Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “DJI Mavic AIr vs Mavic Pro vs Spark – Which One is best?”.
Hey, what’s up folks how’s it going! This is watch hope you guys are all doing well. So, for the past couple of months, we’ve been testing out a lot of compact drones from dji a couple of months back we looked at the mavic pro platinum. The little spark drone, and just recently we published our review for the mavic air. Now, what we’re going to do is actually do a three-way comparison between all three of these compact drones to see how everything kind of fits together and if you guys, are actually interested in getting a compact drone.
It’S going to be a great video for you to kind of understand how things stand on the dji side now. Firstly, let’s talk about price. The spark comes at the cheapest price point, starting around 399 for just the drone itself.
If you want the extra controller, it’s another 120 to 150 dollars, the mavic air is right in the middle at around eight hundred dollars and the mavic pro is a thousand dollars. We have the platinum edition, which is about 10.99, a hundred dollars more than the standard model. Now next, in terms of portability, certainly the spark is going to be the most portable. It only measures about 143 by 143 millimeters in terms of its footprint and it weighs under 300 grams. So it’s ultra portable and that’s one of the reasons why you can land and take off by just using your hand. In fact, the spark is the only drone that you could do that without using the controller itself, which is pretty cool now, the mavic air is smaller than the pro measuring around 168 by millimeters in terms of footprint, and it’s pretty light at 430 grams. So not a lot bigger than the spark itself now, the mavic pro kind of innovated this whole foldable drone design and even though the design hasn’t changed since the couple of years. I still think it’s a fairly compact solution: uh it’s under 200 millimeters in terms of overall length and the width is around the same as the air at 83 millimeters in terms of footprint. It is a little bit heavier at around 734 grams, but still fairly portable. Now, moving on, let’s talk about the special feature that each drone presents, starting with the spark, as we mentioned before, it’s the most compact and it’s the only one that actually has facial recognition technology, so you can hold it up to your face.
It’Ll recognize your face, and without even using the controller you can launch it off your hand. You can also land it on your hand as well something unique to the spark. It was also one of the first drones to introduce the whole smart capture, control idea, where you raise up your hand, and you can literally control all access of the drone by just using your hand, and even though gesture control is offered on both drones. The air and the spark do have the ability to be controlled by just using your hand, which is definitely awesome right now.
The mavic pro does not have that feature, but you can take a picture and capture video uh by using the gesture mode on the mavic pro now. Speaking of the mavic pro, let’s talk about its special features. Firstly, it’s the best overall battery life offered out of the other two drones. You can get up to 30 minutes with the platinum series.
According to dji, i realistically got something around 25 minutes, but still a world-class leader in terms of flight time and overall battery performance. It also comes with the 8331 propellers that are four decibels quieter than the standard mavic, and it’s also the quietest drone in terms of its flying operation compared to the other two as well, so definitely nice for flying indoors. Another thing about the mavic pro is that it has the widest field of view. It has a 26 millimeter lens with the largest aperture at about f 2.2, giving you a field of view about 78.8 degrees.
So it’s going to give you the most amount of information captured on to the sensor itself, so that’s great for most aerial photography and the perspective is not very distorted. You still have that nice cinematic flat look to the video, which is always important. You don’t want to have that kind of fisheye effect that you have with gopro cameras or older generation drones now move forward in terms of the unique features about the mavic air. I think it’s probably one of the most feature-rich drone, especially in this compact form, factor that i have ever come across. Think of it as like, a mavic pro mixed with a phantom pro. Firstly, you have uh front facing stereoscopic sensors rearward facing sensors as well as sensors, on the back for your all your obstacle avoidance system, and it has a lot of technology to keep it very stable and very safe in the air, which is definitely a huge thing.
