The Skydio 2 is hands down has the best sports tracking drone at this price point or probably even Any price point.  It tracked me when a house was directly in between me and the drone at 10:33!!  No Beacon.  It must be using the GPS off the phone too.  The drone is no joke and performs 100% on what was promised at the demo video and more.


Mavic 2 Zoom lost me a few times tracking other people instead by itself.  The Smart Controller M2Z is like no other though.  Super solid feed and HD with little lag.  The on demand zoom feature is on another level.

Nice to see.

Shouldn't the test be with identical setups,  so test the Mavic2 when your on your bike and there's a bigger target to track.

DAFlys Posted at 1-13 02:02
Shouldn't the test be with identical setups,  so test the Mavic2 when your on your bike and there's a bigger target to track.

I couldn't trust it.  If it tracks someone else it takes time to stop the bike safely.  The Skydio 2 feed is delayed and laggy.  M2 just has an incredible connection that it's easy to be confident.  I'm confident in flying the M2 manually but with the Skydio 2 I'm confident it will work as long as there are no super thin lines across the sky.

I wouldn't really use it for commercial work.  The pictures aren't so great as I think the Mini provides the same images if not better.

AntDX316 Posted at 1-13 02:06
I couldn't trust it.  If it tracks someone else it takes time to stop the bike safely.  The Skydio 2 feed is delayed and laggy.  M2 just has an incredible connection that it's easy to be confident.  I'm confident in flying the M2 manually but with the Skydio 2 I'm confident it will work as long as there are no super thin lines across the sky.

I wouldn't really use it for commercial work.  The pictures aren't so great as I think the Mini provides the same images if not better.

Should track better with a bigger object,  I tested it with the car recently and once I had it in the right mode it never got confused and tried to track anything else.

DAFlys Posted at 1-13 02:13
Should track better with a bigger object,  I tested it with the car recently and once I had it in the right mode it never got confused and tried to track anything else.

I couldn't risk it as if it tracked someone else going the other direction on a bike that went towards land, it would follow them before I could catch it and probably crash into something.

I was watching the drones future path which is why it was safe.  Follow-me mode is how to track but it doesn't exist on the M2 but follow-me mode on the P4 and Inspire 1, the obstacle avoidance isn't good or non-existent.

AntDX316 Posted at 1-13 02:13
I couldn't risk it as if it tracked someone else going the other direction on a bike that went towards land, it would follow them before I could catch it and probably crash into something.

I was watching the drones future path which is why it was safe.  Follow-me mode is how to track but it doesn't exist on the M2 but follow-me mode on the P4 and Inspire 1, the obstacle avoidance isn't good or non-existent.

The cycle test I saw a while back was pretty promising.

Yeah, if you are in the middle of no where with no people it's great.

AntDX316 Posted at 1-13 02:06
I couldn't trust it.  If it tracks someone else it takes time to stop the bike safely.  The Skydio 2 feed is delayed and laggy.  M2 just has an incredible connection that it's easy to be confident.  I'm confident in flying the M2 manually but with the Skydio 2 I'm confident it will work as long as there are no super thin lines across the sky.

I wouldn't really use it for commercial work.  The pictures aren't so great as I think the Mini provides the same images if not better.

I disagree!

If the Mavic is losing you or tracking someone else, just hit the "cancel" button and the drone stops immediately. You had the control on your bike anyway with the skydio setup, so you should have done exactly the same with the Mavic 2! You cant compare two things, if you change the setup!

I agree, the skydio has amazing tracking feature. If you need it, buy it. For my usage, the mavic 2 works good enough, i fly my drone by myself.

What i DONT like with the Skydio tracking, is the fact that it moves all the time, the picture looks "nervous". Even if you are standing, the drone keeps moving. The Mavic is having a much smoother movement. But i guess its by design, because if you are cycling or doing something active, that movement from the Skydio makes everything more like an action movie...

Checki Posted at 1-13 05:38
I disagree!

If the Mavic is losing you or tracking someone else, just hit the "cancel" button and the drone stops immediately. You had the control on your bike anyway with the skydio setup, so you should have done exactly the same with the Mavic 2! You cant compare two things, if you change the setup!

The Skydio 2 is way better autonomy wise.  If it would able to fly the way it should be, the shots would have been better but because of people, it couldn't stretch its legs to the fullest.  The Skydio 2 doesn't have to be watched like the M2.

There was a bunch of wind and the M2 had the gains cranked to 120 on everything.  In a way, you are right but Activetrack cannot compare to Skydio 2s track at all.

Mavic 2 Active Track - motorcycle, in the absolute open , not so reliable as Skydio I think.

I have watched a bunch of Skydio videos. And tried to search “Skydio 2 crash” but has not found one.
It does great on obstacle avoidance and path planning.
But I guess it has different purposes than DJI drones?

bonmot Posted at 1-13 16:59
I have watched a bunch of Skydio videos. And tried to search “Skydio 2 crash” but has not found one.
It does great on obstacle avoidance and path planning.
But I guess it has different purposes than DJI drones?

Skydio 2 has crashed on a bunch of videos.  I can't risk crashing mine.

AntDX316 Posted at 1-13 17:50
Skydio 2 has crashed on a bunch of videos.  I can't risk crashing mine.

