I have an old Mavic Air. Thinking about getting the Mini 3 Pro

[Siam]

I have an old Mavic Air. Thinking about getting the Mini 3 Pro. Thoughts? If I get the Mini 3 Pro it would be with the controller with screen. I am a hobbyist so the camera is not a huge factor. My biggest concern is being able to see the screen while flying.

I could buy a new tablet but that would be a few hundred bucks anyway.

I would appreciate your thoughts on it.

 

[JoelP]

This depends upon how you would like to use your drone. If you bought your Mavic Air 1 for its size to do things like backpacking then this would be a great upgrade for you. I went to the Mavic 3 for the camera and low light capability, but that is a much bigger investment. I find the specs of the Mini 3 Pro to be quite impressive and a great choice for most people. You will need to get used to the DJI Fly app which is quite different than Go4.

 

[Macinfo]

I think if you're not concerned about the camera improvements in a Mini 3 or other new drones over what you have, and are only concerned about seeing the screen, buy a tablet.

The DJI RC in the Mini 3 bundle is 700 nits, that maybe brighter than most tablets, have not seen any comparisons. But its not as bright as the DJI RC Pro, which is a 1000 nits, however, your going to pay 4x more for the Pro, and its not yet compatible with the Mini 3 based on a DJI FAQ..

Course most tablets do not get that bright in many cases and will suffer in bright light while flying. Or may fade/dim if they get warm, depending on the ambient temps you're flying in that day. There are some bright tablets, like the TripleTek mentioned in some threads, though thats more than 2x the price of the DJI RC stand alone price and may have to mount on the RC-N1 model RC in some fashion if I recall. Not sure, never used one.

However, if you went DJI DC Pro and spent big $$, you'd be flying a Mavic 3 or Mavic Air 2S.

However, I think you'd probably be generally pleased with the camera improvements in the Mini 3 and using the DJI RC over your current Mavic. If your using Go 4 with that Mavic,, you'd have to get used to the Fly app.. Many think Go 4 is better, I am one that think Fly is better once you get used to it.. your mileage may vary.

 

[Siam]

I think if you're not concerned about the camera improvements in a Mini 3 or other new drones over what you have, and are only concerned about seeing the screen, buy a tablet.

The DJI RC in the Mini 3 bundle is 700 nits, that maybe brighter than most tablets, have not seen any comparisons. But its not as bright as the DJI RC Pro, which is a 1000 nits, however, your going to pay 4x more for the Pro, and its not yet compatible with the Mini 3 based on a DJI FAQ..

Course most tablets do not get that bright in many cases and will suffer in bright light while flying. Or may fade/dim if they get warm, depending on the ambient temps you're flying in that day. There are some bright tablets, like the TripleTek mentioned in some threads, though thats more than 2x the price of the DJI RC stand alone price and may have to mount on the RC-N1 model RC in some fashion if I recall. Not sure, never used one.

However, if you went DJI DC Pro and spent big $$, you'd be flying a Mavic 3 or Mavic Air 2S.

However, I think you'd probably be generally pleased with the camera improvements in the Mini 3 and using the DJI RC over your current Mavic. If your using Go 4 with that Mavic,, you'd have to get used to the Fly app.. Many think Go 4 is better, I am one that think Fly is better once you get used to it.. your mileage may vary.

Thanks. I did look at the Tripletek but figured the Mini 3 Pro is about the same price with controller, I decided I would most likely go with the Mini. Which will give me two good drones to have around

 

[careless]

As someone told me not long ago "It's time to tear off the Band-Aide"

 

[Siam]

This depends upon how you would like to use your drone. If you bought your Mavic Air 1 for its size to do things like backpacking then this would be a great upgrade for you. I went to the Mavic 3 for the camera and low light capability, but that is a much bigger investment. I find the specs of the Mini 3 Pro to be quite impressive and a great choice for most people. You will need to get used to the DJI Fly app which is quite different than Go4.

Thanks. i don't want anything too big. I have even thought about taking it on an Ultramarathon run for some really cool footage. I like the idea of the Controller with the screen as long as it is truly viewable in direct sunlight.

 

[Siam]

I got to admit. I got gun shy on ordering the Mni 3 Pro. Waaaayyyy too many people have been having problems
I think I will hold off.

 

[jphoto]

I think if you're not concerned about the camera improvements in a Mini 3 or other new drones over what you have, and are only concerned about seeing the screen, buy a tablet.

The DJI RC in the Mini 3 bundle is 700 nits, that maybe brighter than most tablets, have not seen any comparisons. But its not as bright as the DJI RC Pro, which is a 1000 nits, however, your going to pay 4x more for the Pro, and its not yet compatible with the Mini 3 based on a DJI FAQ..

