this is the mavic 2 pro it has been a workhorse drone for three years but the mavic 3 has arrived
there's one huge reason why you may not want to upgrade and of course there's a lot of reasons
why you might want to upgrade all except for the price hey my name is jake and i create content
here to help solo creators on the go so i do lots of drone camera and lunch reviews and i
do tips and tutorials on how to use those so you can tell better stories if that's something that
interests you consider subscribing today we're comparing the mavic 2 pro and the mavic 3 both
amazing drones this one's three years old and no longer in production but there is still one
big reason you may not want to upgrade if you have the mavic 2 pro to the mavic 3
and not just talking about the price of the mavic 3 which yes it's expensive
video quality the mavic 3 definitely wins the larger sensor a little more dynamic range and up
to 5.1 k up to 50 frames a second which is huge plus you also get 4k 120 frames a second if you
want it whereas this is limited to 4k 30 that's it you don't get any more than that but uh definitely
bigger the quality of both of these drones shoots they both shoot really really nice video but the
extra resolution gives you a little more room to punch in without losing anything and still get a
nice full 4k image and the fact that you can shoot 4k 120 frames a second in d log is really nice and
it gives you just a lot of extra flexibility in how you want to shoot things and what you want
to do with it both these drones shoot 10-bit d-log color which is amazing they both have a
physical mechanical aperture which is fantastic if you're shooting in dynamic changing environments
because it allows you to adjust things on the fly without having to bring the drone back down when
it comes to low light both of these drones perform really well but the mavic 3 definitely has an edge
because it does have a larger sensor maybe about a stop of light or maybe not two thirds of a stop
of light more but they both do perform really well in low light and one little side note it's really
not that big a deal but this does have eight gigabytes of built-in memory so if you happen to
forget an sd card you might be able to get a shot or two i mean three or four depending on how you
shoot but it fills up with 4k really really fast uh this has nothing so if you don't have an sd
card you're just out of luck and on the imaging department and it also goes with the physical
design of the drones in sport mode the gimbal the upward gimbal tilt on this
is limited because of how far back it is it only can go up so far i've found
that extremely frustrating in a lot of cases because i've been wanting to chase something
at full speed sport mode and i can't because the gimbal will drop down a lot this does not have
that problem this will go full speed forward sport mode provided you're not hitting a lot
of headwind or something really buffeting the drone and the gimbal won't drop down at
all which is incredible if you want to do things like follow something that's moving really fast
for photos the mavic 2 pro shoots 20 megapixel stills thanks to its one inch cmos sensor
the mavic 3 20 megapixel stills thanks to its four thirds inch sensor the mavic 3 has a little
bit better dynamic range than the mavic 2 really makes a big difference for photographers if you're
wanting to do photo work they both shoot great photos and really really editable the mavic 3
does have a little bit better dynamic range than the mavic 2 pro does as far as photos this is a
12-ish stops this is 12.8 stops so just a little bit more not a huge difference but it
is noticeable if you're shooting in extreme environments one more thing in imaging that
the mavic 3 has over the mavic 2 is the little zoom camera i don't really count it because it's
it's not the quality isn't really there yet like i wouldn't use
anything professionally but it is kind of cool that you can get closer to things or at least
find things a little easier and you can get some usable stuff out of it
you're just limited to the default standard colors no 10 bit or anything like that but you can use it
for a few things i just would never use it professionally in any way
when it comes to obstacle avoidance which is especially useful in intelligent flight modes
and yes both of these have active track the mavic 2 does have 360 degree obstacle voids but it's
only active in intelligent flight modes and tripod mode anything else you only get forward backward
up and down obstacle avoidance you don't get any side obstacle avoidance whereas the mavic 3 has
full time 360 degree obstacle avoidance and it is vastly dramatically improved over the mavic 2.
now they will both still struggle with small things like branches with no leaves on them
and small wires so you still should be aware of what you're flying around and make sure you're
not going to run into anything like that when it comes to intelligent flight modes here's where
there is a lot of difference it says active track three which is a huge improvement over active
track two or active track whatever's in this one i don't remember off the top of my head um but uh
this will active track well it does okay but i do find it's a little bit harder for it to stay with
a subject whereas this does a much better job of sticking with the subject and really locking on
to it something that's different on the mavic 3 than the mavic 2 pro for active track is how you
do active track for the mavic 2 pro you have to go into active track mode whereas the mavic 3 it's
basically there all the time you just select your subject by drawing a square around them
and then you will go into active track mode then you can select from active track spotlight or poi
those are different active track modes but that's how simple and how easy it is to get
out you push a little green x and you're done the other thing that this sports this does not is the
apos system which is where it will find flight paths through obstacles as its active tracking
very nice i still don't trust it 100 i'm always a little leery of obstacle avoidance with drones
but it does do a really good job they also have things like point of interest mode
this has hyper lapse features this does not yet however that is supposed to be coming in a future
firmware update it just hasn't been released yet but they did release active track for it
and the other thing that this will have in the future is master shots so master shots gives you
like a two minute long video clip of a whole bunch of different shots that gives you a lot
of ability to grab shots from it or if you want to use the app you can just edit out a 15 to 30
second little clip of a bunch of different clips of this thing creating shots for you which is nice
i don't know how much i use it the air 2s i use it a little bit but not that much i pref a little bit
more of a manual control guy but yeah but here's where the mavic 2 pro still beats out the mavic 3.