Thanks. You are right. People have started reporting crashes since about 2 weeks ago. I was doing a lot of research online during the Christmas break without seeing any.
It is interesting to see how this new product goes.
To be honest,
1) I think their obstacle avoidance technique is over advertised, which gives people too high expectations.
2) they probably have the one of the best obstacle avoidance algorithms in the world at that price range. But camera drones are not just about avoiding trees. On the “drone” part their system is lack of a LOT details.
3) But it has a very good market which DJI isn’t attacking. DJI owners including myself call themselves “pilots”, Skydio owners just consider themselves someone with a flying smartphone, simple, easy to use.
4) Most importantly, Skydio still has long way to go. :-)

bonmot Posted at 1-14 05:34
Thanks. You are right. People have started reporting crashes since about 2 weeks ago. I was doing a lot of research online during the Christmas break without seeing any.
It is interesting to see how this new product goes.
To be honest,

The Skydio 2 system is not perfect but very close to it and the OA performance is far beyond anything that can compare.

Super thin branches, branches or thin objects that match the color of whatever is in the background during fast flight, objects that move into its path like birds, etc. are things it cannot avoid with 100% accuracy every time.  The other competitive OA systems fail a lot more.

You will probably lose 1000 of the competitive drones to 1 Skydio 2 failure in fast Activetrack in tight corridors with obstacles scattered randomly all over the place.  I gave the P4PV2.0 a lot of time to clear some branches and it didn't during follow-me mode.  Luckily, the branches were very thin and flexible.  It was like side-OA was asleep until it hit it then it started to beep like crazy.

Follow-me mode works just like it does in the day time.  I haven't tested the beacon with the Skydio 2 at night.  It is heavily reliant upon the vision sensors working and the lack of RTH altitude and other things makes it scary to trust it in manual or automatic RTH flight.  With the DJI, if you are at least 20m from the home point and the drone can raise to a high-alt, it will be very close to the take-off point every time.  I can trust it for all commercial work but I wouldn't really trust the Skydio 2 unless we are doing some sort of object tracking with full line of sight.

People crash their drones for various reason but when you know what to select and where to position, the chances of failure can become non-existent.  The hassle of getting back in the air, it may never be the same which is why a lot of emphasis should be placed before any activity is even happening in real-life but people usually like to experience first then act later when they feel things are quite harmless.

The video would've looked better but I shot it in HDR.  I think they've cheated it because they dim everything way way down to keep the brights from being too overblown.  Probably giving the system time to interpret whether to give it brightness or not.  It looks better on paper, it could look better in very very bright scenes, but if it isn't too bright or dark, it will stay underexposed.

Good write up and advice.
And understand some of the crashes are for “review” and “test”’purposes.
If I am a “selfier“, and do a lot of outdoors, probably I would consider this $1000 investment to capture some cool moments.

bonmot Posted at 1-14 08:01
Good write up and advice.
And understand some of the crashes are for “review” and “test”’purposes.
If I am a “selfier“, and do a lot of outdoors, probably I would consider this $1000 investment to capture some cool moments.

I wouldn't buy anything else, trust wise.  You don't need the controller.  You can fit another battery and the beacon in the standard case.  You just need to predict where its going to be so if anything too thin or not lit up properly goes in between, there is a slight chance it would hit it so just adjust the position prior then adjust it back.  Just can risk it anyway as there is still a high chance that it won't hit it.  We don't have built-in OA lidar on these drones yet.

The RTH altitude is not a feature yet so if it loses connection somehow it either will land on the spot or fly all the way back to take-off point.

Even human run into thin wires. That’s why you see 2” yellow tube on the power pole bracing cables.
I hope DJI has been working on similar OA algorithm or even AI or self learning.

bonmot Posted at 1-14 09:05
Even human run into thin wires. That’s why you see 2” yellow tube on the power pole bracing cables.
I hope DJI has been working on similar OA algorithm or even AI or self learning.

We shouldn't expect too much as the only way is to have radar avoidance.  Because of cost and size requirements, what we are asking for is beyond the money milking zone we are in.

Agreed.

DJI has done a fabulous job to bring the technologies into a sub 1kg aircraft and cost sub 1.5K USD.
It is truly amazing.

DJI did setup the bar and Skydio does have a few tricks in the sleeves.

From consumers point of view, those little aircrafts will just be better and better in very short term.

bonmot Posted at 1-14 19:28
Agreed.

DJI has done a fabulous job to bring the technologies into a sub 1kg aircraft and cost sub 1.5K USD.

I want to see what it looks like with HDR off.  The better and better they are the better because if it crashes into anything, I wish we could see all the lawsuits people had.  Someone did structure damage to a roof but I didn't follow up on that post.  You are 'supposed' to have $1M damage coverage when you fly.  We think these things are harmless and don't matter but when they are unreliable they can cause massive damage.

To have an unreliable activetrack around a lot of people and property is unacceptable to me but to others, it doesn't matter.  We don't know, probably in a few months, the systems fail, the motors die, and it's more unreliable than DJI.  Someone had almost 1000 flights on their Inspire 2 and it just finally crashed.

We can't always think all our equipment is fail-proof no matter how good it looked prior but it's the risks we need to take and the trust is determined by the statistics.

AntDX316 Posted at 1-14 07:43
The Skydio 2 system is not perfect but very close to it and the OA performance is far beyond anything that can compare.

Super thin branches, branches or thin objects that match the color of whatever is in the background during fast flight, objects that move into its path like birds, etc. are things it cannot avoid with 100% accuracy every time.  The other competitive OA systems fail a lot more.

Good Info....Thanks