A couple of comments on nits, brightness, and what they mean and do for a device used to monitor drone filght out in the sun.

First thing to know is that "brightness" is a term that relates to how we preceive the intensity of light, but it's subjective only, not actually measurable.

Second, the "nit" is a common slang term for the unit used to measure lumious intensity, the Candella per square meter. One Candella per square meter = 1 nit.

But eye perceives "brightness" changes nonlinearly. In fact, sensory perception of loudness, brightness, force, touch, taste, smell, all follow a very nonlinear law. Doubling the amount of stimulus (light, sound, etc.) does not double the perceived change. Perception follows a "power" law, where the Sensation is proportional the the Intensity raised to a power. The whole mess is complicated by the fact that the above law only really works well in a very controlled environment, which optically, isn't where we fly.

What this all means is, when we look at specs that say the RC has 700 nits, but the RC Pro is a "whopping" 1000 nits, that's actually not a very big difference. If doubling the luminous intensity doesn't actually double how humans see "brightness", then certainly a change of 43%, while noticeable, is nowhere near to the difference 700 vs 1000 nits sounds like. And it's a VERY expensive change!

Course most tablets do not get that bright in many cases and will suffer in bright light while flying. Or may fade/dim if they get warm, depending on the ambient temps you're flying in that day. There are some bright tablets, like the TripleTek mentioned in some threads, though thats more than 2x the price of the DJI RC stand alone price and may have to mount on the RC-N1 model RC in some fashion if I recall. Not sure, never used one.

Again, be careful to properly scale those intensity changes. They aren't as big as they sound.

I use the Mini 3 Pro RC, but still find it challenging in direct sun, a situation I constantly avoid. Yes, its usable, and way better than my iPhone, but a lot of shadow details, and dark areas are blown away. Doubling its intensity would be nowhere near enough to compensate, so you'd be looking at one of those 6000 nit displays, which I don't think are available on a tablet at any reasonable price. I'd like to see an RC Pro in direct sun, but I don't expect it to be a game changer, just a bit better.

Just keep the sun off the display, and you'll be fine.

 

[JoelP]

A couple of comments on nits, brightness, and what they mean and do for a device used to monitor drone filght out in the sun.

First thing to know is that "brightness" is a term that relates to how we preceive the intensity of light, but it's subjective only, not actually measurable.

Second, the "nit" is a common slang term for the unit used to measure lumious intensity, the Candella per square meter. One Candella per square meter = 1 nit.

But eye perceives "brightness" changes nonlinearly. In fact, sensory perception of loudness, brightness, force, touch, taste, smell, all follow a very nonlinear law. Doubling the amount of stimulus (light, sound, etc.) does not double the perceived change. Perception follows a "power" law, where the Sensation is proportional the the Intensity raised to a power. The whole mess is complicated by the fact that the above law only really works well in a very controlled environment, which optically, isn't where we fly.

What this all means is, when we look at specs that say the RC has 700 nits, but the RC Pro is a "whopping" 1000 nits, that's actually not a very big difference. If doubling the luminous intensity doesn't actually double how humans see "brightness", then certainly a change of 43%, while noticeable, is nowhere near to the difference 700 vs 1000 nits sounds like. And it's a VERY expensive change!

Again, be careful to properly scale those intensity changes. They aren't as big as they sound.

I use the Mini 3 Pro RC, but still find it challenging in direct sun, a situation I constantly avoid. Yes, its usable, and way better than my iPhone, but a lot of shadow details, and dark areas are blown away. Doubling its intensity would be nowhere near enough to compensate, so you'd be looking at one of those 6000 nit displays, which I don't think are available on a tablet at any reasonable price. I'd like to see an RC Pro in direct sun, but I don't expect it to be a game changer, just a bit better.

Just keep the sun off the display, and you'll be fine.

A couple of comments on nits, brightness, and what they mean and do for a device used to monitor drone filght out in the sun.

First thing to know is that "brightness" is a term that relates to how we preceive the intensity of light, but it's subjective only, not actually measurable.

Second, the "nit" is a common slang term for the unit used to measure lumious intensity, the Candella per square meter. One Candella per square meter = 1 nit.

But eye perceives "brightness" changes nonlinearly. In fact, sensory perception of loudness, brightness, force, touch, taste, smell, all follow a very nonlinear law. Doubling the amount of stimulus (light, sound, etc.) does not double the perceived change. Perception follows a "power" law, where the Sensation is proportional the the Intensity raised to a power. The whole mess is complicated by the fact that the above law only really works well in a very controlled environment, which optically, isn't where we fly.

