If I take the SD card out of the smart controller I can see low res (1080p) of the videos my drone (DJI Mavic 2 Pro) recorded by going into the D:\DJI\dji.go.v4\DJI_RECORD directory on the SD card.

My question is...  is there a way I can preview these files on the Smart Controller without having to navigate to that directory in the File Manager on the Smart Controller?

The "connect" page has two buttons on the right - a image and a square that itself consists of four squares. The image has these three options at the top:

- Photos
- Albums
- SD Card

When I click on any of those I don't see anything...

The quickest way to preview what you captured is to just use the preview icon in the app itself...While still in the GO4 App, you can use the "preview/album" icon (lower R/H corner of the screen ..look on page 50 of the mavic2 pro manual)
It will show the "cached" version of the images and let you actually download/preview videos as well as the "high resolution/original" image files.

Same as in the Go4 app on the regular controller but the smart controller lets you actually download the better video files.