We got the DJI Mavic Air and took it out for a spin. Here’s the DJI Mavic Air review in complete detail so you can decide if it’s the drone for you or not!
DJI has released what’s maybe its most impressive success yet, the Mavic Air. They released the Mavic Air even though DJI has already been dominating the buyer drone market with the existing lineup which includes the best-selling Mavic Pro, top-performing Phantom 4 Pro, and small adorable quad, the Spark. Using the release of the Mavic Air, DJI has once more upped their game, apparently always one step before their competition.
- Related: DJI MAVIC AIR 2 Review
DJI Mavic Air Review
DJI Mavic Air Features
The features on the Mavic Air are impressive. It really is situated in most ways between your Spark and the Mavic, but with some key features that neither the Mavic Pro or the Spark have. It has a smooth new look that people think helps it be a far more attractive drone than either of its predecessors. Let’s observe how they build up.
We summarized every one of the facts for you in the stand below. It’s rather a lot to absorb, so we will walk you through the main comparisons. We likewise have in-depth articles assessing the Mavic Air to the Mavic Pro and Spark. Go through the links below if you wish for more information.
DJI Mavic Air size
Now the Mavic Air is slated to be the largest reach of 2018 in the buyer market. One question we’ve is, will the Mavic Air cannibalize sales from its existing products? Or will the Mavic Air just develop how big is DJI’s market by providing more pilots?
Let’s look into precisely how good the Mavic Air is and just why we think DJI can maintain steadily its existing line-up (at least for a short while) while making the Mavic Air the largest reach of 2018.
The Mavic Air Specs
The Mavic Air will have an airline flight time of 21 minutes and a variety of 4000 meters. The airline flight time is preferable to the Spark’s 16 minutes but noticeably significantly less than the 27-30 minutes you can get with the Mavic Pro Platinum. With a variety of 4000 meters, you can journey the new Mavic Air over 2.5 miles before burning off reception. While that is significantly less than range than its bigger siblings, the number of the Mavic Air is plenty of for some situations which is farther than almost all of us should be traveling anyway.
When we go through the size of the new Mavic Air, it slot machine games between the Spark and the Mavic Pro. It really is smaller than both drones when folded up, rendering it even more lightweight than the Spark. The Mavic Air’s small folded design and light-weight can make it a far more popular option for trip travelers who wish to shed as many pounds as you can from their baggage.
Just like the Spark, the Mavic Air can be flown with or without a handy remote control. The Mavic Air has even more complex gesture control buttons and is capable of doing more tasks minus the remote. We recommend soaring with the remote control as it provides another degree of control and allows the pilot for taking good thing about the 4000-meter selection of the Mavic Air.
The newly-designed far off is small and the gimbal sticks are detachable to assist in safe-keeping. Another new feature of the Mavic Air is made in storage. With 8 GB of inside memory, you aren’t vulnerable to lacking an aerial shot if you neglect memory cards.
For anybody who is graphically focused, we come up with a visual representation of the specifications on DJI’s top consumer drones. Everything in the graph is baselined to DJI’s consumer flagship drone, the Phantom 4 Pro.
For instance, the airline flight time of the Spark is merely 16 minutes, which places it in at about 50 % of the thirty minutes you get with the Phantom 4 Pro. As you may expect, the technical specs tend to progress on the more costly drones from DJI, but that’s not the case for any features.
DJI Mavic Air Camera
The Mavic Air will include a 12 MP camera with the capacity of capturing 4K video footage at up to 30 fps. Which will be improved further having the ability to use HDR to improve your photographs. Unlike the less costly Spark, the Air’s camera will take a seat on a three-axis gimbal that will be sure to get ultra easy video footage. The Spark has electronic digital image stabilization to pay for having less a yaw gimbal.
DJI Mavic Air Gimbal
The gimbal of the Mavic Air has far more travel than that of the Spark. Like other DJI drones, it has a small number of useful video tutorial and flight methods including orbit, waypoints, and effective keep tabs on. The Mavic Air will have every one of the video modes you like and will present two new methods, Asteroid and Boomerang.
Asteroid comes with a tiny globe 360-level view then spirals downward.
