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Mavic Pro 3 delayed due to CV?

Ben_McPhee

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So, before the **** hit the fan, there were rumours of January 2020 for the MP3.

Obviously that date came and went, and some said it was to better compete with the Autel.

Now there's this situation... do you think DJI will release the MP3 soon, or is it on hold until supply chains open up, people aren't locked down, and have money to spend again? (Which would likely delay it until at least June, but possibly October-December).

And seeing as most estimates put that at 6 months away, do you think they will use the extra 6-9 months to improve the specs? Or are they locked in (ie. Drones already produced, and just awaiting the announcement).

I also have a strong suspicion that they knew about Covid-19 in China 3-5 months before WE realised the seriousness of it, and perhaps anticipating its effects, might have chosen to delay and improve the drone quite a few months ago, rather than ship it now when noone can use or afford it.
 
So, before the **** hit the fan, there were rumours of January 2020 for the MP3.
There have been rumours from just a few months after the M2 was released, just as there have been for all DJI drones.
And most were just forum chatter and had no substance.
do you think DJI will release the MP3 soon, or is it on hold ...
As the existence of your MP3 is unsubstantiated forum chatter, any suggestions about what might happen with it will be pure guesswork.
I also have a strong suspicion that they knew about Covid-19 in China 3-5 months before WE realised the seriousness of it, and perhaps anticipating its effects, might have chosen to delay and improve the drone quite a few months ago, rather than ship it now when noone can use or afford it.
Now you are really getting in to the realm of fantasy.
As has been clearly demonstrated in so many countries by now, you can't keep Covid-19 secret for 3-5 months.
 
No evidence of an M3 at all for any month. Nothing at all.
It simply doesnt make sense to release ANY sort of drone until the EASA rules and certifications get sorted out and rolled out.
Mid-2020 is a spectacularly bad time to release any drone purely due to regulatory changes and certifications in DJIs biggest markets.
Also, whats the rush? The M2P has no viable competition so no need to "keep in front" as theres nobody chasing them.
 
Probably- maybe even for the reasons you imagine although your suspicion re prior knowledge seems ridiculous. It will be reajesed if and when it happens.
 
No evidence of an M3 at all for any month. Nothing at all.
It simply doesnt make sense to release ANY sort of drone until the EASA rules and certifications get sorted out and rolled out.
Mid-2020 is a spectacularly bad time to release any drone purely due to regulatory changes and certifications in DJIs biggest markets.
Also, whats the rush? The M2P has no viable competition so no need to "keep in front" as theres nobody chasing them.

I agree with your assessment, except for "no viable competition"

Buy Autel Evo 2 Drone | Rise Above Australia

On Paper, it beats the Mavic 2 Pro in many areas.

I am only not jumping on the M2P because it's just too late to do so, but I don't currently own a drone, so I was eager to get something soon (But pretty pointless right now).
 
In reality its behind in just about everything from features to image quality to reliability. Its about 3 years behind a M2P in real world performance,

Until EASA get certifications hammered and remote ID is standardised i cant see a lot of point buying in lots of the world.
Why buy a drone now that wont be legal to use without significant restrictions as its "legacy" in 20 months time...
 
I agree with your assessment, except for "no viable competition"

Buy Autel Evo 2 Drone | Rise Above Australia

On Paper, it beats the Mavic 2 Pro in many areas.

I am only not jumping on the M2P because it's just too late to do so, but I don't currently own a drone, so I was eager to get something soon (But pretty pointless right now).

I looked into the Autel2Pro as well before i bought my m2p, but as I quickly found out, Autel over promises and under delivers. They still haven't any news of releasing it, and they originally said it would be out in February. Their offices in the states also only has 6 people working in it. They are definitely not a major competitor. Yes on paper the specs look good, but it's not competition if only 5 people can buy them a week when it's finally released
 
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I agree with your assessment, except for "no viable competition"

Buy Autel Evo 2 Drone | Rise Above Australia

On Paper, it beats the Mavic 2 Pro in many areas.