Another cool thing is that the controller on the air actually has detachable. Thumb sticks, making it a little bit more portable and you have eight gigabytes of internal storage built inside the drone. Apart from whatever sd card that you’re going to put inside of it, which is awesome, furthermore, you will have all of these smart capturing capabilities of the mavic pro with uh. The active tracking capabilities with now multiple subjects and you can do all sorts of cool orbiting shots. You also have the capability of capturing 32 megapixel spherical panoramas. So if you want to get a fully 360 degrees immersive capture, that way, you can view it through the dji goggles or through any vr headset, you have that capability built inside the drone. Furthermore, we have the smart capturing, slash hand, control capabilities that we initially found with the spark. So you can launch the drone by just using your hand, land it and go left right up and down pretty much, have full control of the drone by just using your hands and not be dependent on the controller. And lastly, from a technical perspective, you are recording higher quality video. You can record uh up to 4k at 30 fps up to 100 megabits per second, that’s actually a little bit better than what we find on the mavic pro or platinum, which records at 60 megabits per second at 4k. So technically the video should have a little bit more information in terms of color and overall sharpness, and you can record 1080p at 120 frames per second for all your slow-mo capture versus the mavic pro can do. I think 96 frames per second at 1080p. If you want 120 frames per second you’re gon na have to drop it down to 720p on the mavic pro. Additionally, the mavic air is certainly going to give you a lot better video quality than what you’re going to find with the spark, which is limited to only 1080p at 30 frames per second now.
The last thing that we’re going to talk about is the overall flight dynamics, the range and the battery performance in terms of my testing in terms of flight dynamics. All three of these are very easy to fly. They have the vision, positioning system, they have a built-in gps. So your hover stability and deviation is going to be very minimal.
It’S gon na be great for indoors outdoor pretty much any situation that you’re gon na fly in all three are very easy to fly and very friendly for any kind of operator skill level. Now, in terms of maximum velocity, when it comes to a flight performance, the mavic air is the fastest rated at 68.4 kilometers per hour. The pro is rated at 65 kilometers per hour, and the little spark can actually go 50 kilometers per hour, which is still pretty fast moving forward in terms of maximum communication distance. This is always going to vary depending upon what kind of situation you’re flying in, but directly line of sight. The spark with the controller, can be controlled up to 2 kilometers away with the smartphone you’re limited to about 100 meters. Now, with the air, with the controller you’re looking at about four kilometers maximum communication distance, that’s with a 720p live feed and the mavic pro is actually rated at the longest range at about seven kilometers with an hd live feed. Now, last but not least, let’s talk about the real world flight time and the overall battery performance of each of these drones. Now this is an average about 10 flights from one drone to the other, and here are the ranges that you’re going to look at for the spark you can get anywhere between 10 minutes to about 12 minutes on the air.
Based on my experience, i got 12 to 16 minutes and with the mavic pro platinum, i got anywhere between 18 to 25 minutes of real-world flight time again. These are gon na depend upon how you’re flying it or how much wind is in the environment, and everything like that. But, generally speaking, the mavic pro is the best the air is in the middle and the spark is the worst in terms of battery performance as to be expected. Now, besides, that, that’s really it.
For this comparison, i would certainly say that the mavic air is probably my personal favorite drone right now, and even though i love the pro, it was uh. Pretty amazing, in terms of its feature, sets overall design the air just kind of perfects everything that we loved about the phantom series of drones and what we loved about the mavic pro. The spark is a great kind of starter drone, a little bit cheaper, although you’re still going to have to get the control. If you want to get a better range out of it and to make it a little bit more easier to fly than just being limited to your actual smartphone, but definitely not a bad overall little compact solution, great for kids and things like that.
Another thing is, if you’re interested in a really cheap, affordable drone, something that offers a lot of cool capabilities for the price check out our video on the teledrone from rise. Robotics, that’s a sweet little thing. One last thing i want to mention is that there’s actually a sale going on on dj’s website from april the 1st to the 14th and there’s a couple of unique items on sale. Firstly, you get a hundred dollars off of the single mavic pro quadcopter. You also get a free battery, which is a smoking deal, there’s also a hundred dollars off of the standard uh dji goggles, which is an excellent thing to pair up with any of the mavic pros or the air. You also get a 150 off. If you get the mavic pro fly more combo, which comes with a lot of sweet stuff check out the description for more details about everything, we’ve talked about and all the product information, but really on that guys. That’S really it! Thank you so much for watching. Thanks for your support – and let me know which drone you would prefer, would you go with the spark, the air or the pro mavic? So definitely, let me know and we’ll see you next time take care. .