I'll tell you about my research of the DJI Ronin 4D.

Step 1:
I'm a small filmmaker and need a cinema camera.

Step 2:
DJI released a cine camera? Their drones are great, I'll look.

Step 3:
Full-frame 4K60? Cool!

Step 4:
Steadicam-like gimble? Awesome! This meets all my needs and it's affordable for me, the small filmmaker.
I'm going to pre-order one now!

Step 5:
RAW video only available with DJI's proprietary $800 1TB "proSSD"?
Order cancelled.

This will be the experience of many, many other small filmmakers who research the Ronin 4D.
The reason DJI locks RAW recording behind their $800 1TB "proSSD" rather than allowing it for all brands of SSD (like real cinema cameras eg. Sony FX6 do) is because SSDs are consumable items at the write-rates involved in cinema production. SSDs wear out when a lot of writes are performed on them. The "ProSSD" is a QLC SSD, meaning it will wear out MUCH faster than an enterprise-grade SLC SSD that costs 6x less. DJI did not release endurance information for the ProSSD, but if it is like other QLC SSDs, it should last for about 200TB of writes - if you fully fill the ProSSD 1TB 200 times, it will no longer work. It takes 36 minutes of shooting to fill the ProSSD 1TB with 6K RAW footage according to DJI. Do the math... it adds up to a lot of hidden costs for you on this "budget" cinema camera.

Roughly every 120 hours of 6K RAW recording with the DJI Ronin 4D will require you to buy another of DJI's ProSSDs for $800. Your camera requires you to pay DJI $6.67 per hour you use it to shoot 6K RAW footage. That's almost minimum wage.

DJI is also using the USB-C protocol for their "ProSSD mount" which means an NVME SSD is not even needed for RAW video, a $150 1tb USB-C SSD would do the same job. DJI not only refuses to allow you to use non-DJI-branded NVME SSDs for your camera, they don't allow you to shoot RAW video on USB-C SSDs even though they are 100% capable of it.

This is the "catch" of the Ronin 4D. This is what will make the Ronin 4D extremely expensive for your productions. You will be buying and re-buying these horrifically overpriced proprietary $800 1tb SSDs if you use this camera often.


DJI: Don't become Apple when your company is growing so fast. Don't taint an extremely popular product with an evil business practice. Do the right thing.

It's more than likely related to the cost of licensing ProRes Raw. Look at their Inspire drones, you had to fork over I believe 1K for the license, and it appears that they are just baking the fee's into the SSD's. Otherwise, there would be no need to limit the ProRes Raw to only their SSD, I have 2TB drives that are plenty fast, peaking around 2700mb/s.

Hi there, thank you for bringing this to our attention. Just to clarify, this is related to the writing and reading speed of the medium, other mediums may not meet the requirement. Hope for your understanding.

DJI Susan Posted at 2-20 22:53
Hi there, thank you for bringing this to our attention. Just to clarify, this is related to the writing and reading speed of the medium, other mediums may not meet the requirement. Hope for your understanding.

This is nonsense. There is an abundance of much faster SSDs on the market than this "proSSD" whose read/write speeds DJI deliberately does not even disclose. In all likelihood the "proSSD" is an OEM M.2 SSD from another Chinese company, and highly inferior in quality to Samsung / Crucial / etc. equivalents.

This isn't even speculation, because your SSD uses USB-C as its interface with the camera. The bandwidth of USB is lower than the maximum write speed of many/most modern SSDs, meaning the DJI SSD can only ever be equal to them in write speed, if not (in all likelihood) quite inferior. Hiding the write speed of the DJI SSD is pointless when we know it cannot magically be faster than the USB standard.

djerk Posted at 2-21 08:27
This is nonsense. There is an abundance of much faster SSDs on the market than this "proSSD" whose read/write speeds DJI deliberately does not even disclose. In all likelihood the "proSSD" is an OEM M.2 SSD from another Chinese company, and highly inferior in quality to Samsung / Crucial / etc. equivalents.

This isn't even speculation, because your SSD uses USB-C as its interface with the camera. The bandwidth of USB is lower than the maximum write speed of many/most modern SSDs, meaning the DJI SSD can only ever be equal to them in write speed, if not (in all likelihood) quite inferior. Hiding the write speed of the DJI SSD is pointless when we know it cannot magically be faster than the USB standard.

Hello, there. Sorry for any misleading and confusion. Pro SSD installed on Ronin 4D applies PCIE agreement, while third-party SSD uses USB-C agreement. All the units in the recommended list have been tested by us, others haven't. Thus, we can not guarantee their performance.  If you have recommended SSD for compatibility tests, you may tell us. We would forward it to our engineers and see whether can we arrange for verification. After it is done, we will update the compatibility list on our website. Thanks for your understanding.

So all this being said- Can we use a standard portable SSD to connect to the camera? I'm about to try the Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD?

Holy hell i cannot believe this $7000 camera cannot even delete clips individually.... How.... How can that be possible?

No cinema cameras  I have owned allow you to delete individual clips.

Komodo, Red Dragon, Scarlet, Epic - even the BM6Kpro.

fans4d0031c4 Posted at 3-15 16:06
So all this being said- Can we use a standard portable SSD to connect to the camera? I'm about to try the Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD?

they only support Samsung T5 500GB at the moment.