Boomerang is another orbiting option that can vary the flight course and acceleration for a distinctive shot.
Mavic Air Sensors
You can take a flight many of these modes confidently as DJI has improved upon their obstacle avoidance technology and has put receptors on leading, back and bottom level of the Mavic Air. You will find seven cams that interact to help ensure a safe journey for your valued possession.
Once more, we created a graph to break down the way the DJI consumer drones compare. As you can plainly see, the Mavic Air appears to have all the features your average consumer may want – a fully-stabilized 4K camera that can photograph 12 MP HDR images. It can’t blast at the same framework rate as its much larger siblings but it really outperforms the specifications on the Spark camera.
Mavic Air Pricing
Like the Technical specs, the price tag on the Mavic Air is put between your Spark and the Mavic Pro. The purchase price will be low enough to lure in customers who had been apprehensive at the Mavic Pro’s $1000 price. We think the $799 accessibility price of the drone will yank in these customers even though they’ll likely conclude paying $999 for the Fly More Combo with three electric batteries and a weather-repellent backpack.
DJI Mavic Air Hands-on
- Taking flight
I am going to say this: The Mavic Air is a durable little bugger. I effortlessly skipped the little bit previously where I attempted to soar the drone in my own small NEW YORK apartment and poor lamps triggered it to slowly but surely hover toward the wall membrane until one of the propellers winged the medial side and the whole lot sputtered to the bottom. My point being, the environment could handle two trivial collisions and was no more serious for wear, besides a few dings on its propellers.
Remove, like a lot of the controls, is conducted on the mobile app, seen by plugging an iPhone or Google Android handset straight into the folding remote control. You touch one icon and slip another to the right — a supplementary precaution to avoid unintentional lift-offs. The onboard system will warn you if the drone isn’t level or if there’s an obstacle in the manner. I came across that the machine actually did pretty much essentially weedwacking extra tall turf out of its way as it heated up.
The two-joystick control system requires a little used to unless you have much journey time under your belt — another reason you will want some spare battery power, especially the first few times you fly. You will also want lots of space. Sure, the drone is pint-sized, but I recommend you should give yourself a reasonably vast berth for maneuvering finished . as you learn the control scheme.
It also had taken me somewhat of their time to get accustomed to the thought of navigating through the onboard camera, alternatively than using a type of eyesight. But with a 2.5-mile maximum distance, you are going to need to get accustomed to it eventually. The drone is zippy and reactive and was able to stay aloft quite nicely, regardless of some pretty strong winds over a cool winter day.
Oh, and make sure you bring those free controller sticks along with you. I had formed one pop from the remote during assessment and lost it permanently in the high grass.
- Complete control
I didn’t genuinely have much use for the gesture handles after we finally managed to get external. The features seem sensible with the Spark, where selfies are among the main element uses, however, when you get outdoors with the drone, you truly want to travel finished. around. Responsiveness has been improved upon since the previous technology, though like the joystick it requires some used to.
It also calls for takes somewhat of active to get the machine to recognize that person and hands. Once it can, you can move the drone around with the influx of a side, land it and obtain it to take photographs and videos. It’s an extraordinary feature, but genuinely, in nearly all instances, it’s probably a bit more when compared to a novelty. As the unit continues steadily to get smaller, cheaper and even more user-friendly, however, you can observe how gesture handles could eventually turn into a useful feature.
The Quickshot airline flight modes are actually the most impressive little bit of the whole package deal. You will discover six in every, representing the perfect cross portion of usability and outcome. You touch one (Rocket, Asteroid, Group, Boomerang, Dronie or Helix), attract a rectangle around the topic you would like to be the center point, touch it and the drone places from a pre-programmed way.
The iPhone app automatically stitches jointly a world into an extraordinary clip, filled with music. Both new methods, Asteroid and Boomerang, will be the most impressive of a great deal. Boomerang creates an ovular airfare path, hooting around from the topic and time for the same location.
Asteroid, in the meantime, creates a sizable spherical shot, mimicking the planet earth as it shoots high up into the air.
