Ordered on the 23rd, arrived today so took a long time.  Half the delay was DJI not shipping then UK customs.

Knew i'd need to do a firmware update.  This refused to work with Go4 Android (the No Network error most people seem to get).  Assistant 2 installed but wouldnt load (nothing happened, never appeared).  Turns out you may need to disable an AV - it tries to phone home and if it cant (no firewall prompt) it just never loads.
Either way, firmware then updated OK.

Thought i'd calibrate vision sensors but DJI still haven't got signed drivers so i didnt bother for now.

Calibrated the IMU (beware the bug about the orientation in step 3 on Go4, its wrong).
Calibrated the RC (different to the old method, much easier).
Calibrated compass - my compass initially was in the yellow out of the box so it definitely needed it even though it didn't prompt.

Went to find a big empty field for a first flight and failed, turns out every single one seems to be Rugby training this evening so plan B was a very careful flight from the garden.

Random impressions in no real order:-

• The charging hub is better designed and foldable
• The chargers built in USB for the RC is nice.  Its also got a normal USB plug
• Batteries take a lot longer to charge and are physically much thicker.
• The RC antennas have a little plastic clip to lock together when folded.  This is great as the old ones flopped all over when stored.  Small things...!
• Gimbal lock is one piece and much easier to fit and remove than the old thing
• Being able to access the SD card without unfolding is nice.  You'll still need to unfold for the USB port though
• Drone startup is a lot faster
• First flight - took off and noticed no obvious difference in noise to older versions.  Still buzzes, still audible 300m+ away
• Out of the box the yaw is far less sensitive.  It'll need a bit more backup off but nothing as severe.  Gimbal still needs customisation
• Front and back sensors means its likely to beep at you every time you take off and land!
• Precision landing has definitely gone - if it can find the correct house and garden now it's lucky!
• The camera itself is *SIGNIFICANTLY* better than the M1:-
  

- Colours are far better reproduced both on screen and on images
- Its far snappier taking photos and operations and returning control to you
- Dynamic range is so much better its unbelievable.  It was tricky lighting (end of day, cloud, low sun angle) and even bog standard auto its not burning stuff out
- Highlights dont appear "white by default" any more
- It does 16:9 and 3:2 aspect ratios apparently..  HOWEVER im not seeing that.  The images i took switching between were 5472 x 3078 and 5464 x 3070 which obviously isn't correct..... Bug???
- Spherical now takes 26 images and more slowly giving exposure time to adjust.  I'll see if the AE lock bug has gone next time
- Having aperture and shutter priority is great
- Very little noise (admittedly ISO100)
- Image profile correction IS baked into the DNG by default so you dont need to wait for Adobe to produce it
- Sharpness is generally good throughout the frame.  A little bit of corner softness but really nothing to get worried about

• Video:-
  
  • No more pulsing on the 8th frame. !!!
  • No more mushiness noise reduction with sharpening 0
  • "None" colour profile looks pretty good
  • Dlog has really obvious barrel distortion (which we already knew).  Really obvious!
  • Having Shutter priority is a fantastic addon for video!
    
• Lightroom wont import H265s (says unknown video and audio stream).  It also wont see the new file structure for Panos etc which arent in DCIM so if you use LR to import you may need to reconsider.  It'll only do single shot DNGs and AEB, the rest it wont see.
• Says my Sandisk Class10 MicroSD is too slow for 4k recording.  Its been fine in my DSLR and Mavic 1.  I'll test a different card
• Formatting a card creates a GIS and some other new directories on the SD that older drones didn't
  

• Auto Sync HD photos still doesn't work on Android.  This is a Go4 bug going back to around January.  They broke it, they never fixed it.  It still wont downlink JPGs or anything during flight automatically.
• The half-press to focus is going to take a bit of getting used to.  Initially i focussed a lot and took few pictures.  Then wondered why it was constantly trying to focus.  You really do have to press and HOLD now to take an image on the RC.
  

[size=14.6667px]All in all im impressed.  Not good lighting conditions and one quick flight due to all the places i WAS going to test fly being full of kids throwing balls around.  Hopefully tomorrow i'll test the modes, videos and functions a lot more (ive got a list).
[size=14.6667px]We've got the usual thing that DJI can do hardware well but not software (Go4 bugs with firmware, auto sync, unsigned drivers etc) but thats not going to shock anyone.

And heres a barrel distortion example video:


Both videos shot with Cloudy WB, H265, 0-0-0 standard settings

The first 13 seconds "None" profile set.  Then switches to DLOG-M.  You can see the barrel distortion appear easily.

Also not how much less sharp DLOG is vs normal straight off the camera.  Thats fine though, youd expect that to be done in post on a log file.

Thanks for the analysis. Pictures look good. I'm still gun shy to buy one until a lot of the bugs are worked out (or at least until DJI says they're bugs and not permanently removed features). But again, camera looks great!

Very nice!
Thanks for sharing

Safe flying.
Alex.

First of all heartfelt congratulations that you have eventually received it! And thank you for the great shots and your first impressions. Different from you, I have no experience with Mavic Pro and cannot compare. But I am really happy about the M2P so far.

Hi there, thank you for sharing and giving some feedback with it. satisfaction mean to us. If you have any concern or question feel free to reach us back, Thanks!

gnirtS Posted at 2018-9-4 13:27
And heres a barrel distortion example video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se5-Uq9WK0Q

Precision landing has definitely gone - if it can find the correct house and garden now it's lucky!



Obviously a Pilot / owner problem.  You need to buy a house with a bigger garden, perhaps an Estate.
Here is one.


Only trying to help out ...

Thank you for this! I have a Mavic Air and just purchased a MP2 (still waiting for shipment). I liked the pics from the Mavic Air fine. They're great for social network sharing, but they're no better than average cell phone photos and I wanted something better than that. I actually want to use it more for still photography than videos so I'm happy whenever I see comparisons like this. Those RAW and edited from RAW photos look really nice. Not quite like my full frame DSLR (dodn't expect it to be), but on par with my canon g7x-ii with a 1" sensor and that's exactly what I would expect.