The instantaneous flow characteristics of circular orifice synthetic jet was experimentally studied by a phase-locked Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) system. The instantaneous flowfields, including the forming, developing and breaking down of the vortex for the jet were clearly shown by the PIV experimental results. As the basis of the study of the instantaneous flow, 36 images were taken and phase-averaged for each condition. The PIV experiment was mainly focused on the time evolution of the vortex pairs formed in the push cycle, the saddle point existing in the suck cycle, the variation of the centerline velocity in the whole cycle and the cross-stream velocity profiles and their self-similarity. Finally, the orifice depth was changed from 1.5 mm to 2 mm and 3.5 mm in order to study the effect of different orifice depths on the flow structure, which shows that at all stream wise sections, the peak of the mass flux and momentum flux increases as the orifice depth increases. Furthermore, the nondimensional distance of the mass flux from the exit is the maximum, while the nondimensional distance of the centerline velocity peak from the exit is the minimum, and nondimensional distance of the momentum flux from the exit section is between them.