There are always a couple of other noteworthy new features up to speed as well, including gradual motion video pictures, taken from 1080p video recording at 120 FPS and HDR images for uneven light. A couple of old favorites up to speed as well, including ActiveTrack, which will a pretty stable job pursuing moving subjects once you have locked them in. That was one of the top noteworthy omissions from GoPro’s Karma — a fairly important feature for an action drone.
The software is rather user-friendly after experimenting with it for a few moments and does a good job outputting shareable videos. Additionally, you can just draw the natural MP4s from the 8GB of onboard memory space or microSD.
- Air Up There
Don’t allow the advertising fool you – these drones aren’t as user-friendly as a smartphone. And they are definitely not idiot substantiation – take it out of this idiot who arrived air in a tree just about straight from the container. Still, the latest DJI drone can be an impressive combo of hardware and software in the business’s most accessible thus far.
The Air is approximately as close as the marketplace provides to a genuine entry-level drone that’s with the capacity of capturing excellent video recording. It’s a deserving little gizmo for photography enthusiasts and videographers seeking to add another tool to their arsenal.
It’s also a great little tool, once you receive the hang-up of the navigation system – but at $799 (or, really, $999, let’s not pretend), it’s still a fairly pricey technical toy.
Verdict Of DJI Mavic Air
It really is impossible never to be enamored with this drone and it includes really kicked off 2018 with a bang and can, without doubt, put a proverbial rocket in the industry’s backside. It could be the entire year of your dog in China, however, in reality, it is most likely heading to be the entire year of another three-letter beast – DJI. They took something that had been brilliant, managed to get cheaper and for that reason more accessible to the people and actually advanced it in lots of ways.
The Mavic Air is exquisite for the amateur professional photographer or informal technical enthusiast who would like to produce stunning results but may also be more than competent for most professional photography enthusiasts and videographers who consider portability and quality as key.
We are deeply in love with the Mavic Air – it is really as simple as that!
The Mavic Air is a masterstroke by DJI. They took one of these most successful and show packed drones in the Mavic and blended it with the portability and cheap of the Spark. What they have were left with might have been completely different – instead, it appears apt to be the big success of 2018 as it pertains to drone technology.
Take our advice – if you want 4K, portability and good final results then go on and grab yourself the Mavic Air.
DJI Mavic Air: FAQs
Is DJI Mavic Air any good?
Overall the Mavic Air is a great drone and it is definitely worth the money. The retractable landing gear is a great idea and the fold up design is very convenient for traveling. The advanced obstacle avoidance is a great feature and is definitely an improvement over the Mavic Pro. The Mavic Air is smaller and much quieter than the Mavic Pro and DJI’s gimbal technology is again a great feat. You can get a good recording up to 2.5 miles away. The Mavic Air shoots 4K and 1080p video at 60 fps. The Mavic Air is a great camera drone and a large upgrade from the Mavic Pro.
Is Mavic Air good for beginners?
Mavic Air is a very good drone for beginnners. It is cheaper than Mavic Pro, but it is almost as good. It is also lighter and more compact than Mavic Pro. Just like Mavic Pro, Mavic Air allows you to shoot beautiful cinematic 4K videos with its 3-axis gimbal. It can fly up to 35.7mph and has a max control distance of 4.3 miles. It has a flight time of 21 minutes and comes with a rechargeable battery and a carrying case. It is a great drone at an affordable price.
Is the DJI Mavic Air good for photography?
The DJI Mavic Air is a drone with a good camera, but it’s not the best for photography. The camera is decent, but it is significantly lower quality than what you will find on the Phantom series of drones. I would recommend the DJI Spark instead, as that drone has a considerably better camera, and it costs less than the Air. The only advantage of the Mavic Air over the Spark is the use of digital image stabilization. However, for still photos this is not a huge advantage. The DJI Mavic air makes a lot more sense for video. The digital image stabilization makes it possible to shoot silky smooth video. If your primary goal is to capture video, then the Mavic Air is an excellent choice. If you are primarily interested in still photography, then I would recommend getting the Spark. Find out more here .
Hi, my name is Josh Hayden and I am the head writer and editor on Drones-Pro website.
I bought my first drone in 2011 and my passion for flying has only grown from there. I love drones and enjoy reviewing them for you.
I live in Iowa, got 2 kids, loving wife and a dog.