I am only not jumping on the M2P because it's just too late to do so, but I don't currently own a drone, so I was eager to get something soon (But pretty pointless right now).

I bought my m2p just over a month ago and I'm happier than a pig in poo.

It's the best consumer drone out there and even if a mavic 3 gets released later this year, the mavic 3 is unlikely to be a huge upgrade (maybe better active track features which i dont use, slightly better battery time ? or 8k video which is pointless). Also buying a drone when its first released is always a bad idea, lots of bugs and problems to deal with. Even if they released the mavic 3 in september i wouldn't but it until march of next year after they ironed out all the bugs.

Man, just get the mavic 2 pro now and enjoy it. When the mavic 3 gets released, even if you can only sell your mavic 2 for $900 that's still $900 you can put towards the mavic 3
 
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Heya Ben,
Assume you're in Australia somewhere ?

The Autel stuff looks good on paper, but no one, not Autel, Skydio, Parrot, or any other manufacturer, is anywhere close to DJI for . . .

The ability to mass produce consumer drones to satisfy market demand
Worldwide distribution for product and service needs
Overall quality consistency
Innovation

I think it was mentioned in an article posted here a week or so ago, that DJI has 70% + of the consumer drone market in the US, any one of the others has no more than 5% each.
Says it all.

As much as I'm a little disillusioned with DJI of late with a couple of things, there really is no real competition.
The best thing over DJI is a RTF or custom built FPV setup, which I'm seriously considering next.

If I were in your shoes, and you want to get into the air now, I'd get a DJI drone right now.
If you just want to intro into the almost 'self flying' drone world, I'd look for (if possible to find anywhere) a nice little Spark flymore package, or an ever reliable MPP (pro platinum) flymore (both can be had for a pretty good price now), and just get into it.
If you're really serious about aerial photography, and can justify the M2P cost, then one of those in a flymore is the go.

In 3 or 4 years, there will be some real market breakthroughs that will be about the right time to move up to something truly more remarkable.
 
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I bought my m2p just over a month ago and I'm happier than a pig in poo.

It's the best consumer drone out there and even if a mavic 3 gets released later this year, the mavic 3 is unlikely to be a huge upgrade (maybe better active track features which i dont use, slightly better battery time ? or 8k video which is pointless). Also buying a drone when its first released is always a bad idea, lots of bugs and problems to deal with. Even if they released the mavic 3 in september i wouldn't but it until march of next year after they ironed out all the bugs.

Man, just get the mavic 2 pro now and enjoy it. When the mavic 3 gets released, even if you can only sell your mavic 2 for $900 that's still $900 you can put towards the mavic 3

Hey, I know I'd love the M2Pro, but as someone who bought a Canon 5Dmk2 weeks before the 5Dmk3 was announced, and then repeated that effort when I bought a 2014 Apple MBP weeks before the 2015 came out (kinda had to both times due to equipment failure), I don't really want to drop $2000au on a drone when I expect there to be one released soon.

If I knew how long I'd get out of it, that might be different, but I'd be hoping for 9-12 months.

I'd almost be tempted to buy a Mavic Mini just for something to fly (cheap) rather than buy the dream drone right now. I just don't have that kind of money to burn in depreciation. If I found a good enough sale, that might be different.
 
Heya Ben,
Assume you're in Australia somewhere ?

The Autel stuff looks good on paper, but no one, not Autel, Skydio, Parrot, or any other manufacturer, is anywhere close to DJI for . . .

The ability to mass produce consumer drones to satisfy market demand
Worldwide distribution for product and service needs
Overall quality consistency
Innovation

I think it was mentioned in an article posted here a week or so ago, that DJI has 70% + of the consumer drone market in the US, any one of the others has no more than 5% each.
Says it all.

