New DJI Osmo Action 6 is world's first action camera with adjustable aperture – is it enough?

DJI has just announced the new Osmo Action 6, the latest in the company's series of rugged compact cameras designed to unseat the GoPro – and this one boasts a lot of striking features, including a world's first for the category: an adjustable aperture. It also boasts a lens-swapping mechanism, so that's two ways the action camera is going up against what we might call "real cameras."

DJI had previously held an advantage in my guide to the best action cameras over the best-known brand in the field, GoPro, by virtue – mostly – of using a larger image sensor. This had the main practical effect of teasing out more detail in lower light, which was useful in a world where more and more people were using action cameras for vlogging in lower light – evenings, indoors etc. – and of course doing things that still count very much as extreme action in less well-lit environments. If you like caving, a GoPro would likely not be your go-to camera if you'd seen the DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro and its 1/1.3-inch sensor.

GoPro's Hero Black 13 did introduce swappable lenses and had a near-square image sensor that made it easier to re-frame video for mixed use (social formats and traditional).

The new Osmo Action 6 introduces the larger 1/1.1-inch CMOS square sensor seen in the Osmo 360 camera to bring that possibility to the Osmo series. It brings 13.5-stops of dynamic range and 2.4μm fused pixels, all of which assist a super night mode option.

The Osmo Action 6 supports the DJI microphone system, and uses the same 1950mAh batteries as the recently released Osmo 360 camera.

Features include built-in 50GB of available storage (so you don't need a MicroSD card), auto subject tracking, 20m water resistance without a case, six built-in film tones, portrait mode that prioritises skin tones, and a 2x lossless zoom in 4K mode.

The camera is available immediately from store.dji.com in most countries around the world, though customers in the USA might need to wait because of trade regulations – that said it looks like Amazon USA, among others, might have it (see Amazon USA DJI Action 6 page).

For more details, check my full review of the DJI Osmo Action 6.