Mavic Pro features vs. Mavic Air?

[Sean_b]

Can the early reviews really be trusted for an honest opinion? My guess is that they all received the early release because they are in good graces with DJI. So, if they disliked the new product would they really tell us? Otherwise they'd likely never get another prerelease and never be invited to a DJI event again. I'm not saying Toms Tech Time is not truthful or any for that matter. Just raising the question/thought.

You are 100% right

 

[Fixaldo]

So, you can change the codec algorithms, but that wont get you far if the hardware codec (i said CPU, but being more specific here) cannot support over 60Mbps, then you are kinda up a creek. Reading other threads here, it sounds like the hardware is indeed capped at 60, which would suggest why we have not seen any improvement over time.

As for streaming - i was referring to the video downlink (sent to the smart device). In good conditions, it can send 1080p (IIRC), which is a significant amount of data to move itself.

Yup. You are right. I also got confirmed that they use a Ambarella A9-A1-RH chip. Which makes it kind of.. not working. I was hoping for something else. But I guess they went with the hardware they started with back in the production line. Cant blame them on that though. Guess we have to wait for the Mavic Pro 2

 

[DesertWindAero]

Any idea what max altitude on mavic air?

Practical? Or legal?

There's a difference

 

[Hiflyer808]

One thing I want to know is, just how good is the APAS system, where the drone goes around or above obstacles instead of just stopping? How smoothly does it do it? Does it work when flying backwards? I haven't seen any videos that really tested the limits of APAS thoroughly. If the Air could, for example, fly backwards through a forest quickly and smoothly without hitting a tree, that would be a HUGE plus for me.
Have any of you seen videos focusing mostly on the functioning and limits of APAS? If so please provide links.
On the other hand, I assume the MP2 will have APAS at least as good as the Air. Goid things come to those who wait...

 

[Matija]

As much as i hate to admit it as an Mavic Pro owner, i see in few downloaded Air footage examples that water color effect Mavic Pro has when it cant handle high amount in details is pretty much gone, or hugely reduced in Air.

Because of this effect, when compared to my GH4 4K footage Mavic pro doesn't even look as a 4K camera at times. On few occasions i used HD 96fps from GH4 upscaled to 4K and it still looked sharper with more detail than some Mavic Pro footage. A lot of grass, trees, forget it.

Now, knowing how buggy DJI products can be, i am not considering changing my Pro for anything else anytime soon until it proves it self stabile. I don't even update software if everything is working. New battery freakouts, shaking gimbals, random landing, i can't go through that again.

 

[KONY]

let’s do the math. 100mbit equals to about 12.5mb per second. That’s about 750mb for 1 min. that gives you about 10min of footage. Hardly something to brag about. 16gig+ would make sense though. And he knows that.

well 10 minutes of 4k videos of a great sunset is long enough...and you don't have to film in the 4k highest quality, it can be 2.7 k

and also you counted 10 minutes of video...but what about the hundreds of photo those 8 gigas can give you if you forgot your sd card or if it's full ?

videos are not everything for everyone

 

[Schotzie]

Any Best Practices for cleaning the Mavic Pro?

 

[Cliff_622]

I have not seen this mentioned in the reviews, but the lens on the Mavic Air is only f/2.8 vs f/2.2 on the Mavic Pro, so it has less light gathering ability, slower shutter speeds, more noise in low light. It is more wide angle which may be a good thing depending on your needs.

For me the f.2.2 and f2.8 apertures are really not a big deal. I'm often using ND filters anyway to keep my shutter speeds down. And , when I'm not using ND's I'm always shooting ridiculously high shutter speeds. I never fly at night and rarely shoot in "real" low light situations where I would say, "Dang,..I wish I was at f2.2 instead of my f2.8 right now"

It could also be argued that f2.8 will produce LESS lens artifacts, purple fringing, coma, contrast and flare problems. It could, in theory, be sharper at 2.8 too. (especially the corners and edges)

The Mavic Air also shoots wider with a (35mm equivalent) 24mm wide angle. For me, I'll take that over the Mavic Pro's narrower field of view.

I just downloaded some 100mbp/s Air files straight from the SD card. They look pretty good. They are slightly more detailed than the Mavic but what I really notice is that trees and bushes hold detail better in motion. Also, when sharpening, they don't seem to be bringing out splotchy, macro-blocking in the shadows the way the "mushy" 60mbp/s Pro does. I can clearly see that motion is smoother and resolves better. I do like what I see with these files with NO YOUTUBE compression involved. It's in no way close to the Phantom Pro 4's 1 inch-type camera but I'm still pretty happy with this Air, even after doing allot of pixel peeping tonight!

My only complaint is that the Mavic Air and the Pro BOTH use too much noise reduction. I'd rather they back off a bit and allow some grain back in and give us more detail back. Right now, you can tell they are scrubbing the Hell out of these images.

Anybody know if the Air or the Pro use glass or plastic lenses?

CT

 

[EsiMavic]

 

[szh]

does anyone actually find 60Mbps significantly limiting? it's sucha tiny sensor anyways..

As someone not experienced with video, I still found compression artefacts that were noticeable and annoying. If you look at the lakebed carefully in this video, you'll see it "jumping" from keyframe to keyframe instead of moving continuously. I don't know if 100 MBps would fix that ...

 

[Cliff_622]

Yeah, these are your classic "stressed" compression artifacts. In 4k, 60mbp/s is just too d@mn low, especially for a company like Ambarella. (I see your upload was 1080 and Vimeo hurts that too) If you look at Sony's XAVC encoder. They have an extremely sophisticated h.264 processor. They do all kinds of advanced techniques like "live" look ahead VBR using a delayed write system. Sony uses sliding/variable GOP structure that can adjust the I/B/P frame structure on the fly according to the detected scene complexity. Sony does this and sooooooo much more with their h.264 encoding. Ambarella? Man, I think their encoding process is bare bones and it total crap. Not only is it the lowest possible bitrate that you would ever want to shoot 4k on, it's not even a good quality encoder to begin with.