As much as I'm a little disillusioned with DJI of late with a couple of things, there really is no real competition.
The best thing over DJI is a RTF or custom built FPV setup, which I'm seriously considering next.

If I were in your shoes, and you want to get into the air now, I'd get a DJI drone right now.
If you just want to intro into the almost 'self flying' drone world, I'd look for (if possible to find anywhere) a nice little Spark flymore package, or an ever reliable MPP (pro platinum) flymore (both can be had for a pretty good price now), and just get into it.

If you're really serious about aerial photography, and can justify the M2P cost, then one of those in a flymore is the go.

In 3 or 4 years, there will be some real market breakthroughs that will be about the right time to move up to something truly more remarkable.

Yep, Aussie here. :)

Yeah, I'm really not interested in any of the DJI competitors. But I do see DJI as competition to itself. I've made the mistake of buying gear at its end of life, right before new gear was announced (My hand was forced by equipment failure). Absolute worst time to buy. I was stuck with the old stuff, and paid too much for it.

I wouldn't even hate buying a M2P once the M3P was released if I didn't think the upgrades justified the costs, but to me, the Mavic 2 Pro is a pretty significant upgrade over the Mavic Pro, which is the main reason I never got a Mavic Pro. I have had my eye on a M2P for WAY too long, but other things always took priority. And just when I was getting ready to buy, the rumours about "January" came along, and then CV, and now it looks to be on hold indefinitely.

I'm very serious about image quality. I'm a photographer by trade (and videographer too), so that's my main concern. So I'm reluctant to compromise that for any price.

Now, if I COULD find a Mavic Pro, Mavic 2 Pro, or Mavic Air (maybe) at a very good price, that might be different, but if I just had a solid clue that December was the targeted release date, I'd feel a lot more comfortable with that. 9ish months of good use before an upgrade isn't ideal, but it's better than 3-6 months.

But I am getting impatient. 5 years ago when I moved to Sydney, I had dreams of flying a Mavic Pro on the beach every day. Then circumstances prevented that. I know I want this, but I don't want to get burned again by buying at the wrong time.
 
As others have noted, there is ZERO evidence, just rumours and a few statements from DJI like the one that all drones from 2020 would include ADS-B IN, but they say nothing about what those products are or even roughly when they will ship. However, DJI is going to have to update or replace *all* its models within the next two years if it wants to continue selling them into the EU due to the newly enacted aircraft regulations, so it does seem very likely that an M2 update is going to arrive at some point. The US FCC is considering similar requirements, and I don't think those are anywhere close to finalised yet either. As an additional point, with the US' current anti-DJI rhetoric I suspect there are also on-going talks to try and get the US government to relax their restrictions, but it seems highly likely any positive moves on that front would also effect the specs, and that will need more time to include as well.

As to when, well, most people can't really fly under lockdown so that's going to mean that even if they could launch and ship it (or any other model update) that a lot of potential buyers might defer their purchase for some months. There may also be a few gotchas come out of individual countries implementations of the EASA regs, so it would probably be prudent to try and catch as many of those as possible. Much better for DJI to use that time to continue internal development and testing so that the new aircraft are as refined as possible at launch. Realistically, I'm not expecting any new DJI drone announcements until much later this year, once all of the major markets have removed their travel restrictions.

They might do something with their robotics and Osmo stuff though - both of which can be used indoors.
 
Now you are really getting in to the realm of fantasy.
As has been clearly demonstrated in so many countries by now, you can't keep Covid-19 secret for 3-5 months.

I'm not so much saying China kept it "Secret" as I am saying they might have not mentioned it as early as they could have, and then downplayed it for a little too long. That could easily equate to a month in total before anyone with any say in the matter realised that it was going to be huge deal, and then a couple more months for us all to realise it - which is exactly what happened.

It's pretty well documented that China knew about CV for several weeks before the rest of the world did. Some estimates put it as a month or more. It was first "reported" in December 2019, with the first "reported" death in early January 2020.

