- The new Mavic Air comes packed with features
and modes like the ones you just saw.
And you might have already seen some of them
on the smaller DJI Spark and its predecessors,
the Mavic Pro and the Pro Platinum.
In fact, the $800 Mavic Air shares a lot of similarities
with both of these drones, but this video is not really
a side-by-side comparison.
It's more about whether the Mavic Air is suitable
for more serious photo and video work.
Before we start flying, we'll have to spend some time
talking about the size of this thing.
Portability is what the Air is all about.
It is considerably smaller than the Mavic Pro,
but it's also smaller than the Spark,
at least in its folded state.
The fact that Spark couldn't fold made it a lot
harder to carry around unless you used the provided case.
Unlike the Pro and the Spark,
the Air actually feels a lot sturdier.
It feels like something I can fold, put it in
my backpack, and not have to worry about it,
especially when the camera and the gimbal
are way more protected than they were on the Mavic Pro.
Granted, when you include all the accessories
and the batteries, the Spark is still a more portable
setup as a whole, but you'll be sacrificing in image
quality, flight time, and smoother footage.
Speaking of the camera, it has a three-axis gimbal,
compared to two axes you can find in the Spark,
making the Air a lot better for videos.
It also shoots 4K videos up to 30 frames per second
and has a 12 megapixel still camera.
You can also do slow motion up to 120 frames per second,
and of course that one is 1080p.
The biggest difference between the Mavic Pro and the Air
is the fact that the Air shoots at 100 megabytes per second
and the Pro shoots at 60 megabytes per second bit rate.
Now without getting into explaining what bit rate is,
it results in a lot crisper footage with a lot more
data packed into it, so most people won't really
notice a difference between the two,
but it's good knowing that there is an image quality bump.
One thing to consider, though, especially if you're into
more serious commercial work, is that the sensor size
on all these three drones is exactly the same.
It's also smaller than the one that you get
on the Phantom 4 so if you're into that
you might want to skip the Mavic line entirely.
Also, the Mavic Air has something that's called
an APAS, or the Advanced Pilot Assistance System
but we'll get into that later.
Alright, enough about drone specs,
let's see how this thing actually flies
and what kind of footage you get out of it.
You can fly the Air in three different modes.
There's the wired connection, which is a big misnomer
because there are no actual wires,
it just means using the bundles remote.
There's the wireless connection,
meaning using only with your phone,
and the third one is gestures.
Now we won't focus on the last two because I think flying
with your phone is a little weird
and I will say the gestures, they work just as well
as they did with the previous models.
So the controller basically looks similar
to the one that you would get
with the Mavic Pro, but without the screen.
Also, there are no thumb sticks attached to it.
The thumb sticks are actually hidden in this tiny
rubberized storage compartment within the remote,
just under the arms that grab your phone.
It's a great little design tweak, which makes it a lot
easier to stow the RC in your bag.
So the first time setting it up,
I will say I had some issues,
my phone was connecting to my home Wi-Fi,
the link wasn't really working that well, and it just kinda
made the initial pairing process a hassle.
Once it was paired, each time I had to use the drone again,
I would have to unpair it and pair it back again.
It sorta started to get annoying but after I talked
to DJI they just told me to wait for the green light
on the remote and the green light on the drone
and it'll just connect, and that did the trick
for the most part.
In some locations I will still get
some errors regarding the compass but usually
a quick reset will just fix the issue.
Another major distinction between the Mavic Air
and the Mavic Pro is that the Air
uses Wi-Fi or enhanced Wi-Fi,
and the Mavic Pro here uses radio frequency.
Now that's a change that not a lot of people will welcome,
but in my testing so far, it hasn't really been an issue
except for the initial pairing.
I will say you would lose the video link
every now and then which can get a little
nerve-racking even for a skilled pilot.
The footage looks fine, it's a minor step up in
quality from the Mavic Pro so if you recently
got that one, don't feel bad.
I have always found that the dynamic range can be an issue
with smaller sensors, and the trend continues here.
When you're shooting during the daylight, with lowest ISO,
everything looks sharp and rich.
But once you introduce a scene with high contrast
such as sunrise, things kinda start falling apart.
In the footage you're looking at now, the ISO was set
higher than what I would normally do and you can
definitely see it affecting the shadows.
They look a little too noisy and the dark areas
start to crush or lose all their detail,
which can be kinda painful to edit, even when you're
shooting in the CineLight color profile,
which gives you more flexibility in post.
I got similar results with the photos
but with RAW files you still have more flexibility,
and if you shoot bracketed you can always just do
the exposure blending after the fact.
I said that I won't talk a whole lot about different modes
that you can shoot, but there is one mode
that I'm completely obsessed about and you saw it
at the beginning of the video.
It's called Asteroid.
The drone focuses on you, gives you a countdown,
flies backwards and up into the air where it hovers
for about a minute, and takes a spherical pan out shot.
The app automatically stitches everything into one video.
My only issues are the black bars you get towards
the end of the clip, but they seem kinda unavoidable.
There is one more standout feature in the Air
that we haven't talked about yet
and it's called the APAS, which is short for
Advanced Pilot Assistance System.
It basically enables the Air to 3D map the area
around it and decide whether it should go around
objects or fly over objects.
Still that's not something that you should rely on.
Although, it worked pretty well in our testings,
you just have to make sure the feature is enabled
and you're getting a good reading,
which isn't always the case.
Now since the Air is so small,
a lot of people are concerned about
how it's gonna perform in the wind.
Unfortunately we haven't had a windy day
in San Francisco so we weren't able to test that feature
but I did get wind alert a couple of times
when I really wasn't expecting it.
Finally, that brings me to battery life.
DJI markets this as a total of 21 minutes of flight time
and sure, on a full charge you'll get that.
But realistically, you're never on a full charge,
by the time you set up the drone,
take off, by the time you have to land it,
you're looking at about 15 minutes.
I do wish this was a little bit longer than that.
Regardless, the Mavic Air really is the best
of both worlds, those worlds being the Pro and the Spark.
You get a slightly improved camera compared to the Pro,
and a smaller body than the Pro and the Spark.
Still, as I mentioned before, if you're looking
into more commercial work, I'd strongly recommend
you looking into the Phantom lineup.
But if you're just a hobbyist or a freelancer
looking to add another skill to your resume,
the Air is the right drone for you.