GoKawiilThe Pocket 4P's optical zoom deserves its own section because it's that good. DJI isn't the first to put a dual-lens system on a gimbal camera — Insta360 won that race — but it's a huge leap over the Pocket 4's 2x in-sensor zoom. The familiar 20mm wide-angle remains a capable all-rounder, while the new 60mm medium telephoto dramatically expands what the camera can do.
DJI is quick to point out that 60mm is the "sweet spot" for portraits, giving more natural face proportions, but it offers much more than that in practice. The smaller aperture also creates a shallower depth of field. This naturally puts more focus on your subject, be it a person, object or landmark. I particularly enjoyed the freedom to reframe shots in-camera without worrying about loss of quality. I shoot a lot of top-down product shots, and being able to reframe the subject before I press record is a huge time saver. Better still, ActiveTrack continues to work while zoomed in, making it far easier to keep yourself framed when filming solo.
True optical zoom tops-out at 3x, but the in-sensor zoom still preserves a high amount of quality. It was hard to find much noticeable degradation in quality or noise in anything I shot at 6x. Honestly, even at 12x, well into the realm of digital zoom, I was hugely impressed with the fidelity. At this extreme, you will notice a drop in quality, but it is less than I expected. When compared to 12x zooms from the Insta360 Luna Ultra, it's hard to pick a winner as both have their strengths.
The transition between the two lenses isn't completely seamless, however. DJI has already reduced the issue with a firmware update, but you'll still occasionally notice a slight shift in exposure, color or framing as the camera switches to the telephoto lens at exactly 3x. There's also a small perspective change caused by the physical distance between the lenses. The Luna Ultra behaves much the same way, and it's largely a limitation of the hardware rather than something software can eliminate entirely.
One area where Insta360 still has the edge is zoom control. On the Pocket 4P, you can zoom using either the joystick or the dedicated zoom button. The button works well: single presses jump between 1x and 3x, a double press goes to 6x, while a long press performs a smooth continuous zoom. The joystick is less convincing. It's easy to leave it assigned to pan mode, only to realise after recording has started that it isn't controlling zoom at all.
The Luna Ultra's thumb slider feels more intuitive than the one on the 4P. Short presses step through the zoom levels, while a long press delivers a smooth zoom, and those controls remain available regardless of screen orientation. On the Pocket 4P, the zoom button disappears from the interface when shooting in portrait mode, making it slightly less convenient for vertical video.