you actually have to edit the footage. Recording everything around you sounds brilliant. Then you get home with an enormous spherical video file and realise you have voluntarily given yourself another job.

The DJI Osmo 360 II is interesting because DJI seems determined to make that process less annoying while also expanding what a 360 camera can actually be used for. This is not just a device for invisible-selfie-stick shots, tiny planets and people swinging cameras around their heads in locations where they probably shouldn’t be swinging expensive cameras.

It shoots 8K/60fps 360 video, offers 105GB of internal storage, uses replaceable lenses, supports direct DJI microphone connections and can switch into a single-lens mode that effectively turns it into a conventional action camera. There is also NFC connectivity, subject tracking, pre-recording and a fairly extensive accessory ecosystem sitting behind it.

That makes the Osmo 360 II less of a specialist camera and more of a slightly odd Swiss Army knife for filming things.

The real-world testing material supplied for this review covered hiking, travel and fishing, including extended single-lens pre-recording tests. That gives us a much more useful picture of the camera than simply staring lovingly at an 8K logo on a specification sheet.

And there is a lot here to like.

Design / First Impressions

The Osmo 360 II follows the basic physical formula you’d expect from a modern 360 camera. It is a compact upright body with a lens protruding from either side, because physics remains irritatingly unwilling to let manufacturers hide them inside the camera.

At 183g, it is reasonably light considering what DJI has packed inside. That matters more with a 360 camera than it might with something you hold normally because these cameras spend a lot of their lives sitting at the end of selfie sticks, extension poles, helmet mounts and other accessories designed to make your camera appear to be floating through space.

The obvious vulnerability is the lenses.

Traditional action cameras usually have a front lens that is relatively easy to protect. A 360 camera needs both lenses sticking proudly out into the world like two expensive glass targets waiting for a rock, table edge or moment of stupidity.

DJI’s solution is one of my favourite changes here: the lenses are replaceable.

They also feature what DJI describes as an ultra-hard optical coating intended to improve resistance against scratching and wear. More importantly, if you do damage one, you aren’t necessarily looking at a camera-sized repair bill. DJI lists the dual Replacement Lens Kit at AU$49, which almost makes scratching one feel financially survivable.

Almost.

The camera also uses DJI’s dual-direction quick-release system, along with a standard 1/4-inch thread, so you’re not completely trapped inside one accessory system. That’s particularly useful if you already own tripods, clamps or other camera hardware.

DJI has also retained compatibility in some areas with existing Osmo equipment. According to the supplied material, the revised magnetic attachment isn’t identical to previous hardware, but the mechanical locking interface continues to work with existing compatible action-camera accessories.

There are four metal contacts along the bottom of the camera for accessories such as DJI’s Battery Extension Rod, allowing physical shooting controls and additional power without awkward cables hanging around.

The whole thing looks purpose-built rather than unnecessarily decorative. Good. It’s an action camera. I don’t need it to express itself artistically.

Key Features / Specs

The headline feature is obviously the 360 recording system.

The Osmo 360 II can record panoramic footage at up to 8K/60fps. DJI says its new square HDR sensor architecture improves sensor utilisation while reducing power consumption, and the company claims up to 14.5 stops of dynamic range.

The main specifications include:

• Up to 8K/60fps 360 video
• 120MP HDR 360 photos
• 16K 360 timelapse
• 10-bit colour and D-Log M
• AI SuperNight 2.0 low-light processing
• Spotlight Follow subject tracking
• 105GB of internal storage
• 183g weight
• Replaceable lenses
• Four built-in microphones
• Direct DJI Mic compatibility
• NFC phone connection
• Waterproofing to 10 metres without a case
• Waterproofing to 50 metres with the Invisible Waterproof Case
• Operation down to -20°C
• Around 100 minutes of claimed 8K/30fps continuous recording
• Fast charging to 80% in a claimed 22 minutes

There are also some slightly mad creative modes.

You can capture 120MP panoramic photos, create 16K timelapses and use an 8K/120fps Vortex mode. DJI also advertises a 64x panoramic slow-motion feature produced through AI frame interpolation in DJI Studio.

I suspect most owners won’t wake up every morning desperate to create a 16K cloud timelapse, but I’d rather manufacturers include genuinely interesting shooting modes than another menu containing seventeen beauty filters.