It took until late February before anyone here really took it seriously, but even the Chinese community in Australia knew it was serious. Here, they were already wearing masks (more than usual), and buying items to send home and keep for themselves, at least a month before anyone here even considered the possibility that it was more than a cold. While I was joking about it, they were listening to reports from family back home and preparing for it. It wasn’t even being widely reported in the news when my housemate (who works in a pharmacy) told me about the (mostly) Chinese buying up all the hand sanitiser in Sydney.

I hadn't even heard of Coronavirus at that point, until a friend of mine posted a selfie of herself with "coronavirus" (drinking a Corona and having a laugh). We were definitely caught off guard, but the Chinese weren't.

DJI is based just 2 hours away (by plane) from Wuhan, so if people in Australia already were prepping for it, I'm sure DJI had heard about it, and possibly decided that "Late Jan" might not work out. (Plus, the Evo 2 apparently showed them up a little on paper, and I read that they might have gone back to beef up the specs, and delayed the drone for that reason also).

It's not that ridiculous to think that a Chinese company heard about the virus, ran some scenarios, and made a business decision to hold off on releasing their flagship product until more was known.

And now that the worst has happened, I'd be surprised if they didn't decide to give the MP3 12 more months in the development oven, if for no other reason than the global recession we are now facing, and a drone that may have been perceived as “not worth the upgrade”.

I know that if the MP3 was released tomorrow and was my dream drone, I’d probably be holding off on that purchase for financial reasons, and I’m sure I’m not alone. And I don’t even own a drone. I’m sure most MP2 customers wouldn’t rush to upgrade right now.

(For the record, if anything I said sounds xenophobic, it’s not meant to be. I’m simply stating that DJI are a bunch of smart cookies, and absolutely would have used the time between early December and the supposed “late January release” when everyone else was still sleeping on CV to factor that into their business strategy. I sure would have.)
 
As others have noted, there is ZERO evidence, just rumours and a few statements from DJI like the one that all drones from 2020 would include ADS-B IN, but they say nothing about what those products are or even roughly when they will ship. However, DJI is going to have to update or replace *all* its models within the next two years if it wants to continue selling them into the EU due to the newly enacted aircraft regulations, so it does seem very likely that an M2 update is going to arrive at some point. The US FCC is considering similar requirements, and I don't think those are anywhere close to finalised yet either. As an additional point, with the US' current anti-DJI rhetoric I suspect there are also on-going talks to try and get the US government to relax their restrictions, but it seems highly likely any positive moves on that front would also effect the specs, and that will need more time to include as well.

As to when, well, most people can't really fly under lockdown so that's going to mean that even if they could launch and ship it (or any other model update) that a lot of potential buyers might defer their purchase for some months. There may also be a few gotchas come out of individual countries implementations of the EASA regs, so it would probably be prudent to try and catch as many of those as possible. Much better for DJI to use that time to continue internal development and testing so that the new aircraft are as refined as possible at launch. Realistically, I'm not expecting any new DJI drone announcements until much later this year, once all of the major markets have removed their travel restrictions.

They might do something with their robotics and Osmo stuff though - both of which can be used indoors.

So I'm not quite across the "Anti DJI" stuff. Is that just because they're Chinese? Like the whole Huawei thing?

And also, with these upcoming laws, will that be for all drones moving forward? Or will old drones become illegal? Because that's just another reason not to buy right now if that's the case.

I probably wouldn't be buying anything right now anyway, for financial reasons, and also due to lockdown restrictions. And that's kind of what I meant about CV delaying it (though as you say there's a lot of other factors).
 
I don't even see any evidence there will be a M3 at all.

Why on earth wouldn't there be?

I mean, maybe they'll come out with a completely new folding drone - smaller, with specs that surpass this, and maybe it won't be called a Mavic 3 Pro, but clearly they're going to do something - even if it does take 12-18 months.
 
