After flying a Phantom 3 Advance for over 4 years and racking up over 130 hours of flight time, I just upgraded to the Mavic Air 2 with ADS-B. If you want the short answer, the MA2 is a huge upgrade from the Phantom, and after only 4 flights now under my belt, I am really impressed with the new drone and am glad I upgraded. If you want the long answer, continue reading below.
I have really enjoyed the Phantom over the last 4 years, but packing it up each time to take it anywhere involved taking off props and lugging around an entire backpack to transport it. The Phantom also lacks a lot of features that DJI added to the MA2. I love that the MA2 (including the remote and batteries) folds up into the supplied pouch quickly leaving the props attached.
After receiving the MA2 fly more combo, I charged each battery separately for the first time to make sure I did not run into the problem some here found by bricking their batteries after trying the use the charging hub on the first charge. After the first charge, I used the charging hub with no problems. I found the bottom of the battery compartment made a perfect location to apply my FAA registration sticker.
While the batteries and charger were charging, it gave me time to go through and remove all the stickers on the drone, and there were a lot of them. There are multiple stickers on the arms, camera, body, gimbal protector, and even the battery. I actually missed a couple that I did not find until after the first flight, although they did not interfere with anything. The first time the AC is powered up the DJI Fly App automatically asked to link the new AC to my DJI account and then searched and showed the updated firmware, which I allowed it to download and install it so I was current and ready to go.
Before the first flight, I went through and performed a compass calibration and then went through and adjusted all of the other settings like the return to home height, action to take if the AC loses contact with the RC, making sure the ADS-B system was turned on, etc. After making all of the changes and going through the pre-flight checklist, it was up up and away for the maiden flight.
The first thing I noticed on launch is that the MA2 is a lot quieter than the Phantom 3. There is still a buzzing noise but not as loud as the Phantom. The MA2 has three drive modes - Tripod, Normal and Sport. Tripod is the slowest and least responsive to stick input. Normal speeds that up some, and seemed to be almost the same as the one mode that the Phantom 3 had. Sport goes to full speed and the stick input is a lot more sensitive meaning a little stick movement generates a much bigger change that when in tripod mode. I liked using sport mode to get to where I wanted to go and then used normal to move around what I wanted to film. On the way back to the home position I switched back into sport which sped things up a lot, including how fast the battery drains.
Even though I did not go out to some crazy range, I did find the signal very stable and never cut out on me, even when flying near power lines. With my Phantom 3, I would get signal drops from time to time, and I flew the MA2 in the same location with no drops in the signal. I have seen videos online where people traveled over 10,000 feet from the home point while still maintaining a constant signal the whole time. That is pretty impressive.
The video and photos are a lot better on the MA2, and it will take me a while to master all of the possible settings using the menus on screen for both video and photo settings. You can leave it on automatic or go through the menus (and there are several of them) to pick exactly what you want.
ADS-B is awesome, but it does have it's limitations. On my second flight, I got a warning that there was a maned aircraft in the area, and it allowed me to switch to the map so I could see the location and direction of travel of the plane. I could easily see on the map where the plane was coming from in relation to my drone, however, it does not tell you the altitude of the approaching maned aircraft. In my case I was at 156 feet altitude and in complete line of sight, while the approaching maned aircraft was showing an altitude of 4,566 feet on an air traffic app I was running in the background. I still dropped it down to 50 feet just to be safe and I really liked the heads up while I was flying so I could make sure I was not in the way of the approaching aircraft. I can see this coming in really handy in the case of a low flying helicopter or other aircraft.
I purchased the fly more combo, so I have 3 batteries and the charging hub. The hub will charge all 3 batteries, but it does so one at a time. Therefore if all 3 batteries were drained and put on the hub, you could be looking at over 4 hours to charge all three. The charger also has a separate cable to charge the remote, but coming from a Phantom where DJI advised against charging both the battery and the remote at the same time, I did not try to do this on this go around. I did not see anything in DJI's manuals about not charging at the same time, but since time was not of the essence this time I charged everything separately.
One thing I did notice is that if you do not set the RC to charge the phone during flight, my I-phone battery went from full to 20% after 3 full battery runs. It wasn't a big deal since I was done for the time being and had to charge the batteries anyway, but I was a little surprised how much drain on the phone the RC had during flight. In the future, I might try setting the RC to charge the phone during flight if I am going to be using multiple batteries at one time.