The important feature is actually much simpler: you don’t have to decide exactly where the camera should be looking when you press record.

That sounds obvious because, yes, this is literally the point of a 360 camera. But it fundamentally changes the shooting process.

Instead of carefully framing yourself against a view, pointing the camera at whatever is happening, then discovering later that the interesting thing actually happened three metres to the left, you record the whole environment and decide what the viewer sees afterwards.

You can then produce conventional horizontal footage, vertical social content or more unusual tracking shots from the same source recording.

There’s also Spotlight Follow, which can automatically keep a selected subject centred even while the physical camera rotates. For quick-turnaround content where you don’t want to manually keyframe every movement afterwards, that could be genuinely useful.

The NFC system is another small addition that may end up mattering more than some of the enormous numbers on the box. Bring a compatible phone close to the camera and you can establish a connection with DJI Mimo, access footage and move into editing more quickly.

Anything that removes three menus and a Wi-Fi password from an action-camera workflow gets my support.

Performance

Resolution matters enormously with 360 cameras because the quoted resolution is spread around an entire sphere rather than representing the final cropped image your audience sees.

That is why 8K isn’t simply specification-page showing off here.

When you reframe 360 footage into a normal 16:9 or 9:16 shot, you’re effectively cropping a relatively small section out of that original panoramic image. Starting with more detail gives the editing software more information to work with and helps the resulting conventional footage hold together.

The jump to 60fps at 8K is particularly significant for action. Hiking isn’t exactly Formula One unless your walks are going dramatically wrong, but cycling, skiing, motorcycling and similar activities benefit from the additional temporal resolution.

DJI is also pushing low-light performance heavily with the Osmo 360 II. AI SuperNight 2.0 uses computational noise reduction, while the larger pixel architecture is intended to collect more useful image information in darker environments.

As always, manufacturer low-light claims should be treated as claims until properly compared under controlled conditions. Software can clean footage aggressively, but there is a difference between removing noise and magically creating information that wasn’t captured in the first place.

The supplied real-world material also included an interesting endurance test using the camera as a conventional single-lens action camera.

With 4K/60fps pre-recording enabled, a 30-second pre-record buffer and an outdoor temperature of around 30°C, the camera reportedly continued operating for roughly an hour and a half. That’s a more relevant test than recording an empty room until something overheats, because pre-recording is exactly the sort of feature people use for unpredictable activities.

Car spotting is a perfect example.

You could record continuously for hours and return home with enough footage to make your computer quietly reconsider its life choices. Or you can use pre-recording so the camera continuously buffers footage and saves the moments immediately before you hit record.

The Osmo 360 II supports up to five minutes of pre-recording at 4K/60fps in the tested single-lens use case. That means when something suddenly happens, the camera can preserve footage from before you physically reacted.

There is also the option of removing the battery and running the camera from external power. In testing, the camera was operated from a power bank without encountering an overheating shutdown.

That’s potentially useful for long stationary recordings where waterproofing and complete portability aren’t the priority.

Battery endurance varies heavily depending on resolution and shooting mode, but DJI officially rates the camera for up to 100 minutes of continuous 8K/30fps recording. The optional Battery Extension Rod can add a claimed 180 minutes.

Then there’s the internal storage.

105GB is not a token amount thrown in so DJI can print “built-in storage” on the box. The supplied material indicates it is enough for more than an hour of 8K/60fps panoramic recording.

I still wouldn’t rely exclusively on internal storage during a long trip, but forgetting your memory card no longer immediately turns the Osmo 360 II into a very expensive paperweight.

What It’s Like to Use

This is arguably where the Osmo 360 II makes its strongest case.

The difficult part of filming yourself while travelling isn’t usually pressing record. It’s everything surrounding that moment.

Walk forward. Stop. Check composition. Move tripod. Walk backwards. Pretend you weren’t just adjusting a tripod. Walk naturally past camera. Return to retrieve camera. Repeat until the beautiful coastal hike feels suspiciously like unpaid television production work.

A 360 camera removes much of that nonsense.

Put the Osmo 360 II on an invisible selfie stick and you can concentrate primarily on where the camera physically is rather than exactly where it points. Walk, ride or move through the scene and sort the framing afterwards.

