Great video on the M2 PRO vs P4Pro camera, in depth

[Spike151]

 

[Former Member]

Thank you for posting this. Tom does some good drone reviews.

 

[mcsenerd]

Good friggin luck trying to get a straight answer on that letter to DJI! LOL

 

[SteveCA]

nice, well thought out tests and analysis. Thanks for sharing!

 

[dannybgoode]

It’s ok as it goes and Tom at least has a planned testing methodology which has been thought through.

My main issue with it is that by his own conclusions the P4P does an amount of post processing regardless of the settings (automatically applies digital sharpening for eg) whereas the M2P does not.

He should have therefore applied some post to the M2P footage before comparing

Similarly there is a good reason why the 10bit FOV footage fisheyes and that’s because lens correction is otherwise applied on the fly in both drones so again this really should be fixed post imo.

As a point of interest I’ll post my RAW files from my Canon G7X II which uses the same Sony sensor. Without any lens correction the pictures are horrific!!

 

[MavicPro2]

lets hope just some of this is SW fixable then as its clearly not living up to spec. I too wasnt that blown away after looking at my footage compared to the MP1.. I expected a lot more out of the box tbh.

 

[mavicn00b]

If its SoC/ISP related, then whats he trying to say? The Ambarella H1 in the P4p from yesteryear is superior to the In-house "H3" used in the Mavic Air/2 ? Even the cheaper Autel Evo uses the H2. I may be jumping to conclusions here but DJI's custom silicon leaves a lot to be desired.

 

[Dronefriend]

Good video by Tom.

Agree with that he should have applied sharpness and distortion fix in post for Mavic 2 Pro.

However, no post can fix that bad sensor read-out in 4K FOV mode. Meaning that only a fraction of the sensor is used in HQ mode. Meaning, one should strongly consider getting the Zoom instead, as less color accuracy is the only downfall.

Also meaning: the M2P is not the beast DJI want it to be, and for professional videographers that are not concerned with carrying a P4P, it is still the better choice.

 

[sar104]

Good video by Tom.

Agree with that he should have applied sharpness and distortion fix in post for Mavic 2 Pro.

However, no post can fix that bad sensor read-out in 4K FOV mode. Meaning that only a fraction of the sensor is used in HQ mode. Meaning, one should strongly consider getting the Zoom instead, as less color accuracy is the only downfall.

Also meaning: the M2P is not the beast DJI want it to be, and for professional videographers that are not concerned with carrying a P4P, it is still the better choice.

Less color resolution, less dynamic range, poorer low-light response from the small sensor. And that's just considering video. If you factor in still photography the M2P wins easily with much better image quality and higher resolution. No one should buy the zoom for image quality - only for utility.

 

[Levitate]

lets hope just some of this is SW fixable then as its clearly not living up to spec. I too wasnt that blown away after looking at my footage compared to the MP1.. I expected a lot more out of the box tbh.

It isn’t software fixable so I wouldn’t hold my breath too long. See attached.

 

[Levitate]

If its SoC/ISP related, then whats he trying to say? The Ambarella H1 in the P4p from yesteryear is superior to the In-house "H3" used in the Mavic Air/2 ? Even the cheaper Autel Evo uses the H2. I may be jumping to conclusions here but DJI's custom silicon leaves a lot to be desired.

That H3 is actually from a 3rd party company called “Allwinner”. It is a really cruddy SOC. Big downgrade.

 

[mavicn00b]

That H3 is actually from a 3rd party company called “Allwinner”. It is a really cruddy SOC. Big downgrade.

Nah the specs don't match some of this SoCs obvious capabilities e.g. 4k30 encode

H3 - linux-sunxi.org

 

[Levitate]

Nah the specs don't match some of this SoCs obvious capabilities e.g. 4k30 encode

H3 - linux-sunxi.org

It definitely is the "Allwinner SOC". Devs on the slack group confirmed it a couple weeks ago. It's a huge step down from the A9.

 

[mavicn00b]

It definitely is the "Allwinner SOC". Devs on the slack group confirmed it a couple weeks ago. It's a huge step down from the A9.

Some of the users on djirev believe it's the allwinner SoC yes but the information I have from other (dare I say more senior??) members is it's custom SoC. The information on the allwinner SoC doesn't support the theory that it's an allwinner SoC

• H.264 High Profile 1080P@30fps encoding

We already know the Mavic 2 supports more then this including 4k/30 and h265. From what I've seen of the part it seems to be similar to that found in the Mavic air.

In any case I think we both agree whatever this thing is it's not up to the task of handling the 1" sensor on the M2P as well as we had hoped.

 

[Levitate]

Some of the users on djirev believe it's the allwinner SoC yes but the information I have from other (dare I say more senior??) members is it's custom SoC. The information on the allwinner SoC doesn't support the theory that it's an allwinner SoC

• H.264 High Profile 1080P@30fps encoding

We already know the Mavic 2 supports more then this including 4k/30 and h265. From what I've seen of the part it seems to be similar to that found in the Mavic air.

In any case I think we both agree whatever this thing is it's not up to the task of handling the 1" sensor on the M2P as well as we had hoped.

You could very well be right. Honestly, I am waiting for the next firmware release. If it doesn't improve the quality closer to the P4P, I might actually sell my M2Pro and go back to the P4P. I don't think the P5 is coming for a while.