the mavic 2 pro has waypoints so if you do things like mapping or missions where you
go to a place several times to be able to like document the progress of a building being built
waypoints are where it's at now dji has said they are not adding waypoints to the mavic 3
which means we'll have to wait until they release the sdk and a third-party app developer
creates waypoints like lychee or something like that but they don't release the sdk until
about a year after they've released the drone so we've probably got a ways to go on that
however uh i think eventually waypoints will come to the mavic 3 but if that's something
you use often you're going to want to stick with the mavic 2 pro for now and then we come to the
differences between these two drones this drone i feel like is a bit quieter than this drone
there's the mavic 2 pro it's uh exactly one arm's length from me we'll do the mavic
3 here in just a second
when it comes to battery life there is of course a very big difference for this
you get a 20 ish 21 minutes maybe if you're doing okay um i've flown this as cold as 40
below zero it's had no problems it's not nearly that cold today thank god but uh it has been flown
at that temperatures and never had an issue you got to keep an eye on your battery temperature
you got to keep your batteries warm before you take off you take some precautions but
it does fly that cold this i haven't had a chance to fly that cold yet but it does fly i've flown
it at 25 below zero it's had no issues so i have no reason to believe it wouldn't have any
problem flying at 40 below zero either hopefully i don't get the chance to test that this winter
but this has 46 minutes of battery life okay not 46 maybe 38 minutes depending on how you fly it
on a day like this 35 36 minutes because it's not that warm but it has significantly longer battery
life to the point where you kind of start to wonder what else you need to shoot it really flies
for a lot longer when you're using it and the batteries also and another big upgrade to these
is that this you have to use the charger whereas this can charge via usbc power delivery in the
drone which is fantastic if you're somebody like me who's on the go and you use power packs power
stations battery packs or anything like that you can actually recharge the battery on the mavic 3
without having to have the specific uh charger and then we come to flight speed and characteristics
now the mavic 2 has tripod mode which is something i absolutely loved because it was
such a fine uh very easy to control and get really super slow super smooth cinematic shots
um that i do i really did love about this drone i still i still love about this drone
this doesn't have tripod mode it has cine mode but it's not as slow as i would like for as it's
definitely not as slow as tripod mode is but it has cindy mode and it's not bad when it comes to
speed however there's a big difference this will ascend and descend at twice the speed of the
mavic 2 pro and as far as forward backward speed and sport mode you can get about 45
maybe 46 miles an hour out of mavic 2 whereas this i've gotten up to 47 miles an hour in sport mode
which seems insanely fast but it's much faster but when it comes to your ascending and descending it
is a dramatic difference in how fast this responds another thing that's really interesting is how
much more stable the mavic 3 is in the air it will just sit there hover it's like it's on a tripod
just like the air 2s the air ii the mavic 2 drifts a lot more and i used to think this thing was
insanely solid when i got it because it was much more solid than other drones i've flown but this
makes this looks like it's drifting all over the place um and still this doesn't drip that bad
another thing with the mavic 2 is this little gimbal guard thing which is kind of floppy and
kind of weird to stick it in there you got to fit it over the top of the gimbal push it
back in there and then you can kind of click it in and lock it in place which is fine with the
mavic 3 the gimbal actually locks after you turn it off and then you use the gimbal guard and you
just slide it basically over the entire thing of course you fold the legs up and stuff first
and then strap it around the back i didn't like this at first but now i've gotten used to it
and actually i like it quite a bit it does a it does a really good job one bad thing though is
i put some tape on my arms here because these rear arms tend to hit the gimbal a little bit
so yeah i don't i don't know anyway i just put some black gaffers tape on there
to protect the gimbal arms doesn't seem to hurt anything it's been working fine ever since now if
you want to see how the mavic 3 compares to other drones click or tap right there i put
together a small playlist i'll see you in one of those videos as always if you have questions
ask me in the comments below or join my live stream wednesday nights at 4 pm alaska time
8 pm eastern it's getting really cold the sun is setting i'm gonna go home cheers