For solo travel, that’s enormously appealing.

A small tripod creates similar freedom for stationary shots. Put the camera somewhere useful, hit record and move through the environment. Provided the camera can see you, you’re no longer trying to predict the exact composition before anything happens.

DJI has also included a twist-to-record function. Rotating the camera or compatible shooting setup can trigger recording without needing to poke around for a tiny button.

It sounds insignificant until you’re wearing gloves or holding something with your other hand.

Voice and gesture controls offer similar convenience when the camera is mounted somewhere inaccessible, particularly for activities such as cycling or motorcycling.

The single-lens mode is arguably even more important because it means you don’t always have to deal with 360 footage.

There will be plenty of moments where you know exactly what you want to record. A chest-mounted fishing camera doesn’t necessarily need to capture the seagull committing crimes behind you.

Use one lens and the Osmo 360 II behaves much more like a traditional wide-angle action camera. The square capture format also gives you flexibility when deciding whether the final edit will be horizontal or vertical.

That is valuable if you’re creating for multiple platforms.

You can shoot once with additional framing room, then create a conventional YouTube clip and vertical Reel or TikTok without discovering that the important part of your footage sits inconveniently outside the crop.

Audio is also better integrated than I’d expect from something primarily sold around panoramic visuals.

The camera has four onboard microphones with wind-noise reduction, but DJI’s OsmoAudio system also allows direct connection to compatible DJI microphones including the Mic 3, Mic 2 and several Mic Mini variants.

For travel videos, that’s a big deal.

A spectacular mountain view paired with audio that sounds like someone violently attacking a microphone with a hairdryer isn’t particularly immersive.

What I Liked

The replaceable lenses might be the least glamorous feature on the Osmo 360 II, but they’re probably the one I’d appreciate most after spending my own money.

360 lenses are exposed by design.

You can be incredibly careful for six months and then one poorly judged tripod placement turns one side of your expensive camera into frosted glass. Being able to replace damaged lens hardware without replacing the entire camera makes much more sense.

I also like that DJI is treating this as more than a dedicated panoramic camera.

Single-lens recording completely changes the value proposition. Instead of carrying an action camera plus a 360 camera because you’re not sure which one you’ll need, the Osmo 360 II can cover a meaningful amount of both jobs.

The 105GB internal storage is another unusually practical feature.

Plenty of camera specifications exist primarily to look impressive in online comparisons. Internal storage is something you’ll appreciate exactly once, when you realise your microSD card is still sitting inside your laptop 40 kilometres away.

The workflow improvements also matter.

NFC connection, automatic subject tracking, flexible reframing and direct microphone compatibility all reduce the amount of preparation required before you can actually start filming.

That is probably the biggest thing DJI gets right here.

A camera designed for capturing spontaneous experiences shouldn’t require you to stop experiencing them every three minutes.

What Could Be Better

The obvious downside is one shared by basically every high-resolution 360 camera: the flexibility you gain during recording gets partially paid back during editing.

You can reframe afterwards, which is brilliant.

You also have to reframe afterwards, which is less brilliant.

DJI is clearly trying to reduce that workload with Spotlight Follow, automatic editing functions and improved Mimo integration, but anyone expecting every 8K panoramic clip to emerge from the camera looking like a finished conventional video is going to be disappointed.

Those enormous resolutions also mean enormous files.

The 105GB internal storage helps, but 8K/60fps 360 capture generates data at the sort of pace normally associated with people who own suspiciously large NAS servers.

Editing it properly also places considerably more demand on your computer than trimming a normal 4K action-camera clip.

Then there’s the price.

AU$899 isn’t ridiculous for what the Osmo 360 II offers, but we’re firmly outside impulse-purchase territory. Add an extension rod, mounts, microphone gear, waterproof housing and spare batteries and you can quickly create an accessory collection worth more than some perfectly acceptable conventional cameras.

I would also separate DJI’s impressive-looking computational modes from the features most buyers will actually use.

AI SuperNight 2.0, 64x interpolated slow motion and 16K timelapse all look brilliant on a product page, but I’m far more interested in whether reframing is quick, whether stabilisation remains dependable and whether I can replace a damaged lens without sending the camera away.

