DJI Mavic 2 Pro

amazon DJI Mavic 2 Pro reviews

DJI’s Mavic family has replaced all but its Phantom line for consumer drone use. The Mavic Drone is smaller all around and is foldable for easier storage and transport. The top-end model, the Mavic 2 Pro ($1,729), has the largest image sensor we’ve ever seen in a Drone of this size. That means photos and videos both look better than other Drones, including the Pro’s near-twin, the Mavic 2 Zoom. The Pro is a bit more expensive, $250, but we think the increased picture and video quality is worth it. The Mavic 2 Pro is the Best Drone for enthusiast pilots.

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The Mavic 2 Pro takes design cues from the original Mavic Pro but is slightly larger. It measures 3.3 x 3.6 x 8.4 inches (HWD) when folded and 3.3 x 9.5 x 12.7 inches when extended. Extending the drone is pretty easy; remember to swing your front arm in front of your lower arm. The aircraft weighs about 2 pounds, heavy enough to require FAA registration for recreational flying in the US.

Although slightly larger than the original Mavic and the more recent Mavic Air, the Mavic 2 Pro is still portable. It fits in a camera bag, taking up the same space as a typical 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom lens. You’ll have to make a bit more space for the remote, charger, and any additional batteries you buy, but you won’t have to spend a backpack on the Mavic the way you do with the Phantom design.

DJI is splitting the Mavic 2 series into two models – the Pro we’re reviewing here – and the Zoom, which has a 2x optical zoom lens, but a 1/2.3-inch, smartphone-sized 12MP image sensor. The Mavic 2 Pro is ahead with a 1-inch sensor, about four times the image size behind the Mavic 2 Zoom’s lens. The larger surface area allows for higher image resolution (20MP) and higher quality video.

How we test drone

The included remote is similar to what you get with other Mavic models. It comes in grey, with a short, interchangeable cable that connects to your smartphone, mounted underneath the controller. Two clips hold your phone — they’re big enough to hold a phablet and can hold a slim phone case, but you’ll need to take your phone out of the case if you’re using a bulky one. There’s a cutout on the left clip, so you can access the phone’s home button when it’s docked in the remote. Cables are included for phones using Lightning, micro USB, and USB-C ports.

The remote control has a monochrome display — it shows battery status, telemetry data, and more. The Mavic 2 can be flown without an accompanying phone, but you’ll need an Android or iOS device and the DJI Go 4 app to activate the drone before your first flight. However, we recommend that you do not fly without your phone, as you will not see the view through the camera without the phone.

In addition to the flying stick — which can be removed for storage. The wheel on the left tilts the camera up and down. The right lightens or darkens the exposure; the buttons are used to take a photo or start a video. The remote also has a switch to change flight modes on the side, a dedicated button to trigger the Mavic’s return-to-home feature, and a Pause button to freeze the drone in place. There’s also a small four-way controller — it can be used to point the camera straight forward or straight down. Two programmable control buttons are located at the round back things out.

The Mavic 2 Pro is rated for up to 31 minutes of flight time when fully charged. That number is based on how long the drone can travel in place so that real life will be less than a few minutes. Our tests averaged 27 minutes — that’s still a pretty long time, better than the 23 minutes the original Mavic Pro achieved during our flights.

You’d expect a $1,500 Drone to include an obstacle avoidance system, and the Mavic 2 doesn’t disappoint. It has sensors in all directions. In most flight modes, the front, rear, top, and bottom sensors are always active, stopping the drone in place if an obstacle is detected. Switching to ActiveTrack, where Mavic identifies and tracks moving subjects, turns on the side sensors.

They also work in Tripod mode, a low-speed setting that allows photographers to move the drone to capture better frames slowly. The Mavic 2 also has a High-Speed ​​Sport setting. It increased top-flight speed from about 32mph to just 45mph. All obstacle sensors are disabled when Sport is on, so use them carefully.

DJI has started adding internal storage to its Drones — we first saw it with the Mavic Air. The Mavic 2 Pro matches the Air’s 8GB capacity and includes a microSD card slot. The card slot is necessary, as 8GB is not enough space to hold many videos. The Mavic 2 shoots 4K footage at 100Mbps, so you’ll be limited to less than 15 minutes of footage in the internal memory. I would have liked to have seen at least 16GB come with a model that calls itself Pro. However, memory cards are inexpensive and have some internal storage, so you won’t get cold if you forget to pack the card.

DJI Go 4 Apps and Features

Like other DJI drones, the Mavic 2 Pro works with the DJI Go 4 app, available as a free download for Android and iOS devices. The app does many things, but most importantly, it allows you to control the drone’s camera and display its view in 1080p. It also shows a map of the world, mosaic in the video feed, which you can swap to this if you need to locate Mavic relative to you.

