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The New Folding DJI Mavic Pro. What are the pros and cons of this compact design and how does it stack up to the Phantom 4?


Well with DJI delaying time and time again for the shipment of the Mavic Pro, will it be worth it? We have a demo unit that we have been testing daily and it is a pretty neat unit to say the least.

PROS

  • Foldable arms and propellers makes it very easy to carry around
  • Long battery life (we get around 22 minutes flying normally)
  • Pretty good camera, good specs on it but we have yet to do a side by side comparison to the P4 or X3. Its hard to beleive that such a small sensor will product high quality imagery
  • Fast, but only in sport mode. otherwide its pretty slow
  • Very good range on the controller

CONS

  • Struggles in wind, we got gimbbal shake errors on many occasions
  • Jello effect on the video, time will tell if we can get an ND filter for the camera and if the gimbal can handle one
  • Flying at dusk we had obstacle avoidance cut it when light hit the sensor, same with sun glare from a window
  • We couldnt get Wifi to link to fly with the phone
  • Need flat landing surface like wood or concrete slab, propellers hit grass

Why would you maybe need a Phantom 4 instead?

  • With all of the same automatic flight features the Mavic and Phantom 4 seem like competitors, but we can see a few places where the Phantom 4 would be a better choice.
  • The Phantom can take higher sustained wind speeds, we notice the mavic is very twitchy when in stronger wind.
  • The Phantom gimbal is much more robust, we encountered gimbal shake error on the Mavic on multiple occasions.
  • Flying a bit slower helps ith that a little. The Phantom can take ND filters to improve video. Personally I dont think the Mavic can handle any more weight on the gimbal so time will tell if we see some ND filters, otherwise you may get the jello effect on some video.
  • The Phantom 4 will do 120 frames per second at 1080p where the Mavic will do 96 fps at 1080p
  • P4 can take off and land on grass much easier

Those are some reasons why the Phantom 4 might be a better fit for you. If you are wanting to do aerial photography and use the drone in more situations the P4 is going to be slightly more versatile. If you are looking for portability and more general recreation the Mavic will be a great choice.