Like so many here, I own multiple drones for my wife's and my business and recently decided to retire our workhorse, the Phantom 4 Pro+, in favor of the Air 2S.
Long story short, we have/had a Mavic Air, Phantom 4, Phantom 4 Pro+ and an Autel Evo I (our backup). The P4P+ was our workhorse and we loved it because it did everything well (4k60, 20mp 1" sensor camera, etc.). We never used any of the flight modes or "advanced features". I never liked letting go of the sticks when flying, everything was manual for me. The thing that initially attracted me to the P4P+ was eventually its downfall. It just caught too many peoples attention. I was pretty caught up on "looking professional" back then. As curiosity has turned to disdain for drones, we like to get in, shoot and get out before we attract too much attention.
Because of this, we started using our Evo more and more. A bit quieter and had a much smaller footprint (our OG Air had a TERRIBLE pitch, so we used that just for tight flythroughs). As time went on, we were getting a little tired of having to run the Evo for all of our video shoots and then quickly throw the P4P+ up for stills. Yeah, I know, most people don't see the difference between the 2 drones cameras for still photos, but I do and want to give our clients what I think is the best deliverable.
We contemplated the Mavic 2 Pro, but that's getting old. So when we saw the specs of the Air 2S, I was intrigued. Like many I watched all the YT vids I could and TRIED to find unbiased, non-DJI supplied, non-DJI fanboy reviewers to get an honest opinion. I found quite a few that personally purchased the Air 2S and had more positives then negatives to say.
I bought the drone on the 29th and set it up. Coming from the Go 4 app, I was slightly taken aback at the simplicity of the new Fly app. BUT, it had everything I needed access to, in order to do a job this past Saturday. I'm not going to get into specs and all that, I'm simply going to relate my experience as the owner of a small photography and videography company.
THOUGHTS
Pics -- Like I mentioned, we had a chance this past Saturday to do a photo-only shoot on a typical $500,000 southwest beach town-home. It was 85+ degrees and super bright out. Gusts were up to 20 occasional because, well, it's Florida and storms materialize from nowhere. Anyway, I took pics of the home, pool and lanai from various heights and was not disappointed whatsoever. I wanted to try out 5 shot AEB and see how well it did in such windy weather. Even in constant 15 mph winds, only 1 picture came out slightly blurry. All the others were perfect. The little Air 2S planted like a rock in the air. I also tried out the Smartphoto. Again, I was surprised at how well the image was, on basically what could be considered auto. While I did not use those images as deliverables to our client, due to a slight lack in dynamic range and color, they could be usable in a pinch or even when quickly taking pics on vacation.
Video -- I also did some B-Roll video and it looked great. I shot the same videos in normal, DLOG and HLG at 4k 30fps, slowed to 80% and color graded them in Davinci Resolve. I didn't really care for the Normal profile. The DLOG with a Rec 709 natural LUT looked really nice for client work, whereas the HLG with the same LUT was SUPER PUNCHY...so much so I had to bring back a lot of the color. But, I loved the dynamic range and will probably shoot HLG soley. Sadly the DLOG profile matches our Sony cameras a bit more, but I'll work that out in time.
Flight Characteristics -- I was not prepared at how "snappy" the Air 2S flies, lol. Like, seriously. Even after having tested it out at home prior to the job, I was caught off guard a time or two during the shoot. I blame it on being a little tired from shooting the 4000 sqft homes interior on AEB and Flambient...and I'm sticking to it.... Anyway, when you get on the sticks, the drone MOVES...in normal mode. You touch the controls and it hops right to it. It has Cine mode, but I never like to fly that slow, ever. I had to avoid a pair of hawks (or was it ospreys???) by flying straight up and when I came back down, I could have sworn the motors cut off! It dropped like rock and a half. I admit, I loved it. My other drones took forever to descend. To me, the fast descend is a great feature, as when I'm flying in our hometown of Orlando, avoiding low-flying helicopters and small passenger planes is a frequent occurrence and dropping like a rock is a big plus... I do plan on digging through the Fly app more and deadening the sticks a bit, to perform like our "backup" Evo does, in all of its lumbering dump truck glory, lol.
Sound/Annoyance factor -- This has to be the quietest of the 5 drones we own/owned. It is seriously quiet when only a few dozen feet from the ground. Our job was in a pretty exclusive neighborhood, with many people out taking pics of the surroundings and sunset and not one person batted an eye or even turned in the direction of the drone...except for one gentleman that used to fly drones, before they pretty much became automated... He stopped flying after crashing some old Phantoms and Visions. He told me he didn't initially notice it until it flew through one of his wife's shots she was taking, lol. Nice... This is another plus for us. No more wearing the silly vest in private communities, trying to look all official.
All in all, so far, I'm loving the Air 2S. I don't use any smart or advanced features, so I can't speak to those. I do all of my own tracking, orbits and parallaxes and it works great for us. I'm glad we retired the P4P+ and only have to bring this and our Evo I around to jobs. Great purchase.
