Part of what I like to do on my YouTube channel is to test products to help inform customers when it comes to purchasing products. This sometimes includes testing generic and 3rd party accessories as they can tend to be a little cheaper than official accessories, I am all about saving a few dollars when I can. The downside is generic products sometimes do not perform as well as its official counterpart and can actually cost you more money in the long run.
A few weeks back DJI released its microphone adapter for the Osmo Pocket which is needed if you wish to connect an external microphone. Within days, generic versions of the adapter started popping up on websites including Amazon at a fraction of the cost. These versions are labeled to work with the Osmo Pocket and also include images of Osmo Pocket, so the must be legit, right? Well, I was curious how a generic $2.99 adapter would stack up to the official DJI $39.99 adapter. After my order was placed the generic adapter took about 2 weeks to arrive. A quick visual inspection showed they are of similar shape with a few differences including being a little smaller.
Now to back peddle a bit, in between ordering this generic adapter and before it arrived DJI released a new firmware update that added some new features and fixed a few issues. One of the new features the update added was a new visual notification that a microphone adapter and microphone has been connected, this was great as until the update there was no way to know if the Osmo Pocket was indeed connected and using the external microphone.
The generic microphone adapter arrived and I was eager to test it out, but my testing was cut short due to the fact that the Osmo Pocket did not detect when the generic microphone adapter was plugged in, this was really no surprise to me really. I had a feeling this $2.99 adapter was going to be a bust. I did continue however to see if the microphone did work, just making sure that perhaps only the icon would not show up because it was a non-official DJI part, but again no luck. Now I wonder if this adapter did work at some point and the latest firmware update locked it down, GoPro has done something similar in the past with 3rd party batteries. I am not sure if this is the case or not but it is quite plausible.
So do not waste your money on generic microphone adapters for your Osmo Pocket. Even if you do happen to find one that does work it could be disabled via a firmware update if DJI chooses to do so and could leave you stuck if you rely on your Osmo Pocket for vlogging, work or play.
Official Microphone Adaptor: http://bit.ly/2JfNX1o
Osmo Pocket (DJI Store) http://bit.ly/2RU7iVT
Osmo Pocket (Amazon) https://amzn.to/2UMDUp8