cjr888
Second Officer
Flight distance : 3686988 ft
Czechia
Offline
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as a person who had both of them, I can say Mavic Air and Pro are both great drones (which definitely doesn't help you decide which one to buy) but each of them has its pros and cons.
Let me sum it up quickly:
Mavic Air:
PROS
- 100 MBit video (60MBit video on Mavic Pro)
- weight and dimensions (450 grams for Mavic Air and about 750 grams for Mavic Pro)
- camera is nicely protected by drone body and provides stable footage (on Mavic Pro the camera is actually very open and the horizon tends to be not exactly level in some cases).
- Air has backwards obstacle avoidance (Mavic Pro doesn't)
- has few more quickshot modes like asteroid and boomerang
- it's a newer product so the accessories and parts will be easier to find
CONS
- much lower flight time even with brand new battery - longest flight I had with Air was around 18 minutes until battery reached 25%. After 40-50 charges, the battery average flight time dropped to 15-16 minutes.
- pretty frequent Remote Controller calibration issues (mostly solvable just by sending to DJI for service or replacement).
- compass calibration issue - some Mavic Air units tend to ask for compass calibration before almost each flight which is caused by badly shielded compass unit inside drone (only solvable by sending to DJI for service or replacement).
- it's definitely not the quietest drone on the market. This can be partially solved by purchasing aftermarket propellers from Master Airscrew.
- connection between drone and remote is pretty much average. Air uses proportional WiFi connection which isn't so bad if no obstacles like tree branches or anything gets between drone and remote controller. If it does, the signal stability goes down pretty quickly.
- noisy images and video on low light conditions - caused partially by tiny camera sensor or by camera software.
- batteries tend to get swollen pretty frequently after 40-50 charge cycles when not treated properly.
Mavic Pro:
PROS:
- much longer flight time than Air (on Mavic Pro Platinum I've had a few flights easily over 23 minutes)
- definitely more stable connection between drone and remote - Mavic Pro uses DJI OcuSync system which is far more stable than proportional WiFi used by Air.
- definitely quieter flight than Mavic Air even with stock propellers. On Mavic Pro it's possible to get original low noise propellers that make the drone even quieter. Mavic Pro Platinum also has upgraded ESCs together with low noise propellers coming in stock, so it's even a bit quieter. Look for noise comparison on youtube.
- camera has autofocus and gimbal has bigger operating range and supports rotating the image by 90 degrees to take full resolution portrait shots without cropping from standard 4:3 format.
- Mavic Pro supports the DJI Goggles (VR headset) natively without any cable connection to the controller (everything works wirelessly and provides up to 1080p image transmission).
- remote controller has its own LCD display showing flight telemetry and other info in case the phone gets disconnected during flight.
- more flight modes like Terrain Follow, Course lock, Home lock, Waypoints
- definitely less noise in low light conditions even with same sensor size as the Air has.
CONS:
- camera seems not to be fixed so well to the drone body compared to Mavic Air and in sport mode in rough windy conditions, it tends to shake sometimes
- video offers a lower bitrate of 60MBit/s which can lack some details in difficult scenes compared to Mavic Air. However, overall video quality difference between Pro and Air is barely noticeable.
- sometimes the side USB port of remote controller causes connection issues so the bottom full size USB-A is recommended for use.
- pretty strong lens flare when the sun is low. Sometimes it's pretty hard to work with it but when you know how to shoot, it can actually be an advantage as well.
That's all I can think out right now. Ask anything if you want. |
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