I looked into the Autel2Pro as well before i bought my m2p, but as I quickly found out, Autel over promises and under delivers. They still haven't any news of releasing it, and they originally said it would be out in February. Their offices in the states also only has 6 people working in it. They are definitely not a major competitor. Yes on paper the specs look good, but it's not competition if only 5 people can buy them a week when it's finally released


You're right. in all likelihood. I'll almost definitely buy a DJI drone without considering their competitors, because I know that DJI know what they're doing, and have a good ecosystem, and a great community for support.

I don't think DJI has to beat their competitors, or even match them. Their reputation is that strong. And in the same way that I never abandoned Canon cameras, even when Nikon and Sony started to look better on paper, DJI has earned my support (I own an Osmo Action, and a Ronin S, and have wanted . But I won't lie... If all my camera gear had been stolen and I had to re-buy it, I might have gone with a Nikon over buying a Canon because they started to lag behind.

If another drone company starts doing it significantly better than DJI, then DJI will need to step up their game.

Big companies can fall. RED is in danger because BlackMagic do it almost as well for 1/8 of the price, and Arri do it better and is worth the extra money.

GoPro… Maybe still a market leader, but I bought an Osmo Action once I did the research.

So like I said, I'm cool with yet another 4K60 DJI drone, but those had better be some nice pixels. Camera upgrades are my main thing. The drones fly just fine as they are (Aside from obviously needing to adhere to upcoming regulations).
 
I'm very serious about image quality. I'm a photographer by trade (and videographer too), so that's my main concern. So I'm reluctant to compromise that for any price.

Now, if I COULD find a Mavic Pro, Mavic 2 Pro, or Mavic Air (maybe) at a very good price, that might be different,

Well, the M2P is for you then.
I'm not that sure you'll get a deal on that for a while though, prices are holding reasonably well on that model.
A zoom is cheaper, but you really want the pro camera.

It's up to you if a MPP flymore is priced suitably for your entry now, certainly they can take some great video, and adequate photos, but if you want to sell your pics, or just want the best you can take, then you'll have to hunt out a value M2P, or wait until you can justify the outlay.

As far as DJI and releasing anything soon, or holding back.
There is nothing going to happen before the US remote ID thing is sorted, that will guide DJIs next drone release, or no one will buy it (the US is their biggest market) with the obsoletion practically assured in a year or three.

I think DJI not rushing things has more to do with they have (hopefully) learned not to rush a new drone onto the market, like they did the mini.
And that isn't fixed yet !
 
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Well, the M2P is for you then.
I'm not that sure you'll get a deal on that for a while though, prices are holding reasonably well on that model.
A zoom is cheaper, but you really want the pro camera.

It's up to you if a MPP flymore is priced suitably for your entry now, certainly they can take some great video, and adequate photos, but if you want to sell your pics, or just want the best you can take, then you'll have to hunt out a value M2P, or wait until you can justify the outlay.

As far as DJI and releasing anything soon, or holding back.
There is nothing going to happen before the US remote ID thing is sorted, that will guide DJIs next drone release, or no one will buy it (the US is their biggest market) with the obsoletion practically assured in a year or three.

I think DJI not rushing things has more to do with they have (hopefully) learned not to rush a new drone onto the market, like they did the mini.
And that isn't fixed yet !

Still photos are a big part of what I want the drone for, so the MP2 it is for me really. Not really any other options I see.

OK, you might be the person to answer this then:

1. If I buy a drone now - any drone - is it going to be basically grounded in 1-3 years? Because I'm literally not ok with that. That means I can't sell it some day to finance my next one, and that my $2000 investment might be a complete waste.

2. Tell me about the Mini. What's wrong with it? (A review I read highlighted some cameras features that were missing that were a complete dealbreaker for me, but that I was hopeful could be added with firmware. Is that the issue, or something else?).
 

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