Overall, I am extremely impressed with the new MA2. I haven't even had a chance to try out a lot of the other features like object tracking and the special automated picture taking it is capable of doing, but from the videos online showing them in action I am sure I am going to be even more impressed once I figure them out. Needless to say, I am so glad I took the plunge and upgraded from my Phantom 3 Advanced.
I have really enjoyed the Phantom over the last 4 years, but packing it up each time to take it anywhere involved taking off props and lugging around an entire backpack to transport it. The Phantom also lacks a lot of features that DJI added to the MA2. I love that the MA2 (including the remote and batteries) folds up into the supplied pouch quickly leaving the props attached.
After receiving the MA2 fly more combo, I charged each battery separately for the first time to make sure I did not run into the problem some here found by bricking their batteries after trying the use the charging hub on the first charge. After the first charge, I used the charging hub with no problems. I found the bottom of the battery compartment made a perfect location to apply my FAA registration sticker.
While the batteries and charger were charging, it gave me time to go through and remove all the stickers on the drone, and there were a lot of them. There are multiple stickers on the arms, camera, body, gimbal protector, and even the battery. I actually missed a couple that I did not find until after the first flight, although they did not interfere with anything. The first time the AC is powered up the DJI Fly App automatically asked to link the new AC to my DJI account and then searched and showed the updated firmware, which I allowed it to download and install it so I was current and ready to go.
Before the first flight, I went through and performed a compass calibration and then went through and adjusted all of the other settings like the return to home height, action to take if the AC loses contact with the RC, making sure the ADS-B system was turned on, etc. After making all of the changes and going through the pre-flight checklist, it was up up and away for the maiden flight.
The first thing I noticed on launch is that the MA2 is a lot quieter than the Phantom 3. There is still a buzzing noise but not as loud as the Phantom. The MA2 has three drive modes - Tripod, Normal and Sport. Tripod is the slowest and least responsive to stick input. Normal speeds that up some, and seemed to be almost the same as the one mode that the Phantom 3 had. Sport goes to full speed and the stick input is a lot more sensitive meaning a little stick movement generates a much bigger change that when in tripod mode. I liked using sport mode to get to where I wanted to go and then used normal to move around what I wanted to film. On the way back to the home position I switched back into sport which sped things up a lot, including how fast the battery drains.
Even though I did not go out to some crazy range, I did find the signal very stable and never cut out on me, even when flying near power lines. With my Phantom 3, I would get signal drops from time to time, and I flew the MA2 in the same location with no drops in the signal. I have seen videos online where people traveled over 10,000 feet from the home point while still maintaining a constant signal the whole time. That is pretty impressive.
The video and photos are a lot better on the MA2, and it will take me a while to master all of the possible settings using the menus on screen for both video and photo settings. You can leave it on automatic or go through the menus (and there are several of them) to pick exactly what you want.
ADS-B is awesome, but it does have it's limitations. On my second flight, I got a warning that there was a maned aircraft in the area, and it allowed me to switch to the map so I could see the location and direction of travel of the plane. I could easily see on the map where the plane was coming from in relation to my drone, however, it does not tell you the altitude of the approaching maned aircraft. In my case I was at 156 feet altitude and in complete line of sight, while the approaching maned aircraft was showing an altitude of 4,566 feet on an air traffic app I was running in the background. I still dropped it down to 50 feet just to be safe and I really liked the heads up while I was flying so I could make sure I was not in the way of the approaching aircraft. I can see this coming in really handy in the case of a low flying helicopter or other aircraft.
I purchased the fly more combo, so I have 3 batteries and the charging hub. The hub will charge all 3 batteries, but it does so one at a time. Therefore if all 3 batteries were drained and put on the hub, you could be looking at over 4 hours to charge all three. The charger also has a separate cable to charge the remote, but coming from a Phantom where DJI advised against charging both the battery and the remote at the same time, I did not try to do this on this go around. I did not see anything in DJI's manuals about not charging at the same time, but since time was not of the essence this time I charged everything separately.
One thing I did notice is that if you do not set the RC to charge the phone during flight, my I-phone battery went from full to 20% after 3 full battery runs. It wasn't a big deal since I was done for the time being and had to charge the batteries anyway, but I was a little surprised how much drain on the phone the RC had during flight. In the future, I might try setting the RC to charge the phone during flight if I am going to be using multiple batteries at one time.
Overall, I am extremely impressed with the new MA2. I haven't even had a chance to try out a lot of the other features like object tracking and the special automated picture taking it is capable of doing, but from the videos online showing them in action I am sure I am going to be even more impressed once I figure them out. Needless to say, I am so glad I took the plunge and upgraded from my Phantom 3 Advanced.
