Air vs Pro Round 2 - Suburbia Range Test

[NorthGADronePilot]

Phantom 5? Seriously? What on earth is appealing about the Phantom line other than camera quality? Those things are huge, unsightly beasts!

 

[Snake2715]

Still undecided myself. Have a few toys and ready to get a "real" drone. Air or pro. It's a tossup for me. I believe I will want the extended flight times and range eventually, but I can also see hikes where the extra sensors and shots available on the air would be super valuable. I also worry that buying a pro is basically not going to give me much value when the pro 2 comes out, but the air I could pass to my Wife and then grab the pro 2, with hopefully comparable range. I do sometimes wonder if the pro 2 will have reduced range however from the pro just to self police in a way.

 

[Talley]

Its hard to illustrate the noise from a dB meter. Thats only half the picture. The Air's pitch is lot higher than the Mavic's, not sure if its the blades or the RPM. At eye level, the Mavic and Air are similar in loudness, but the Air having a higher pitch its more noticeable from surrounding noise of planes, helicopters, cars, etc. So in a situation where both are up side by side, dB meter says the volume is the same, but the Air is clearly drowning out the Pro. As you ascend through 200 to 300 feet, the Mavic becomes inaudible even in quiet situations. However, the Air, I was able to hear it at 350 feet with no problem even though I couldn't see it. You have to experience it to understand it. I tried to capture it with my high end 4K camera with a Rode Mic Pro, and it just didnt catch what I was actually hearing.

I just posted on this:

Mavic Air vs P3P noise - Spectrum Analysis - The Truth!

I need a MPP to analyze it's frequency output.

 

[ebrandon]

Yeah I flew my Air yesterday in a busy, upscale suburban area. I was a on ridge, and flew it over a valley to the other side, about 2500ft (1/2 mile, 3/4km). Rock solid, no glitches, no problems.
It was totally out of sight and sound range. About as far as I'd ever fly my P3A.
I was worried about range before buying this thing but that doesn't seem to be an issue.

It is noisy but that's just physics. Smaller drone -> smaller props -> higher RPM for sufficient lift -> higher frequency noise -> More noticeable.

 

[JMF]

not to bust your chops but...

I'm curious that after some much research and so many videos, you never never learned that flying beyond LOS and over people and property is illegal?

One of these range test flights is gonna go south and then we will all lose our freedoms

Then don't !

 

[Advexure]

Such great real world feedback that is simple and straight forward. Thank you kindly for sharing, @droneworx We’ve been finding the same with the WiFi on the Air that it really hangs in there. We were awfully concerned when we say that DJI went WiFi instead of OcuSync at release but they’ve done it well. Some of you may know DJI’s past going the WiFi route...great memories with the Phantom 2 Vision which was DJI’s first stab at the WiFi route. Boy has it come a long ways!

 

[NorthGADronePilot]

If you're interested in buying a real drone now, I would definitely go for the Air. It's superior in nearly every way; I just don't think it's superior ENOUGH to justify ditching my Pro when a Pro 2 is likely on the fairly near-term horizon.