DJI O4 Air Unit Series – Time to upgrade?

It has been more than 2 years since DJI released the O3 Air Unit, a digital FPV transmission system. Just 3 days ago, DJI released its successor: the O4 Air Unit Series. Not one product, but two: the O4 Air Unit (Lite Version) and the O4 Air Unit Pro. In the article I would go through the new features and help you answer the question – is it time and is it worth to upgrade to the O4 Air Unit?

Quick Answer

  1. If low video transmission latency is important for you (racing, freestyle etc.) and you already have the Goggles 3 or Goggles N3, the answer is Yes.
  2. If you fly sub 250g drones (over people, events etc) and you need better low light performance as well as D-Log Color Profile for post-production, the answer is clearly a Yes.

What is new and what have been improved?

Camera

The camera sensor of the O4 Air Unit Pro is now bigger than the O3 Air Unit (1/1.3″ CMOS vs. 1/1.7″ CMOS). The aperture of both O3 and O4 is f/2.8 or same as the DJI Avata 2. The bigger sensor means the new O4 Air Unit Pro is going to perform better during low light conditions.

The O4 Air Unit (Lite) on the other hand has a smaller camera sensor of 1/2″. Therefore in low light conditions it would be not as good as the old O3 Air Unit.

More over the new O4 Air Unit Pro supports 10bit D-Log M color mode, which is important for retaining more details in highlights and shadows. It will give you greater flexibility in post-production editing.

Those two features alone (bigger sensor size + D-Log M mode) will probably be enough for a lot of professional pilots to use the O4 Air Unit Pro as the only on-board video recording system. Simply said: you might not need to mount any action camera anymore on your drone and record everything with the O4 Air Unit Pro. This is especially helpful when you need to stay below the 250g MTOM (maximum take off mass) due to regulations (flying over people at events etc).

Note also that only the O4 Air Unit Pro is capable of recording 4K/120fps video (like the O3 Air Unit). The O4 Air Unit (Lite) can only record 4K/60fps.

Last but not least, the O4 Air Unit Pro support Auto ISO range of 100-25600, while on the O3 it is 100-6400.

Low latency

Another major improvement is the ultra low latency of the O4 video transmission for more responsive controls.

A lot of racing and freestyle pilots were simply not happy with the O3 Air Unit and its 30ms latency (at 1080p/100fps) in the past. Many of them sticked to analog video transmission to ensure low transmission latency.

The O4 Air Unit Pro brings huge improvement: pilots can achieve latency as low as 15ms (at 1080p/100fps) and make tthe O4 Air Unit Pro finally suitable for racing and freestyle. However, there is a little catch here: to achieve the ultra low latency you will need to use the new so called “Racing Mode“. This mode is only available on the Goggles 3 (15ms latency) and Goggles N3 (19ms latency).

If you are going to use the Goggles 2 or Goggles Integra, you cannot benefit of the ultra low latency. The latency will be the same as with the O3 Air Unit – 30ms.

Size and weight

The O4 Air Unit Pro is almost the same size as the O3 Air Unit, while the O4 Air Unit (Lite) is significantly thinner.

O3 Air UnitO4 Air Unit ProO4 Air Unit (Lite)
32.5×30.5×14.5 mm33.5×33.5×13 mm30×30×6 mm
36.4g32g8.2g

The O4 Air Unit Pro seems to have a better build quality, a CNC body design with a better heat dissipation, which should help the unit not to overheat.

The other cool thing are the mounting holes directly integrated into the O4 Air Unit Pro. This is how I have mounted my prototype unit on my old iFlight DC5 HD frame.

Due to the bigger sensor, the camera of the O4 Air Unit Pro is slightly bigger than the one of the O3 Air unit:

  • O4 Air Unit Pro – 25.55×20×23.30 mm (L×W×H)
  • O3 Air Unit – 21.2×20×19.5 mm (LxWxH)

I was able to mount the new camera on the iFlight frame. However, as the camera is bigger it is not as good protected on the front.

I am sure the frame manufacturers will quickly adapt popular frames and will provide new versions for the O4 Air Unit Pro. In fact some already did – Quadmula offered a new version of the sub 250g DJinn F25, which is designed for the new air unit.

What else should you know?

Onboard Storage

The old O3 Air Unit has 20GB built-in storage. The new O4 Air Unit Pro has only 4GB, while the O4 Air Unit (Lite) has 23GB. While both the O3 and O4 Air Unit Pro have SD Card exapansion slots, the O4 Air Unit (Lite) does not.

Improved Range and Video Transmission Bitrate

According to DJI, the maximum transmission range of the O4 Air Unit Pro is 15km, while the O3 Air Unit and O4 Air Unit (Lite) has a maximu range of 10km.

The maximum video transmission bitrate on the O4 Air Unit Series also improved from 50Mbps (O3) to 60Mbps for a better image quality.

Compatibility

The O4 Air Unit Series is compatible with the following DJI Goggles:

  • Goggles 3
  • Goggles N3
  • Goggles 2
  • Goggles Integra

There is no compatibility with the a bit older and very popular DJI FPV Goggles V2. As mentioned above please pay attention to the limitations of Goggles 2 and Goggles Integra for the low latency mode. Same applies for the lower maximum video transmission bitrate of 50Mbps with the Goggles 2.

The pin-out from the FC to the O4 is same as the O3, so you can use same cables and dont need to adapt/change anything on this part. There is support for Betaflight OSD, so nothing changed from the O3 about this.

RockSteady

RockSteady stabilization mode allows high-speed flights to maintain steady video capture and is compatible with Gyroflow software for offline post-stabilization.

Final thoughts

DJI once again pushed the limits and launched two amazing products for FPV enthusiasts. The O4 Air Unit (Lite) is ideal for micro quads, while the O4 Air Unit Pro will be great for racing, freestyle and cinematic FPV flying.

Pricing: The O4 Air Unit (Lite) is at very attractive price of just 115 EUR / 99 GBP, while the O4 Air Unit Pro is priced as the O3 Air Unit back then – 249 EUR / 209 GBP.


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