which drone is best the skydio r2 or the mavick 2 pro today I'm gonna attempt
to answer that question for you by breaking down the differences between
these two drones so that you can decide which one of these two great drones
might best fit your needs there's going to be a lot of footage from both of
these drones in this video hope you're doing well my name is Jake Sloan and
I'm a Content here on YouTube for solo creators people like me who are out
there shooting by themselves a lot especially people who are on the go and
mobile quite a bit and so I do reviews of equipment that makes the process
easier I need tips and tutorials on how to use that equipment and tips and
tutorials on how to take your photography and your videography up to
the next level so that you can get out there and get seen it hurt just in case
you're wondering I bought both these drones neither of these were sent to me
and so this is my very unbiased opinion about the strengths and weaknesses of
each one of these drones because drones are something that I use pretty much in
every shoot that I go and do in one way or another let's start out by talking
about the strengths of each one of these drones even though they are clearly
aimed at different segments of the market one is super autonomous whereas
the other is more of a excellent drone with some intelligent things but is
built and meant to be more flown by you and with you making the main decisions
starting off with the Mavic 2 Pro this drone has been in my bag since it was
released a year and a half ago every single day on every trip I've gone on
and has been fantastic this drone will fly for up to 30 minutes is what DJI
says but let's be honest 24 to maybe 25 minutes is more accurate this drone
rather than being rated to 32 degrees or 0 Celsius will and is ready to go down
to minus 10 which is fantastic because that means it can handle colder weather
another thing that's amazing about this drone is the range and the signal link
quality I have never had dropouts with this thing even when I've been flying in
dense forests or in ice caves the connection to this drone has always
remained rock solid and the downlink quality for the video feed has been
incredible something else that made this drone a great drone for me for the last
year and a half is the fact that it is so compact and foldable which means you
can fit it into a camera bag slot that is relatively small
tiny because it folds down to a really small compact size and add about two
pounds of weight with a battery it's really not that heavy and so it makes it
one of the best portable drones on the market not to mention the fact that this
thing gets great image quality because it has a one inch sensor which is the
largest sensor currently available on a consumer drone and so that's fantastic
because it works better at low light but it also captures great still images that
are 20 megapixels each and then being the fact that it has a variable aperture
makes it really versatile in a lot more situations one of the other things
that's fantastic about the maverick 2 pro is the fact that it has obstacle
avoidance from the front the rear the top the bottom and the sides although
the side obstacle avoidance is only active during intelligent flight modes
but the obstacle avoidance from the front and the rear and the top of the
bottom is actually very good and one of the great things too is that DJI has
done a phenomenal job of implementing intelligent flight modes and active
track which means the drone intelligently finds you you can tap on
yourself and have it track you automatically from a few different
flight modes and then we come to the controller of the maverick 2 Pro not
only does it fold down to be a very compact size but it also features this
screen which is excellent because it gives you all kinds of data about where
your drone is which direction it's flying how fast it's flying how high
it's flying what the RPMs of the motor are and what the status of your battery
is when you plug in a phone of course you can see out of the camera of the
drone which is amazing and the remote controller will now charge your phone
while you're flying is amazing for somebody like me who's out shooting in
the winter and the cold alot which is not good for phones because they don't
like cold and their batteries die insanely fast on to the sky dor - I've
been playing with this drone for the last few days and I have to say overall
I'm really impressed the potential and what this drone is capable of is amazing
so let's talk about some of the strengths of this drone first off this
thing has the most intelligent obstacle avoidance flight system of any drone on
the market absolutely period barn
it is amazing other strengths that I was really surprised at is the image quality
the video quality coming out of this camera is excellent and actually I think
it's pretty much on par with the Maverick tube Pro which is surprising
considering that it doesn't have a one inch sensor but it does get really
really good image quality and you can go up to 4k 60 the still photos are good
and you can't shoot raw still photos but they're limited to about 15 megapixels
and this drone is actually a little bit lighter than the Maverick 2 Pro it comes
in at about 1 pound 12 ounces so that's pretty light another great thing about
this drone is the battery lines up locks in via magnets other strengths about
this drone is that it charges via USB see I would recommend you get the double
battery charger from Scotty o because otherwise your drone is locked up every
time you want to charge your battery the Scotty Oh r2 boasts about 23 minutes of
flight time and honestly I've been getting pretty consistently 20 21
minutes 22 minutes if I really push it to the last few percent probably the
biggest strength of this joan is the fact that it is super smart and super
autonomous and so for anybody out creating content of themselves by
themselves like I do a lot this thing is fantastic and probably a game changer is
the fact that you can turn this thing on take it off it will find you and then
start following you and then if you pair it with something like the beacon or the
remote controller you can get amazing footage just like any other drone and of
course you can fly up to about 36 miles an hour I haven't really pushed that or
seen how fast this thing will go but I know it does fly fast especially when it
knows that there's no obstacles around it it slows way down when there are
closed tight obstacles around it because it's having to judge and calculate a
safe flight plan through obstacles another fantastic thing about this drone
is how much movement and freedom of movement there is for the gimbal it will
tip up a lot much further than the maverick 2 Pro and give you an
absolutely unobstructed view no matter what the attitude of the drone
when you're flying and then we come to the remote now this is a rebranded
parrot and off you remote and it works okay you turn it on by opening it up and
it will link to the drone once you've linked it but there is no screen or
anything to give you any information other than that you have to have your
mobile device plugged in but they also developed this beacon which is fantastic
because you pair this with your phone and then this talks to the drone itself
and with this it will follow you whether it can see you or not and that's really
really exciting plus you can trigger off a few different things with this
particular remote and not have to break out a remote and pull your mobile device