Thankfully, DJI appears to have spent time on those boring things too.

Price and Competition

The DJI Osmo 360 II Standard Combo is priced at AU$899, while the Adventure Combo costs AU$1,079.

Australian availability is expected later in September 2026.

Optional accessories include:

• Replacement Lens Kit (Dual): AU$49
• Battery Extension Rod: AU$149
• Heavy Duty Clamp Kit: AU$69

That pricing puts DJI directly into a very competitive part of the market.

The biggest rival is Insta360, which has spent years making its name almost synonymous with consumer 360 cameras. The newer Insta360 X6 currently costs AU$1,049.99 in its Standard Bundle in Australia. It offers 120MP 360 photography and up to 8K/50fps 360 video, while also pushing heavily into conventional flat-video capture and automated editing.

That makes the Osmo 360 II’s AU$899 price interesting.

DJI is coming in around AU$150 cheaper than the X6 while offering 8K/60fps recording, 105GB of internal storage and replaceable lenses. The Insta360 ecosystem and editing software remain a major reason to consider the X6, particularly for users already invested in that platform, but DJI is no longer entering this category as some slightly confused outsider.

The Insta360 X5 is also worth mentioning because it is currently discounted to AU$789 in Australia, down from its AU$929.99 list price. It records 8K/30fps 360 video and also offers replaceable lenses, making it a very attractive cheaper alternative while that discount remains available.

GoPro’s MAX2 is the other established option. It offers 8K 360 capture, replaceable lenses and GoPro’s familiar mounting and software ecosystem. Its biggest attraction will likely be for people who already own GoPro equipment and simply want 360 capture without moving into an entirely different platform.

DJI’s advantage is how tightly the Osmo 360 II fits into the wider Osmo family.

If you already own DJI microphones, mounts or compatible accessories, that integration makes the asking price easier to justify.

Who Is It For?

The Osmo 360 II makes the most sense for people who regularly film activities where deciding the camera angle beforehand is difficult.

Solo travellers are probably the obvious audience.

You can walk through cities, hikes and attractions without constantly turning yourself into both presenter and camera operator. Record everything around you and choose the actual shot later.

Cyclists, motorcyclists and skiers could get even more value from it because mounting a conventional action camera always involves deciding which direction deserves attention. A 360 camera removes much of that decision.

Fishing is another surprisingly good example.

Single-lens pre-recording can capture unexpected moments without leaving the camera permanently recording, while the 360 mode gives you the option of capturing yourself, the water and everything happening around you simultaneously.

Content creators producing for several platforms also benefit from the flexible aspect ratios. Recording one source clip and creating both landscape and vertical versions afterwards is significantly nicer than shooting the same thing twice.

I wouldn’t automatically recommend it to somebody who simply wants an action camera for occasional holiday footage.

If all you ever do is mount a camera on your helmet, shoot conventional 16:9 clips and upload them with minimal editing, a normal Osmo Action is simpler. You’re paying for considerable flexibility here, and there is little reason to pay for flexibility you don’t intend to use.

The Osmo 360 II is for people who regularly look at footage afterwards and think, “I wish the camera had been pointing over there.”

With this, it probably was.

Verdict

The DJI Osmo 360 II feels like DJI has stopped treating 360 cameras as novelty devices and started treating panoramic capture as another useful way of filming.

That’s an important distinction.

8K/60fps is impressive, but the specification I care about more is 105GB of built-in storage. The 120MP photos sound impressive, but replaceable lenses may save owners considerably more money. The AI features are clever, but being able to switch into a useful single-lens action-camera mode could eliminate an entire second camera from some people’s bags.

There are compromises.

360 footage still requires more thought during editing, the files are enormous and AU$899 is serious money for a camera that some buyers may only use occasionally. Once you begin adding accessories, you’re also very capable of wandering past four figures without noticing.

But DJI has done a good job of making those compromises feel worthwhile.

Based on the specifications and real-world testing material supplied for this review, the Osmo 360 II looks particularly convincing for travel, outdoor sports and creators who regularly produce both horizontal and vertical content.

More importantly, it solves one of the oldest problems with action cameras: the most interesting thing that happens is almost always just outside the frame.

With the Osmo 360 II, you’d have to work considerably harder to miss it.