A CW
Captain
Flight distance : 13877205 ft
United Kingdom
Offline
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1) The Mavic has a better battery than the Spark, but the Pro still has a significantly better battery range. What's the real world flying time, if you want to land it with about 30% left?
MP gives me 21-23 minutes in real time and on the standard charging hub will take 1 hour, 10 minutes to recharge from 15-100%. The Air will give you 17-19 minutes on average and takes 50 minutes to charge at the same percentages. 4 Air batteries will give a little more flight time than 3 Pro batteries and will take the same time to recharge. An increase for sure on the pro but over an hour is good enough to capture everything. Pro batteries are also more expensive and take longer to discharge on cancelled flights.
2) The Air seems more solid, like the Spark, whereas the Pro seems a little fragile, especially its arms and gimbal. But is the Pro more fragile, or does it just look like it, i.e. are there reports of arms broken off and broken gimbals?
The Air is very robust, more compact and less likely to have to be returned in the event of a minor crash. The gimbal on the Air is superior to the Pro in every way though the frame and arms on the Pro are not as fragile as it's gimbal - which is very exposed and causes issues with horizon tilts during flight - sometimes ruining footage.
3) At the same price for the fly-more bundle, what would you recommend? The camera and quality is good enough for me, even the Spark's was sufficient for what I'm doing. I'm interested in how they behave in the air, length of flying time, distance you can cover and practicality: which one is better in the real world?
Being lighter, smaller and more compact the Air is more practical - especially for travel and hikes etc. As stated, the Pro has longer flight times but after flying the Air I don't feel like I've been up for just a few minutes, put it that way. It's flight time is good enough. Both drones are very reliable though having OcuSync, the Pro has the superior radio transmission. That said, the Air's transmission is 4 times more powerful than the Spark - I flew out 1.06 miles with the Air in a CE area on Monday this week and flew back of my own accord having not lost signal once or experienced any glitches - that is more than far enough for any responsible pilot. The motors on the Pro are quieter than the Air but the Air gives out better image quality IMO and has more FPS options and MBPS.
4) The Spark can be quite sensitive to magnetic interference, do the Air or the Pro have the same problem?
The Air has dual IMU and one compass. The Pro has dual IMU and dual compass. The compass on the Air is quite sensitive and compass calibrations have failed before having to do it again whereas they never fail on the Pro. That said, I am yet to experience any compass errors in flight and RTH is flawless on both. I experience less drift in forward flight with the Air than the Pro.
I obviously own both but I prefer the Mavic Air. It's solid, easy to travel with and set up, has a much better gimbal, more advanced tech and when I get home the images and footage are better quality with less compressed artefact due to the higher bit rate. The Mavic Platinum is excellent though and if you want a quiet drone to fly miles away from you and stay in the air for longer then that will be better suited to your needs - though it is surprisingly much more expensive. I think the Mavic Air is the best bang-for-buck consumer grade 4K camera drone on the market today and I don't say that lightly! |
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