plug everything and turn it on and get it synched up and this I think is my
favorite thing and probably the one thing I would highly recommend you get
with the drone the remote I can take it or leave it but this isn't absolutely to
me it's a necessity it's excellent now that we've talked
about all the amazing parts of the maverick 2 Pro let's talk about the not
so amazing parts and one is the fact that this is bound by DJ eyes geofencing
system now I don't think that the geofencing system is bad I think it's a
great idea I just think that a lot of times in many cases it's not implemented
correctly depending on where you are another downside is cost this drone can
cost you up to around 1,800 dollars depending on which remote controller you
get it will come with one battery to extra props the remote and the drone now
you can save a little bit by going with regular controller or not the smart
controller which is I used the regular controller and it's been fantastic
another downside for me is that especially in the winter when the Sun
angle of the Sun is very low over the horizon a lot because I'm so far north I
will get a lot of false positives with the obstacle sensing and another thing
is with the smart tracking features I have found them many times to be fairly
inconsistent especially for whatever reason when I'm using active track a lot
of times I find that the drone is has problems following me closely and I
think probably my last downside for this drone is that obstacle avoidance is
great but it's not something I've ever trusted 100% because I have seen it fly
toward very small branch other objects and not necessarily detect
them and I know a lot of people think that because it has side obstacle
avoidance that it has 360 degree protection it doesn't it only uses the
side obstacle avoidance when its operating in the DJI pre-programmed
intelligent flight modes one other downside for me and it's a difference
between the sky do two is that the DJI batteries you have to use a DJI charger
and so I have to make sure that I carry with me enough fully charged batteries
to be able to do the jobs that I need to do when I'm out and about let's talk
about the downsides because there are a few one is that it is not as compact and
foldable and it's portable as the Maverick tube pro because it does
not fold down now I know why it doesn't fold down as these cameras all have to
be perfectly calibrated in order for the algorithms and the obstacle avoidance to
really work but on the lines of obstacle avoidance is this will not fly in low
light it will not take off no matter what because it doesn't have enough
information through the through the obstacle avoidance sensors to be able to
calculate where obstacles are and on that vein the low-light footage from
this is not going to be as good as the Maverick 2 Pro because it has a smaller
sensor and you can't take off with it in low-light anyway so sunsets sunrises
you're not gonna be able to capture them using this drone another downside is the
fact that you really do only get 20 21 maybe 22 minutes of flight time before
it will need to land and that is a little bit of a downside if you've
paired it with the remote control and you're flying long further distances
away then it will land wherever it is and when it's landing there's no
obstacle avoidance in operation which means it just goes down and sets down on
whatever it's over so you have to be aware of where the drone is how far away
it is how much battery you have and how much you need to get back and that
brings me to one of the bigger downsides which isn't really related to the drone
itself because the drone itself is great it's the remote I'm most disappointed in
and the reason for that is that the signal strength is not nearly as strong
as I would like it to be the antennas are built in here but I was losing
signal or getting image breakup for the image
to my phone when flying behind buildings that were a few hundred feet away the
fact that you don't have any total Emma tree data on your phone or on the remote
you don't really know which way your drones facing how fast it's going how
far away it is from where it took off honestly all the shots that you're gonna
want to get with this drone you're gonna be fairly close by and so if you want
more manual control it's great you can use this it's just you need to buy this
separately from the drone and then that brings me to probably one of my biggest
gripes is I like a lot of manual control over my shots and over my flight path
and what I'm doing with the gimbal and the camera while I'm doing that the sky
do app doesn't give you a lot of options for what you want to do now there's
plenty of options there to get great footage and to get great photos I'm not
saying that there aren't but the fact that when you're flying it either with
the remote or with the beacon it feels more like you're having a conversation
with AI about the direction it's gonna go the direction it's gonna face and I
wish there was a way to tighten up some of those controls so that you had more
fine-tuned control over it but again I think a lot of that stuff is things that
can be added to the app and to the firmware with an update down the road
and I'm sure some of these things will be addressed as sky do goes on because
they've already been very actively listening to the users that have these
units and they have been giving them feedback so for direct comparison they
are this is slightly smaller when this is unfolded but not by much it is
definitely a lot thinner although with the battery on there it's not that much
thinner and a small gripe minor downside is that you have to be careful of the
six camera lenses because they need to be cleaned in order for it to see
obstacles well and operate well obviously this is not something you can
just throw in your backpack as it is you need to keep it in the case it came with
this is cheaper this is more expensive this gets good image quality this gets
great image quality this has some manual control that's augmented by the AI
built-in side which is phenomenal this has a lot of manual control or almost
complete manual control except for the geofencing
and you can disable all of the AI if you want to this has really good intelligent
flight modes and intelligent tracking with some decent manual flight control
this has good intelligent flight modes good object tracking and very good
manual flight modes this is the winner for range this is the winner for
intelligence I've listed a link in the description that will take you to my
Google Drive where I put the raw video and the raw photos from this video and a
few others and you can download them for yourself to decide which drone is going
to best fit your needs and I think that's really what it comes down to is
if you want a drone that is gonna film you better than anything else the sky do
r2 is going to be great if you're doing things in decent lighting and in
daylight if you want a drone that gives you tons of manual control and probably
the strongest best control system on the market aside from the geofencing then
the maverick 2 pro is going to be the drone for you I've put together a
playlist here about using drones to improve your biography and your
photography how to fly them in the winter and stuff like that you can click
there I'll see in one of those videos as always you can reach out to me on
Instagram Twitter or ask questions in the comments below and I'll do my best
to answer them Cheers