How many "not" having issues with the M3?

[Macronaut59]

I finally received my M3 after a shipping delay. However, after reading about so many issues of various sorts, I'm a bit nervous to get mine in the air. I fly mostly fly over or around the ocean and need a good amount of confidence in my aircraft. That confidence has taken a few bumps lately with reports of the M3 ascending, descending, drifting, without input, OA sensors giving false readings/warnings, etc.

This is all very unnerving to say the least. I haven't even broken the seal on the box, trying to decide whether to keep it and see if it functions properly or send it back and wait to see how this all pans out.

Mostly, I would like to hear from those that have not had any issues (other the the missing features on the app). I know this forum is but a small fraction of all those that ordered the M3. I suppose I'm just trying to weigh the odds to some extent. My guess is (hopefully) these issues are a small(er) percentage of the total sold.

Do certain productions dates seem have more issues? Mine is 10/21

Thanks, Billy

 

[fiddlepilot]

Mine seems OK now.

My first flights with no SD card we’re fine.

I put an old SD card in mine and even though I was not shooting at the time it might have caused problems. With image frozen on phone. It was complaining about slow SD earlier in the flight when I did shoot.

I have a recommended card in there now and it was 100% fine today. But others have had intermittent issues. So it will take time to build up confidence.

I still have not flown it a ton but it behaved.

I also mostly fly over water.

I have both DJI care and State Farm. And have until Jan 31 to return through Amazon if things don’t seem right.

RTH has worked every time except I usually abort when it gets close to home and manually land it.

Unbox that baby

 

[TeddyBozeman]

Barring some issues getting my RC Pro to work with my Asus Router (Fixed by giving it a static ip), mine's been almost perfect; I have noticed a slight change in altitude during a C-mode forward fly or two, but that also might have been being overly cautious with obstacle avoidance.

 

[Photo Beaty]

So far, after about ten nice long flights, I have been very happy with my Mavic 3. I am eager for the addition of the promised features.

 

[Desert Drone Works]

I'm having trouble dialing in my footage compared to my Air 2S. That along with some weird altitude increase/decrease issues randomly. I'm working with DJI and submitting flight data to them to figure out what's going on. Honestly right now, I'm not very happy with it. Hopefully with some firmware updates it'll be more usable.

 

[360 Guy]

I can’t understand why anyone would buy first production right off the line.
Even first production cars are going to have quirks for the fist year.

If you buy something just out and right fresh off the production line, then you become the “quirk” finder.

DJI welcomes your free R&D

 

[Antero52]

In another thread I reported systematic freezing problems after about 10 minutes of video recording. Since then I bought a faster MicroSD card and updated DJI Fly to 1.5.1. Now I seem to be able to fly and capture video for as long as the battery lasts. This means that currently I am not having any problems with my "plain" M3.

 

[360 Guy]

You sir are of the lucky few, welcome thru the maze.

 

[Drone Master]

I have a dozen flights in so far. In the beginning I wasn’t really pleased with the out of the box performance, however after some fine tuning, it has improved significantly.
Personally I’m not a fan of the fly app as many are not and are used to Go4.
I am waiting patiently just like many others for the January updates.

 

[CanadaDrone]

I think you will find the majority of people who actually own the drone don't have any problems with it and don't post here. Even making a thread like this is naturally going to attract a disproportionate type of response so early on in the product's life cycle. It's also important to understand that with any new product, user error or lack of understanding accounts for many of the early "issues". The best evidence of this is to look back at the M2 release as it was extremely similar - many weeks of complaining followed by the realization that it's actually an excellent drone when the dust settled and the vocal minority no longer had center stage. This doesn't mean the drone is perfect and some people won't experience some issues just like any other product, but you will always see a disproportionately high number of complaints and knee-jerk reactions when a product is new and people are still figuring everything out. It's the same everywhere with any product. People with problems are far more likely to post about them, most of the happy owners aren't going to bother making a post just to say they like their new drone - same as with every product.

I think the best thing to do is do is first determine if the upgrades will make a real difference to your usage, as the M2P and A2S are already more drone than a lot of people need. After that, do your research, and if you're satisfied, purchase the drone from a place with a return policy you find acceptable. At least half the complaints I have seen so far are from people who don't even own the drone and could have been avoided by reading the Mavic 3 product page on DJI's website. You can bet the same folks that can't be bothered to do a few minutes of reading before spending several thousand dollars aren't going to wait long before they declare they have a defective product should anything not be exactly as they expected. If you are at all nervous about it, then either don't buy it or wait until more people actually have it so you can get a better idea of what to expect.

 

[Fergus]

I've only had mine up a couple of time so far but no issues yet.

 

[canadian drone videos]

I finally received my M3 after a shipping delay. However, after reading about so many issues of various sorts, I'm a bit nervous to get mine in the air. I fly mostly fly over or around the ocean and need a good amount of confidence in my aircraft. That confidence has taken a few bumps lately with reports of the M3 ascending, descending, drifting, without input, OA sensors giving false readings/warnings, etc.

This is all very unnerving to say the least. I haven't even broken the seal on the box, trying to decide whether to keep it and see if it functions properly or send it back and wait to see how this all pans out.

Mostly, I would like to hear from those that have not had any issues (other the the missing features on the app). I know this forum is but a small fraction of all those that ordered the M3. I suppose I'm just trying to weigh the odds to some extent. My guess is (hopefully) these issues are a small(er) percentage of the total sold.

