Hello guys,

my Mavic Air tops out at 45 km/h in Sports Mode though it should be able to go at least 70. What am I doing wrong? Measured at no wind.

Do you have multiple flight modes enabled? If not it will default to regular mode even if the sport switch is moved.

I simply run normal mode and flick the sport mode switch. Obstacle avoidance is disabled. It clearly goes faster than before but nowhere near 70.

45km/h is normal mode speed, so something is off. You have verified Multiple Flight Modes is enabled in the app with the aircraft connected?

I just checked my settings. Intelligent Flight modes are enabled. It even said sport mode while trying to go full speed. Beginner mode is definitely disabled

First of all I am sorry for posting this under video. I did not realize it on mobile view and I am new to the DJI universe.

Second, it starts annoying me that certain features of the Air do not live up to the data sheet. Somehow most of my speeds are halved. My Air ascends with 7 kph only and descends with 3. My system is set to metric so I am 100% sure that this is in kph. It also did not look fast at all. Descending from 100 m took a while. Going in S Mode and sinking vertically, the mavic already started shaking a little. This shows me that it already struggles with the descent rate I achieved. I checked all boxes and went through every menu I could find, no idea what I am doing wrong. Even the flight recorder shows me that my Air did only go 45 in S mode at 100% stick input. If it wasn't using S mode, it would only be allowed to do 30 not 45.

I did not say intelligent flight modes or beginner mode.

My Air connected and hooked up to GPS, it does not say multiple flight modes anywhere. Does that have anything to do with my pilot level? I could only find Intelligent Flight Modes under the copter menu so I thought you referred to that one.

That is Good ole dji consistency lol

Are you on Android? That says 40 is top speed, like the Mavic.

LOL for the differences...

Yes, I am using android. Please note that it says 40 mph, 65 kph.

It’s too cold to test here right now, but here is what I was thinking. When I was flying my Mavic Pro it really had 3-5 maximum speeds depending on what you are doing. There is P mode speed, p mode speed with obstacle avoidance off, and Sport mode speed. I thought maybe if you had gone into sport mode without multiple flight modes enabled it would disable avoidance and raise the speed some but not actually give you sport mode.

I see what you were thinking. I will of course try to solve this issue, but right now it is snowing here with lots of wind. Need to wait for it to get better.

Next I will try p mode speed. P mode without obstacle avoidance (did not work indoors btw. I still could not come close to walls). And last but not least S mode.

Last step would be finding proof or returning the product. You seem to be a Mavic Air owner? Could you please check the speed on yours? Underachieving this much on speed is a clear case of false advertising for me. Range is hard to measure because of conditions, but if there is no wind and you simply put the stick in a corner, there is not much to do wrong. 45 kph is not acceptable.

You are absolutely right. It’s been too cold here to fly outside but today will be over freezing so I will try to get outside and test. I’ve only been able to fly indoors.

So far my top speed with Mavic Air has been 68,6 kph.
I tried to fly it in -10 *c and the top speed was close to 64 kph.

Despite the bad weather, I made another test today. I unchecked and checked the boxes again. Reached ~28kph with obstacle avoidance, a tad more without it, and 65 kph in S mode. Problem solved I guess. This time I took a lot of space to do the high speed test, something like 175 m per run. It takes a while until the GPS shows the correct reading, I expected the Mavic to reach top speed faster.

It might not sound like it but I am super excited about the new Air. So much smart technology in such a tiny package. As an RC guy, it blows my mind how far quadcopters have come in the past 8 years. Back in the days when the Flamewheel 450 was new and everyone built their homemade gimbals, things worked so much worse for a lot of money and lots of effort.

If MA is put on board of Falcon Heavy it can easily achieve speed of thousands of kilometers per hour in a matter of minutes so its battery will suffice for such a feat.

No problem here

In 1 hour of flight time so far, my top speed has been 60.6kph.

Top speed of 75.5kph on my Mavic. A bit too fast for my level of experience.

With a bit of tailwind I reached 74.05 km/h in sport mode as I can see from records..

When you fly it completely sideways you can achieve this.