T7 works (sometimes needs to reconnect to properly mount)

Wait so just to be clear… people have used their party USB-C SSDs? Because I have an enclosure for M.2 SSDs. I'll buy the mount right now

This is confirmed working?

djiuser_hWEp5ap0BQRr Posted at 10-22 13:32
Wait so just to be clear… people have used their party USB-C SSDs? Because I have an enclosure for M.2 SSDs. I'll buy the mount right now

This is confirmed working?

You can not as far as I know use any 3rd party SSD to record 6K not even 6K Proress 6K LT, H265 or H264 like say a Zcam.  You can record 4K with a 3rd party SSD like Sandisk extreme v2 (I use these).  Ive never even seen the 6K from my camera....would love to one day :-)

BerthaVision Posted at 10-25 11:45
You can not as far as I know use any 3rd party SSD to record 6K not even 6K Proress 6K LT, H265 or H264 like say a Zcam.  You can record 4K with a 3rd party SSD like Sandisk extreme v2 (I use these).  Ive never even seen the 6K from my camera....would love to one day :-)

Really? That's crazy!

I've only used CF Express memory cards, and it lets me record 6K ProRes 422 HD (but not the new ProRes 4444XQ).

Thank you for letting me know. These kinds of restrictions and information about the Ronin 4D are not really well documented or easy to find yet. So thank you for chiming in with your experience using a 3rd Party SSD with the PROSSD Mount. (I wonder if the speed of the drive or the type of enclosure it's housed in matters?)

Ford4D Posted at 10-26 01:41
Really? That's crazy!

I've only used CF Express memory cards, and it lets me record 6K ProRes 422 HD (but not the new ProRes 4444XQ).

I killed a whole pile of CF Cards when using the Ursa Mini, but this was years ago when that camera first came out in I think 2015, figured them too fragile for me...I really love the Sandisk Extreme V2s they are even weather-sealed & coated in rubber, have loads of these! But looking now again maybe revisiting the CF cards if thats the only other way to get 6K again. We really need 2TB drives, look kind of pricy, do all of these work? Can we perhaps use that .M2 to CF card adapter dongle hack?  
looking at the Prores bitrate, for 1hr of 6K ProRes LT 30fps its about 450GB or 125MB/sec....If it's a regular USBC port it maybe able to handle roughly 300MB/sec doing a quick dirty speed test here on my mac using a USBC hub & a Sandisk v2.. which is roughly at the limit of 30fps 6K Prores HQ. This kind of makes it seem fairly legit to just turn it off to stop all the complaints that would be generated. But it could be fine for the new Prores LT?

BerthaVision Posted at 10-26 08:09
I killed a whole pile of CF Cards when using the Ursa Mini, but this was years ago when that camera first came out in I think 2015, figured them too fragile for me...I really love the Sandisk Extreme V2s they are even weather-sealed & coated in rubber, have loads of these! But looking now again maybe revisiting the CF cards if thats the only other way to get 6K again. We really need 2TB drives, look kind of pricy, do all of these work? Can we perhaps use that .M2 to CF card adapter dongle hack?  
looking at the Prores bitrate, for 1hr of 6K ProRes LT 30fps its about 450GB or 125MB/sec....If it's a regular USBC port it maybe able to handle roughly 300MB/sec doing a quick dirty speed test here on my mac using a USBC hub & a Sandisk v2.. which is roughly at the limit of 30fps 6K Prores HQ. This kind of makes it seem fairly legit to just turn it off to stop all the complaints that would be generated. But it could be fine for the new Prores LT?

It's a different CF card standard, the first version of CF Express came out in 2017. So it would theoretically be different from what you used in 2015

Wait... what .M2 to CF Express Card adapter dongle hack? First I've heard of this!

Honestly, I'd love to see support for 3rd party SSDs in the PRO SSD mount.

Ford4D Posted at 10-26 15:07
It's a different CF card standard, the first version of CF Express came out in 2017. So it would theoretically be different from what you used in 2015

Wait... what .M2 to CF Express Card adapter dongle hack? First I've heard of this!

Your right, Ive got it mixed up with CFast haha, will start reading into CF Express!  For Cfast there was a dongle for the sata port that you could use to add your own SSD. There are M.2 to CF adapters out there that are very affordable. I guess someone has to test it out.

hi all,
I just purchased the Ronin 4d and started to play with it today. I mostly work w gimbals and already and this 4d could make a huge difference due to the z axis. I alread y encountered mnay issues and have some concerns about how robust it is and how long it will last before to fall appart.

My main concern is regarding the SSD, I have few   T5 1tb, T5 2tb and some jugglers 1Td, that I used w different cameras.
As today, none of them are working properly I cant even record more than 15 sec  with these settings….
Apple prores hq
4k
60fps

I have a message popping up saying that the writing speed is too slow. They used to work fine w any other cameras  and I have no need and desire to buy their overprized SSd.
What ssd worked for you and what capacity as well?

First of all, thanks for venting. But this is not true based on my experience. We have several DJI ProSSDs with a minimum average of 800 full cycle times and some have even more. So far, we have never encountered any of the issues you suggested.