The app is also where you access the photos automatically or enter a special shooting mode, like Hyperlapse. Essentially a time-lapse with motion, Hyperlapse is a fun way to capture quick views of the world. However, I’m not a big fan of how DJI has implemented the experience — the remote makes a noise every time the drone adds a frame, and the airspeed slows down a bit. Your mileage may vary, but I’d like to see a smooth, distraction-free view from the camera, as you get with the Hyperlapse mode on the cheaper Parrot Anafi.

In addition to Hyperlapse, there are many other options and automatic flight modes. These include Asteroid, which combines panoramic images and video to turn an ordinary view of the world into a Small Planet projection, which we first saw with the Mavic Air. It also supports TapFly, allowing you to control the drone by touching your phone’s screen, ActiveTrack, and APAS. The second system — the Advanced Pilot Awareness System — is useful for flights when there are many obstacles to navigate around. It slows down the drone, but when activated, it automatically flies around any obstacles it encounters.

The app also has some safety features. It works with Drones’ GPS to enforce no-fly zones. If you have an FAA Part 107 commercial license, you can also use this app to authorize flights near the airport, saving you the hassle of contacting the control tower directly. Firmware updates, which can be frequent with DJI products, are done using the app.

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Superlative videos and pictures

The DJI Mavic Pro 2 delivers the best drone footage and images you can get in a compact form factor. For the better, you’ll need to think about switching to a large, expensive aircraft with an SLR-sized sensor and interchangeable lenses, like the DJI Inspire 2.

The reason its footage is sharper than other 4K drones is the sensor size. Most Drones use a 1/2.3-inch sensor, similar to what you get with a smartphone. But the Mavic 2 Pro uses 1-inch images, four times the size of what you get with the Mavic 2 Zoom, Mavic Air, and other folding Drones.

That isn’t the first time DJI has used sensor size in a drone — it’s also available in the larger Phantom 4 Pro and Phantom 4 Advanced models. Both are still available and offer some advantages — especially support for the wider DCI 4K format. But if you’re fine with UHD, you’ll find the Mavic includes many of DJI’s more recent innovations—including more powerful auto footage and APAS—not available in the Phantom line.

What you get is 4K UHD footage at 100Mbps, with your choice of H.264 or H.265 compression. You can shoot edit-ready footage with standard color profiles — DJI has leveraged color science technology from partner Hasselblad for the Mavic 2 Pro’s camera. Our test footage was all shot with the default color profile.

You can choose a different attractive profile if you want your video to have a more artistic, filtered look, or you can shoot with a flat, low-contrast Dlog-M profile. Flatbed photography gives you more color correction possibilities — Dlog-M is a 10-bit format. However, it is only recommended for serious video pros, as you will need both software and skills to make the Dlog-M scene stand out. It also supports HDR video, using the Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG) profile.

There are several frame rates available. For 4K, you get 24, 25, or 30 fps. Dropping the resolution to 2.7K adds 48, 50, and 60fps; you get all of the above at 1080p (2K), with the addition of 120fps. The lens has a variable aperture, is configurable from f/2.8 to f/11, and the sensor can range from ISO 100 to 6400 for video. You’ll probably want to add a neutral density filter for flights in bright light. I don’t recommend using the lens at a narrower setting than f/5.6 to minimize loss of resolution due to noise radiation — but if you don’t, you can certainly stop further to maintain the right shutter angle for your shot.

There are also two viewing angles to choose from when shooting in 4K. DJI doesn’t do a very good job of identifying them in the app, which is a shame as it effectively gives the Mavic 2’s camera a similar range of coverage as the Mavic 2 Zoom for 4K video. The default setting, FOV, is a wide-angle world view, about 28mm in full-frame conditions. Switching to the HQ (High Quality) setting narrows the camera’s angle a bit — closer to 40mm. You don’t get quite the same range as the Mavic 2 Zoom’s camera (24-48mm), but it’s close enough. You lose the ability to do a dolly zoom shot, but it seems like a fair price to pay for an overall better video.

The image is also quite flexible. We’ve seen the 1-inch sensor size find a home in compact cameras, where it delivers better results than you might expect from your smartphone. The Mavic 2 Pro takes photos in JPG or Raw DNG format, and I would expect most serious photographers to use the latter. The large sensor makes low-light aerial photography even easier, with ISO set as high as 12800 when creating images. However, I tend to recommend ISO 3200 as the maximum for this type of sensor, but that will still produce some stunning twilight shots.

The best mini drone

Is there a folding Drone more capable than the DJI Mavic 2 Pro? I do not think so. It’s small enough to find space along with your ground-based photo and video gear in a backpack, but it doesn’t sacrifice much when compared to larger Drones. Assuming you don’t necessarily need to shoot footage to show in the cinema, the 4K UHD format (the format used by your TV) should be more than enough for any project to be shown in a living room.

Combine video quality with the ability to record footage at dual angles of view, capture superb stills, and the incredible stabilization provided by the Mavic 2’s gimbal stabilization. It costs a fortune, but the Mavic 2 Pro is the best folding drone we’ve flown.