What this all means is, when we look at specs that say the RC has 700 nits, but the RC Pro is a "whopping" 1000 nits, that's actually not a very big difference. If doubling the luminous intensity doesn't actually double how humans see "brightness", then certainly a change of 43%, while noticeable, is nowhere near to the difference 700 vs 1000 nits sounds like. And it's a VERY expensive change!

Again, be careful to properly scale those intensity changes. They aren't as big as they sound.

I use the Mini 3 Pro RC, but still find it challenging in direct sun, a situation I constantly avoid. Yes, its usable, and way better than my iPhone, but a lot of shadow details, and dark areas are blown away. Doubling its intensity would be nowhere near enough to compensate, so you'd be looking at one of those 6000 nit displays, which I don't think are available on a tablet at any reasonable price. I'd like to see an RC Pro in direct sun, but I don't expect it to be a game changer, just a bit better.

Just keep the sun off the display, and you'll be fine.

I have been in the electronic display industry for more than 50 years and agree with most of what j photo says. The human vision system responds to brightness logarithmically so 300 nits is, as he said, not much of an improvement. On the other hand 6000 nits might be overkill. For the current work on AR glasses the industry goal is 2500 nits, which happens to be about 2x that of the TriplTek Pro8 that I own. It is better than my iPhone, but not nearly bright enough for direct sun. You can measure brightness with a photometer and I plan to check the spec for the TripleTek when I can with a friend’s high-end photometer.

What we really see is contrast. For an emissive display we are comparing the speculative reflectance of the sun to the emission of the display. If there isn’t enough difference we cannot read the display. We have several choices to improve that contrast. One is to make a brighter display. Second is to reduce the specular reflection of the screen with an anti reflective coating, but none seem to do this well enough. The third would be to go to a reflective display.

So far the best reflective displays are the EInk displays used in e-readers like the Amazon Kindle. Sadly there is no good reflective color display that can operate at video rates or even close. This technology has eluded the display industry and remains a goal for e-textbooks and applications like drone controllers.

 

[jphoto]

You can measure brightness with a photometer and I plan to check the spec for the TripleTek when I can with a friend’s high-end photometer.

What we really see is contrast.

I was under the impression that perceived brightness is strongly influenced by contrast, and that is influenced by ambient light surrounding the display. I'm not exactly sure how you can measure the resulting perceived brightness by pointing a photometer at a display if that's true, but maybe I'm missing something, not having personally used a photometer. That's why I isolated "brigthness" as subjective, whereas luminous intensity is a photometric quanity measured in lm/sr (lumens per steradian) or cd (candela). Stevens defined Perceived Brightness = Luminance raised to a power, and modified by conditional factors.

But what we're saying is, nits are bit looking numbers with smaller looking real differences.

 

[JoelP]

Let’s begin with defining some of the terminology. You are right that a nit equals a candle/sq. meter. Luminance is measured in nits (cd/sq.m). The difference between a photo metric measurement and a radiometric measurement is that a radiometric measurement is a measure of the energy of that light while a photometric measurement is a measure of the sensitivity of the eye combined with the radiometric measure of energy. Since the eye is more sensitive to green than blue, green energy counts for more than blue energy. Irradiance is a measure of the energy flux from a light source and quoted as lumens/steradian to allow for the divergence of a light source. This can all get very confusing and get us in the weeds of display metrology.

If I were to measure something meaningful about a display performance I would use an instrument like a Photoresearch Spectrascan. This instrument allows you to look at a small region of the display and measure luminance. I would measure a fully bright white and a fully black region in a dark room. From that I could calculate the indoor contrast of the display. Then I would take it outside into full sunlight and do the same measurement to determine contrast. You would have trouble reading this if it were less than 2:1 and even that would be marginal.

Above a certain luminance level what the human vision systems sees is only contrast. The higher the contrast the “brighter” that we perceive the display to be. Sadly this number is rarely published for these high bright displays.

 

[Macinfo]

I got to admit. I got gun shy on ordering the Mni 3 Pro. Waaaayyyy too many people have been having problems
I think I will hold off.

Most of the issues you probably see were in the release phase, their have been several updates since then, and it appears to be pretty stable right now. Like anything new from DJI, takes a while to get the kinks worked out.

If you go by the anecdotal evidence in forums, where a few people have had issues, there maybe many more not having any at all..

People come online when they are having problems with something.. you rarely see routine posts going, that everything worked great today, only when something went wrong or odd happened.. Same goes for YouTuber's, some noted early issues, but most if not all are fixed now with the updates

Then there are some of them just seem to look all the time for something that is wrong or some negative in their view, and somehow manage to make a 20 minute video to tell you about it.. Even if the chances if it happening to you or if you cared, maybe slim.

If you ordered one, you may not have a single problem, does depend on how cautious a pilot you might be too...