This is why I sold my Mavic and moved to the P4P. I just couldn't handle the macroblocking, the smudging, the detail softening and the "water color" effect it was giving to the most detailed parts of my image. I would shoot scenes where entire "chunks" of my image would "nudge" over as they moved across the frame. So,...from the early downloaded files I'm seeing on the AIr, we are getting significantly better detail handling in motion scenes. Also when h.264 is stressed, the FIRST area that it begins to sacrifice are the blacks and shadows. H.264 will pull bits away from the darker parts of the image and use them on the brighter parts to protect them first. H.264 will macroblock and "cluster" (pixel averaging) those darker scenes and you will be left with blocky, mushy mud in there.

So for me, seeing 100mbp/s come into the Air, it brought me back into this platform again. I dont know what encoder chip the Air is using but even a lousy Ambarella one with 100mbp/s will be a huge improvement. That's an enormous amount of "new" bandwidth for an encoder to shift and play with for it's encoding job.

It's like going from playing half court basketball to full court basketball. The rules are the same but It changes and "opens up" the the way you play the game.

 

[LivinLarge]

For me the f.2.2 and f2.8 apertures are really not a big deal. I'm often using ND filters anyway to keep my shutter speeds down. And , when I'm not using ND's I'm always shooting ridiculously high shutter speeds. I never fly at night and rarely shoot in "real" low light situations where I would say, "Dang,..I wish I was at f2.2 instead of my f2.8 right now"

It could also be argued that f2.8 will produce LESS lens artifacts, purple fringing, coma, contrast and flare problems. It could, in theory, be sharper at 2.8 too. (especially the corners and edges)

The Mavic Air also shoots wider with a (35mm equivalent) 24mm wide angle. For me, I'll take that over the Mavic Pro's narrower field of view.

I just downloaded some 100mbp/s Air files straight from the SD card. They look pretty good. They are slightly more detailed than the Mavic but what I really notice is that trees and bushes hold detail better in motion. Also, when sharpening, they don't seem to be bringing out splotchy, macro-blocking in the shadows the way the "mushy" 60mbp/s Pro does. I can clearly see that motion is smoother and resolves better. I do like what I see with these files with NO YOUTUBE compression involved. It's in no way close to the Phantom Pro 4's 1 inch-type camera but I'm still pretty happy with this Air, even after doing allot of pixel peeping tonight!

My only complaint is that the Mavic Air and the Pro BOTH use too much noise reduction. I'd rather they back off a bit and allow some grain back in and give us more detail back. Right now, you can tell they are scrubbing the **** out of these images.

Anybody know if the Air or the Pro use glass or plastic lenses?

CT

I agree for the most part. The f/2.8 won't hurt except for shooting in lower light. The other issue though is that this lens is fixed focus. It will be set at some hyperfocal distance so that most distances will be reasonably sharp. At the extremes, the Mavic Pro lens may be a bit sharper. Also being a longer focal length, things in the distance will appear sharper because they cover more pixels on the sensor.
I am waiting to see some jpeg images from the Air. I hope they have fixed the watercolor effect.

 

[Divine_Madcat]

One thing I want to know is, just how good is the APAS system, where the drone goes around or above obstacles instead of just stopping? How smoothly does it do it? Does it work when flying backwards? I haven't seen any videos that really tested the limits of APAS thoroughly. If the Air could, for example, fly backwards through a forest quickly and smoothly without hitting a tree, that would be a HUGE plus for me.
Have any of you seen videos focusing mostly on the functioning and limits of APAS? If so please provide links.
On the other hand, I assume the MP2 will have APAS at least as good as the Air. Goid things come to those who wait...

It sounds great, but i would be wary about trusting an auto system like that, that didn't also have side cameras. I can just picture scenarios were something just off to the side comes into play and does otherwise avoidable damage

 

[Cliff_622]

Anynody know if the Air or the Pro are using plastic or glass lenses?

 

[msinger]

Anynody know if the Air or the Pro are using plastic or glass lenses?

The camera lenses are made of glass.

 

[Captain fantastic]

Anybody know if the asteroid and boomerang new quick shot modes are also available on the pro?

 

[LivinLarge]

Anybody know if the asteroid and boomerang new quick shot modes are also available on the pro?

If DJI does not make them available, I expect Litchi or some other 3rd party will.

 

[DefaultIT]

Yeah, these are your classic "stressed" compression artifacts. [...] It's like going from playing half court basketball to full court basketball. The rules are the same but It changes and "opens up" the the way you play the game.

Agreed...my biggest disappointment with the initial Mavic release was the limited bit rate...I am excited to see it lifted here, along with threaded filters. At the same time, I wish there were fewer tradeoffs; shorter flight times and limited range (which I'm guessing will be a bit more susceptible to interference), missing hardware exposure control, and apparently no heading lock flight mode (not sure I get this one) are the ones that stick out for me, vs a MPP

 

[WilliamG]

HOW DID YOU GET ONE EARLY?!

 

[daisy-girl]

Haven’t watched the comparison videos yet, but looking forward to it. Thanks.

Anyone have thoughts on what DJI’s product roadmap really is?

They are just blanketing the market such that new owners will be confused but also, intentionally, they leaving no gaps for competition to exploit. From a cost standpoint, when you take into account refurb prices, default kits and FlyMore combos the price vs. specs comparisons are getting mind boggling.

I think for me, I still like the long flight time and longer range of the MP. But a tinier very capable Air is tempting for travel.

Please see my detailed comparison of the specs on the General Discussion page.