Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “DJI Mavic Air – Is It The Ultimate Compact Drone?”.
What’S up folks how’s it going, this is waj hope you guys are all doing well and in this article we’re going to be talking about the mavic air from dji. Now, essentially, what the air is? It’S a combination between uh, the very popular mavic pro and the more compact spark drone uh. So it has a lot of crossover features. Certainly, the size is very appealing and has that foldable design and a camera quality and feature set that rivals what the mavic pro has to offer. So if you guys are interested on my take on the mavic air, i’ve been actually using it for a couple of months now, and here i’m reporting back to you.
So let’s get right into it now. Firstly, i have to say that the biggest highlight of the mavic air has to be the foldable design in its folded position. It only measures about 168 millimeters by 184 millimeters in terms of overall footprint. That’S about the size of your average larger six to 5.5 inch. Smartphone – and it only is about 64 millimeters in terms of height and with the included small carrying case, you can pretty much throw this drone with you anywhere. You go, whether that’s in a backpack or even fit it in a large cargo pant. If you have big enough pants to do so now, dji’s obsession with portability doesn’t just stop at the drone itself. As you can see, the controller has been kind of redesigned. It looks very similar uh to the standard, mavic pro controller and a little bit like the spark controller, but the thumb sticks themselves are actually detachable. They live just underneath the smartphone mount and you can screw them on into place. Just be a little careful when you are doing so because they are pretty easy to lose. I’Ve actually lost them in the field previously before, and it took me an hour to find them again, but with these detachable thumbsticks, the overall profile of the controller definitely goes a little bit down and it makes it a little bit more portable with the drone itself.
Now, interestingly, the air, even though super compact pretty much shares a lot of the features with the mavic pro uh, both have 4k video cameras that can record up to 100 megabits per second 12 megapixels hdr stills. You can see that there’s a redesigned super compact, three axis gimbal setup with the area with also has a pretty nice fitted lens uh cover, so that way when you’re transporting the drone, your uh gimbal is not gon na be damaged, and your lens is also gon Na be protected so in terms of actual video quality itself, and the stability of the drone is also really awesome. It has the vision, positioning stabilization system uh, so you have cameras at the front, the rear and even at the back of the drone. So it’s pretty much up there with what you would get with like a phantom pro series of drone and the hover stability is also very, very good in pretty much any condition that you throw it in indoors outdoors.
It’S going to be super rock solid and super stable and very easy to fly. In addition to that, you have the advanced piloting assistance system built in, so the obstacle avoidance system will actively retrace different tracks and scan the actual environment that you’re in. So if you have a specific fly path that you want to go through and it detects an object, it won’t just stop right there in its path. It’Ll actually go around that object’s, fine, alternative, more safer routes. So that way it doesn’t crash. And again, since you have cameras both at the front back and bottom of the drone, you have pretty much all access covered, except for the top.
Of course. That being said, this is still not 100 crash proof. Uh things can always happen in the field, and you always want to be careful and make sure you’re flying in a safe zone where drones are loud, which is becoming more and more challenging these days now. Additionally, some of the other main features is that you have the full following capabilities that we saw with the mavic and phantom series of drones, so it can follow you anywhere you go and i can actually follow multiple people.
A really cool thing is the gesture control mode which we first saw with the spark drone. So you can actually use a couple of different hand, gestures to fully control the drone, so you can take off land control the drone in pretty much all three axises and follow you take videos and photos by just using some simple hand, gestures so you’re not tied To the controller, all the time super handy and convenient and works pretty darn well, based on my experience thus far. There’S, however, a couple of differences uh.
Firstly, you do need to enable the gesture control mode on the smartphone app with the controller itself. So it’s not fully dependent on the drone to be set up that way and you can’t land or take off on your hand, because it’s a larger drone, unlike the spark which is a little bit easier to handle, which is understandable. But the spark also recognizes your face without the aid of a separate controller. So it’s certainly a little bit easier to use the gesture mode on the spark, but these are updates that could be made later down the road on the air. Now, in terms of the maximum communication distance between the controller and the drone itself, you can control the drone for up to four kilometers and you do get a 720p hd feed, which is nice now. Based on my testing, i did do a max run test and i started to lose the signal after about a kilometer and a half to the two kilometer mark, so i definitely be careful. You always want to make sure you have good line of sight, but i wouldn’t do a very long.
Distance uh runs between the controller and the unit itself, so uh be careful of that now in terms of the camera quality itself, as you can see, the footage looks pretty darn good uh. The quality, i would say, is very similar, uh to the mavic pro and even the phantom series of drones. Furthermore, you also have the ability to shoot 32 megapixel panoramas in a 360 degree viewpoint, so it’s a sphere that it shoots and you can either use any kind of vr headset to view this perspective later on or if you have the dji goggles that you can Use to view your live footage with uh, you can view the 360 panoramas that way, which is super cool as well now, in terms of the battery life, this is probably the weakest portion of the drone. It’S rated for actually 21 hours based on dji’s specifications.
In reality, i had three batteries to play with and over a month and a half to test out the drone, and i did over 30 flights – and i averaged anywhere between 12 minutes on the low perspective and with the best situation possible. Uh minimum hover deviations about 16 minutes at best, so you definitely want to make sure you have a couple of batteries when you’re going to be using this thing long term, if you’re going on a trip or something like that, and therefore anybody serious about the air Should probably invest in the fly more combo package, it comes with three spare batteries: a four-way charging hub for those batteries, the remote control, the prop guards, six pairs of propellers, as well as a nice travel bag that you can store everything into the cost. For that package is just under a thousand dollars, including the drone and the controller, if you just want to get the standard air for uh just under dollars, it comes with the drone, the controller, a small carrying case for the drone itself, a couple of extra props. As well as the prop guard, so that’s definitely still not a bad deal, but i would definitely want to get some more batteries for sure now.
To sum up everything we’ve talked about thus far. I would have to say that the mavic air is certainly very, very impressive. It’S very close to perfection if that is even achievable, it kind of takes everything we love about the mavic pro and puts it into more compact size. Now there are some gripes that i have with it fairly minor.
Firstly, it’s fairly loud, i think it’s one of the loudest drones that i’ve tested out thus far, certainly if you’re flying indoors, it’s definitely not going to be something that you can covertly operate. People are definitely going to notice. The other problem i have is there’s some inconsistencies in terms of battery life, although i’ve discharged and recharged a number of different batteries and i’m getting some very fluctuating, uh performance results.
It’S rated for 21 hours as we mentioned before, but i typically it can sometimes get under 10 minutes, believe it or not, and i’m really not flying it that aggressively. Luckily, i did get the combination pack, so i have three batteries. So that’s definitely not a problem and with the battery charging hub charging is really simple and straightforward, so i definitely recommend if you guys are interested in checking out the combo package rather than just being stuck to one battery.
You definitely want to have multiple batteries, because you can be flying this thing, a lot more, getting a lot more use out of it, but really besides that guys, i would definitely say that the mavic air could definitely even replace a mavic pro if you want something A little bit more portable, i think the video quality is pretty much very, very similar. I think the platinum definitely has some nice features in terms of being a little bit more quiet, a little bit easier to fly and a little bit more stable, but you’re going to get some outstanding. Looking footage from the air as well, but definitely love to hear your thoughts. Additionally, there’s also some sales going on on a dji’s our website, so we have some links down below.
So if you guys are interested in perhaps getting a mavic air or something on their site, there’s actually a big easter sale going on right now, so definitely check that out, but other than that, thanks again for watching. Thanks for your support and we’ll see you in the next one take care .