You won't know unless you pull the trigger

 

[jphoto]

Let’s begin with defining some of the terminology. You are right that a nit equals a candle/sq. meter. Luminance is measured in nits (cd/sq.m). The difference between a photo metric measurement and a radiometric measurement is that a radiometric measurement is a measure of the energy of that light while a photometric measurement is a measure of the sensitivity of the eye combined with the radiometric measure of energy. Since the eye is more sensitive to green than blue, green energy counts for more than blue energy. Irradiance is a measure of the energy flux from a light source and quoted as lumens/steradian to allow for the divergence of a light source. This can all get very confusing and get us in the weeds of display metrology.

If I were to measure something meaningful about a display performance I would use an instrument like a Photoresearch Spectrascan. This instrument allows you to look at a small region of the display and measure luminance. I would measure a fully bright white and a fully black region in a dark room. From that I could calculate the indoor contrast of the display. Then I would take it outside into full sunlight and do the same measurement to determine contrast. You would have trouble reading this if it were less than 2:1 and even that would be marginal.

Above a certain luminance level what the human vision systems sees is only contrast. The higher the contrast the “brighter” that we perceive the display to be. Sadly this number is rarely published for these high bright displays.

Very educational. Thanks!

 

[Daytona500]

I have a Mavic Air and love it, I just got a mini pro 3, the first one I got had no video transmission, think it was a RC problem sent it back they sent a new one and this on is great. Its so smooth to fly and I get triple the sats that the air 1 got. Pic's and video are fine as far as I m concerned not making videos for Hollywood of gigantic posters. Not sure about low light photos I don't do much flying in low light. So its good enough for me

 

[Robert Prior]

I've got a new Mini 3 with the RC Controller. Screen is bright enough during golden hour and in the shade at midday. In full midday sun I can't see it clearly, but moving into the shade (or using a hood) solves that problem.

Haven't tried low-light imaging yet, as I'm still getting used to how it flies in various conditions.

 

[Siam]

I got the Mini3 Pro with RC controller with a screen. No issues so far. The screen is fine if you use a matte (anti-glare) screen protector. Not perfect but better than using my phone which heats up when I use it for my Mavic Air.

Things I like:

1: From the time I want to fly to get it in the air is as long as it takes for them to turn on. No need to fuss about attaching a tablet or phone.

2: I run Ultra Marathons and sometimes on my long training runs (2-4 hours) I wear a running vest. I can actually fit the controller and drone in the vest! Great for when I want to take a 5-minute break and see something cool to take a video. I mean for me that is worth the price.

3: The video is much better than the Mavic Air I currently have.

4: I love the Hyperlapse

5: The Mini 3 Pro is much lighter than the Mavic Air but it is more stable in flight and with windy conditions

6: The ND filters from Freewell are soooo easy to put on. I keep a small case of 6 of them in my running vest.

7: Active track works great if by yourself.....Once it locked onto my buddy as we crossed. Not a big deal....but something to take note of. DJI does state this in the manual.

8: Batteries are not so expensive compared to the Mavic Air I own.

For the CON's (or suggested improvements) and of course the occasional dig to DJI

1: Make a video out for the RC Controller. It is nice but sometimes I would like to use an external monitor or tablet.

2: In general: do not release a product that you have to do multiple updates in the first year. I am sure most of these were discovered during DJI's own testing. DJI (IMO) loves to use first-time owners as guinea pigs. I don't appreciate that. They should have had the proper testing and fixes done prior to the release of the products.

3: Is it really that hard to make the screen anti-glare..for a reasonable price. Why not just include as an option an anti-glare screen protector?

4: Range in San Antonio (near the city limits ..suburban, is only about a 1/2 mile) I have verified I am in FCC mode. I hope that is just because of interference. I am doing a range test later this week. If it is still low....I am returning the product and Ditching DJI. It is inexcusable for a company to release a product with such a major problem. Yada yada...they did firmware updates. Wrong answer.

 

[frcaloy]

I have an old Mavic Air. Thinking about getting the Mini 3 Pro. Thoughts? If I get the Mini 3 Pro it would be with the controller with screen. I am a hobbyist so the camera is not a huge factor. My biggest concern is being able to see the screen while flying.

I could buy a new tablet but that would be a few hundred bucks anyway.

I would appreciate your thoughts on it.

Get the Mini 3 with the FMC.

 

[SoCal2S]

If you are worried about screen dimming, and want a way to save some money, a $15 screen hood from Amazon fixes that. It's an extra step when flying on a hot bright day, and certainly not as cool or flashy as that nice RC controller with a built in screen, but it's cheap and works.

Now if you just need an excuse to buy a new drone, then yeah, you totally don't want a janky piece of screen hood to mess up your immersion.