Do certain productions dates seem have more issues? Mine is 10/21

Thanks, Billy

I can relate to your concerns, I’ve had mine a week and plan to do my first flight tomorrow during a decent weather window. I have no plans to fly near water for now. There is evidence that people who lack proper knowledge are buying this drone, but to what extent who knows. For all we know people who are complaining are trolls and don’t actually own this drone. I’ve yet to see a flight log that involves a crash or fly away.

 

[Coskier]

So far so good here

 

[Macronaut59]

I got the batteries charged and ready. I expect to set it up today and go for a spin. For now, I'm going to keep it away from the water until I get a feel for it.

 

[bkushner]

I'm having trouble dialing in my footage compared to my Air 2S. That along with some weird altitude increase/decrease issues randomly. I'm working with DJI and submitting flight data to them to figure out what's going on. Honestly right now, I'm not very happy with it. Hopefully with some firmware updates it'll be more usable.

Interested if DJI gives you any feedback on the increase/decrease issue.. After 2 1/2 weeks waiting for an answer they gave me some line about it's changes in air pressure and normal.

 

[Macronaut59]

So, I did get a single battery flight today and had a few minor issues and confirmed some of the notations others have mentioned. I am posting a nontechnical, basic observation.

1). Ascending without input moving forward: Yes, this happens in Cine and Normal mode. Sport mode cancels this. Apparently the OA is the cause. I even tried to compensate using down left stick and all that it did was slow the drone to a crawl. It would not go lower than about 5 ft. from the ground moving forward or backward. My A2S does not do this. It stays at the altitude I start out at and doesn't balk.

2). After about ten minutes of flying, I got a "compass recalibration required". So, I landed and did so. Yes, I did it before I took off. A little concerning non the less.

3). I was testing the OA and all seemed well using bypass. About 15 minutes in, the audio warning started going off when I wasn't near anything and would not stop no matter what I did or where I went, with nothing around for hundreds of feet. I landed and restarted the app and that seemed to fix it...still...

4). What some are saying about the sticks being very sensitive seems to be confirmed (at least with mine). The right stick seems to be hyper sensitive (left and right especially) and it brakes very hard. I have tired being overly gentle towards center with some decent results. I only had one battery so, I was not able to explore the settings in the app. as I would have liked. Cine mode tamed this down quite a bit.

5). less common is the crooked horizon: Unlike as reported from a certain Youtuber, mine appeared to be perfect on the monitor. I did not do any recording though.

It would seem that most of these issues can be corrected via firmware. However, we seem to be at the mercy of DJI tech to step up and do so. Hopefully all will be golden in January.

I hope I do not find any other issues in my next flights. I need to have a reasonable of confidence in my equipment.

Cheers, Billy

 

[JohnC]

Nothing major wrong here! Had an initial problem connecting to the SSD on the Cine, which seems to be a glitch, possibly with some internal parameter. Once it connected the first time its been fine ever since.

No issues with slow SSD or tilted horizon either.

Also have not seen the erratic or jerky movements that some have reported, stick response is very similar to the M2P, Cine mode is OK too.

Some features not yet available, but DJI have moved the warranty start date to February 8th & I can count on one hand how many times I used these things on my M2P so not massively bothered they are not there.

 

[spsphotos]

Going to save $3000 and stick with my A1, A2, and M2. If someone gives me a M3 I'd take it but not shelling out thousands for an iffy drone till I hear better reports.

 

[fly4fun]

Mine seems OK now.

My first flights with no SD card we’re fine.

I put an old SD card in mine and even though I was not shooting at the time it might have caused problems. With image frozen on phone. It was complaining about slow SD earlier in the flight when I did shoot.

I have a recommended card in there now and it was 100% fine today. But others have had intermittent issues. So it will take time to build up confidence.

I still have not flown it a ton but it behaved.

I also mostly fly over water.

I have both DJI care and State Farm. And have until Jan 31 to return through Amazon if things don’t seem right.

RTH has worked every time except I usually abort when it gets close to home and manually land it.

Unbox that baby

I just returned my Mavic 3 for all the same reasons. I had the same SD card to RC issues with the picture and all controls locking up. Also the record button would lock up. This happened even when I Formatted the SD card which was the newest generation. RTH would work luckily. Also on take off I would raise the drone about 20-30 feet and then push the forward stick only and it would fly up anothe 20-30 feet and then go forward. This was going to be a problem if I took off with something above me. I really wanted the Mavic 3 to work properly out of the box but after 39 flights with issues on almost all of them I gave up. My MP2 still works great. Hopefully DJI will fix ALL the issues in January with the firmware update with WAYPOINTS and all the great preset shots and programs that are on the MP2. My concern was that some of the issues with the Mavic 3 were hardware problems.

 

[BethanyFerrell]

With the caveat that I've no prior experience to compare to, I'm having no trouble with our new M3.

Been kibitzing as my mate watches Pilot Institute Part 107 videos (I won't apply for a certificate, just absorbing info), gradually learning and practicing simple maneuvers, most of all training "muscle memory" on what each stick does — the equivalent of learning to keep a bicycle upright, minus the need for a sense of balance.

Of course I want all the features ASAP, but I understand the need for patience. Given the simple stuff I've been doing, no issues at all.