I'm a longtime Mavic Air 2 pilot who had been waiting impatiently for an Air-series drone to arrive with all-around object avoidance. The wait has ended! I haven't flown the drone around enough to give any deep insights into its flight characteristics, and there are plenty of folks on YouTube who have done that already.
But here are some very first impressions of the "DJI Air 3 Fly More Combo (DJI RC 2)" bundle itself – and a few flight things – including some things I didn't learn from watching 50 YouTube videos about the Air 3. Some things about the RC 2 remote are likely not new, but are new to me because I had been using the RC-N1 remote with my phone attached, and the RC 2 includes a touchscreen. Here goes:
The tl;dr on the drone itself so far is that it's lovely, and just what I was hoping it would be.
[I first posted this on Reddit in r/DJI; thought it might be useful here as well]
But here are some very first impressions of the "DJI Air 3 Fly More Combo (DJI RC 2)" bundle itself – and a few flight things – including some things I didn't learn from watching 50 YouTube videos about the Air 3. Some things about the RC 2 remote are likely not new, but are new to me because I had been using the RC-N1 remote with my phone attached, and the RC 2 includes a touchscreen. Here goes:
- I guess I could have examined the package contents more carefully beforehand, but this still surprised me: DJI doesn't include any sort of power brick, even in the Fly More package. (They do include a high-quality but short USB-C cable, which is small comfort.) DJI's 65-watt charger is an outrageous US$79 and out of stock to boot. I ordered a 100-watt Anker power brick from Amazon instead for about $27. It arrived overnight. It seems to work nicely and fits in the zippered lid pocket of the Fly More carrying case. The one I bought also comes with a USB-C charging cable that's longer than the one in the Fly More package. I'd definitely go with 100 watts rather than 65. This is really worth keeping in mind: Even the deluxe package doesn't have any way to charge itself.
- The drone batteries arrived without much charge; the RC 2 came with a low charge. I had to distract myself for a few hours while I waited for things to charge (after I found a power brick around the house that would do it!).
- The thumb sticks for the RC 2 are attached by very, very thin bolts, and the sticks seem very easy to lose. One loosened up on me without a whole lot of use and it almost fell off. The Fly More package does not contain extras, unlike the Air 2's package. And the threads are different, so if you have leftovers from your older controllers, they're not gonna work as spares.
- This is likely not new to the Air 3, but I thought it's worth mentioning that the object avoidance works only in the light (They're cameras, not LIDAR, etc.). There's a helpful indicator on the top right of the screen telling you when the sensors are not working. For the first time in my piloting career, I tested a limitation like this by gingerly edging up to an object instead of plowing into an object. The alarms didn't go off at all.
- Wires are still going to be a problem. I cozied the Air 3 up next to some of the wires coming into my house from the street, and the sensors didn't register them at all.
- On the RC 2, there isn't a way to set double-taps for the buttons (unlike the older remotes, where you could set the gimbal to fling itself up and down with a double-tap). There are extra buttons on the bottom, which makes up for this, but it's a muscle-memory adjustment.
- One of the first accessories I bought for my Air 2 was the PGYTECH propeller holder, which does a very nice job. PGYTECH hasn't released any Air 3 stuff yet, and the one, lesser-looking, prop holder I've seen for the Air 3 won't ship until the end of August. Holy smokes, is it a pain to wrangle the drone around with its propellers unsecured. PGYTECH: Update your lineup and take my money.
- This is something that I'd noticed before I bought the drone, but I'll note it for the record: Again, unlike the Air 2 Fly More package, the Air 3 Fly More package doesn't contain any ND filters. They're a separate $99 purchase now.
- The gimbal protector is quite nice, and it's a lot less fiddly to get it on than it is to get the Air 2's on. Replacements are a reasonable $12.
- I also did know this, but it's worth mentioning: The RC 2 has internal storage, but it can take a Micro SD card as well. So if you're buying cards as part of ordering the Air 3, you're gonna want to buy at least two along with the power adapter mentioned in #1.
- I'm super-delighted to have real waypoints, and am going to go outside to test them just as soon as I post this. But building them on the RC 2's touch screen seems kind of excruciating; it would be so much more helpful if we could build them on a desktop or an iPad offline and import them to and export them from the controller.
- Instead of a button to flip back and forth between video and photo modes, there are now left and right triggers. Hit the video trigger (the left one) once to pop to that mode, then hit it again to start recording. The photo trigger on the right works the same way, but pulling it halfway focuses the shot first, which is pretty cool. They've overall done a nice job of setting things up so that you don't need move your fingers away from the triggers or joysticks.
The tl;dr on the drone itself so far is that it's lovely, and just what I was hoping it would be.
[I first posted this on Reddit in r/DJI; thought it might be useful here as well]