Long story short, we have/had a Mavic Air, Phantom 4, Phantom 4 Pro+ and an Autel Evo I (our backup). The P4P+ was our workhorse and we loved it because it did everything well (4k60, 20mp 1" sensor camera, etc.). We never used any of the flight modes or "advanced features". I never liked letting go of the sticks when flying, everything was manual for me. The thing that initially attracted me to the P4P+ was eventually its downfall. It just caught too many peoples attention. I was pretty caught up on "looking professional" back then. As curiosity has turned to disdain for drones, we like to get in, shoot and get out before we attract too much attention.
Because of this, we started using our Evo more and more. A bit quieter and had a much smaller footprint (our OG Air had a TERRIBLE pitch, so we used that just for tight flythroughs). As time went on, we were getting a little tired of having to run the Evo for all of our video shoots and then quickly throw the P4P+ up for stills. Yeah, I know, most people don't see the difference between the 2 drones cameras for still photos, but I do and want to give our clients what I think is the best deliverable.
We contemplated the Mavic 2 Pro, but that's getting old. So when we saw the specs of the Air 2S, I was intrigued. Like many I watched all the YT vids I could and TRIED to find unbiased, non-DJI supplied, non-DJI fanboy reviewers to get an honest opinion. I found quite a few that personally purchased the Air 2S and had more positives then negatives to say.
I bought the drone on the 29th and set it up. Coming from the Go 4 app, I was slightly taken aback at the simplicity of the new Fly app. BUT, it had everything I needed access to, in order to do a job this past Saturday. I'm not going to get into specs and all that, I'm simply going to relate my experience as the owner of a small photography and videography company.
THOUGHTS
Pics -- Like I mentioned, we had a chance this past Saturday to do a photo-only shoot on a typical $500,000 southwest beach town-home. It was 85+ degrees and super bright out. Gusts were up to 20 occasional because, well, it's Florida and storms materialize from nowhere. Anyway, I took pics of the home, pool and lanai from various heights and was not disappointed whatsoever. I wanted to try out 5 shot AEB and see how well it did in such windy weather. Even in constant 15 mph winds, only 1 picture came out slightly blurry. All the others were perfect. The little Air 2S planted like a rock in the air. I also tried out the Smartphoto. Again, I was surprised at how well the image was, on basically what could be considered auto. While I did not use those images as deliverables to our client, due to a slight lack in dynamic range and color, they could be usable in a pinch or even when quickly taking pics on vacation.
Video -- I also did some B-Roll video and it looked great. I shot the same videos in normal, DLOG and HLG at 4k 30fps, slowed to 80% and color graded them in Davinci Resolve. I didn't really care for the Normal profile. The DLOG with a Rec 709 natural LUT looked really nice for client work, whereas the HLG with the same LUT was SUPER PUNCHY...so much so I had to bring back a lot of the color. But, I loved the dynamic range and will probably shoot HLG soley. Sadly the DLOG profile matches our Sony cameras a bit more, but I'll work that out in time.
Flight Characteristics -- I was not prepared at how "snappy" the Air 2S flies, lol. Like, seriously. Even after having tested it out at home prior to the job, I was caught off guard a time or two during the shoot. I blame it on being a little tired from shooting the 4000 sqft homes interior on AEB and Flambient...and I'm sticking to it.... Anyway, when you get on the sticks, the drone MOVES...in normal mode. You touch the controls and it hops right to it. It has Cine mode, but I never like to fly that slow, ever. I had to avoid a pair of hawks (or was it ospreys???) by flying straight up and when I came back down, I could have sworn the motors cut off! It dropped like rock and a half. I admit, I loved it. My other drones took forever to descend. To me, the fast descend is a great feature, as when I'm flying in our hometown of Orlando, avoiding low-flying helicopters and small passenger planes is a frequent occurrence and dropping like a rock is a big plus... I do plan on digging through the Fly app more and deadening the sticks a bit, to perform like our "backup" Evo does, in all of its lumbering dump truck glory, lol.
Sound/Annoyance factor -- This has to be the quietest of the 5 drones we own/owned. It is seriously quiet when only a few dozen feet from the ground. Our job was in a pretty exclusive neighborhood, with many people out taking pics of the surroundings and sunset and not one person batted an eye or even turned in the direction of the drone...except for one gentleman that used to fly drones, before they pretty much became automated... He stopped flying after crashing some old Phantoms and Visions. He told me he didn't initially notice it until it flew through one of his wife's shots she was taking, lol. Nice... This is another plus for us. No more wearing the silly vest in private communities, trying to look all official.
All in all, so far, I'm loving the Air 2S. I don't use any smart or advanced features, so I can't speak to those. I do all of my own tracking, orbits and parallaxes and it works great for us. I'm glad we retired the P4P+ and only have to bring this and our Evo I around to jobs. Great purchase.
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