Now that the Mavic Air 2 is here, what about the Mavic 3 Pro?

[Ben_McPhee]

I'm aware that anything here will be speculation, but I was here a few months back and distinctly remember someone saying there'll be no new DJI drones (We were talking MP3's) until the USA finalised some drone related legal stuff. (Has that happened and I missed it? I'm Aussie). I also thought perhaps Covid may have an impact on their release schedule. It seems like neither of those things affected this new release.

It seems the Mavic Air 2 leapfrogged the MP3 in release date, and I'm impressed. It seems like a drone a serious amateur or low end pro could consider.

From what I've seen, it only has 4 things that make me still pine for an updated MP3.

- The 48MP stills camera sounds great, but all the early shots I've seen (On youtube videos mostly), seem to have a lot of noise. And it's certainly not a low light camera. (12mp seems higher quality to me). It also seems to have in camera sharpening done (So maybe operator error? If not, I don't love that about it).
- No adjustable aperture or Focus.
- I understand why it doesn't, but I wish it had a 1" sensor (For noise / low light reasons, and possibly DOF)
- Minor Quality of life things that seem to have been deliberately left out.

Perhaps the MA2 was a good candidate for release now, because it's price-tag isn't that scary in a recession. And it looks like they've had a solid guess about what it would need to have to comply with future laws.

But it makes me wonder.... how far away would an MP3 be? I'm sure they'll space it out, as they won't want to cannibalise the MP3 sales, but for many people, the Air 2 is a "better" drone than the MP2 for half the price. If I had to buy a drone today (as in, I couldn't wait), I'd probably go with the MA2 rather than the MP2. I'm considering it actually.

So.... Gun to your head...

1. When will the MP3 drop?
2. I'm assuming it will be an incremental upgrade (Same same, but better), but the Air 2 seems like a massive leap. So is there anything revolutionary you expect in an MP3?
3. What else does it need to have to justify the price jump from the Air 2?
4. If you had to guess at Camera specs, what would they be? Bitrate? 6/8k? Will it have more Resolution? Stay at 20, but improve on low light and dynamic range? Or a mix of both?

 

[msinger]

When will the MP3 drop?

This is the ever ongoing question... when will drone model X drop.

Nobody knows.

 

[MGVision]

I'm aware that anything here will be speculation, but I was here a few months back and distinctly remember someone saying there'll be no new DJI drones (We were talking MP3's) until the USA finalised some drone related legal stuff. (Has that happened and I missed it? I'm Aussie). I also thought perhaps Covid may have an impact on their release schedule. It seems like neither of those things affected this new release.

It seems the Mavic Air 2 leapfrogged the MP3 in release date, and I'm impressed. It seems like a drone a serious amateur or low end pro could consider.

From what I've seen, it only has 4 things that make me still pine for an updated MP3.

- The 48MP stills camera sounds great, but all the early shots I've seen (On youtube videos mostly), seem to have a lot of noise. And it's certainly not a low light camera. (12mp seems higher quality to me). It also seems to have in camera sharpening done (So maybe operator error? If not, I don't love that about it).
- No adjustable aperture or Focus.
- I understand why it doesn't, but I wish it had a 1" sensor (For noise / low light reasons, and possibly DOF)
- Minor Quality of life things that seem to have been deliberately left out.

Perhaps the MA2 was a good candidate for release now, because it's price-tag isn't that scary in a recession. And it looks like they've had a solid guess about what it would need to have to comply with future laws.

But it makes me wonder.... how far away would an MP3 be? I'm sure they'll space it out, as they won't want to cannibalise the MP3 sales, but for many people, the Air 2 is a "better" drone than the MP2 for half the price. If I had to buy a drone today (as in, I couldn't wait), I'd probably go with the MA2 rather than the MP2. I'm considering it actually.

So.... Gun to your head...

1. When will the MP3 drop?
2. I'm assuming it will be an incremental upgrade (Same same, but better), but the Air 2 seems like a massive leap. So is there anything revolutionary you expect in an MP3?
3. What else does it need to have to justify the price jump from the Air 2?
4. If you had to guess at Camera specs, what would they be? Bitrate? 6/8k? Will it have more Resolution? Stay at 20, but improve on low light and dynamic range? Or a mix of both?

1. It will be realeased late summer same as m2p was released in 2018.

 

[deltamike]

The 48MP stills camera sounds great, but all the early shots I've seen (On youtube videos mostly), seem to have a lot of noise.

That begs the question, does any degradation in the final image occur when uploading to U-Tube? Surely the final image quality should be assessed on the PC monitor.

A question I have wondered about. Meta4 come in please

 

[Johnmcl7]

That begs the question, does any degradation in the final image occurs when uploading to U-Tube? Surely the final image quality should be assessed on the PC monitor.

A question I have wondered about. Meta4 come in please

Quality is degraded when uploading to Youtube but there's plenty samples you can download and look at on your own PC. There's no question that the sensor isn't a great performer and the 48MP figure is misleading because it's still a very small 1/2in sensor and the quad bayer design is intended to work as a better 12MP sensor:

Quad Bayer sensors: what they are and what they are not

Marketing departments are trying to sell you on the wrong thing - resolution isn't why these sensors are good, it's the better image processing.

www.gsmarena.com

Companies however know the marketing value of claiming it's a 48MP sensor which many consumers will think must be much better when it isn't. It is of course still capable of good results for its size but it's not a huge leap up in IQ as the headline figure may imply to some.

 

[Johnmcl7]

It seems the Mavic Air 2 leapfrogged the MP3 in release date, and I'm impressed. It seems like a drone a serious amateur or low end pro could consider.

No it didn't, the Mavic Air was released in January 2018 and the Mavic 2 series was released in August 2018 so the Air 2 is pretty much bang on schedule. It seems to be taken as fact by many around here that the M3P was going to be released in January but there wasn't a single piece of actual evidence for this and just made up rumours which unsurprisingly turned out to be wrong.

So.... Gun to your head...

1. When will the MP3 drop?
2. I'm assuming it will be an incremental upgrade (Same same, but better), but the Air 2 seems like a massive leap. So is there anything revolutionary you expect in an MP3?
3. What else does it need to have to justify the price jump from the Air 2?
4. If you had to guess at Camera specs, what would they be? Bitrate? 6/8k? Will it have more Resolution? Stay at 20, but improve on low light and dynamic range? Or a mix of both?

1. No-one knows, there's been no reliable information on it at all and all the rumours so far have been completely wrong. We also don't know what effect the virus will have either with the Mavic Air 2 possibly making its release date as most of the work would have been done would have been done before the outbreak whereas potentially if the Mavic 3 series was intended to be released two years after the original its development could be more badly affected.

2. The Air 2 is a good improvement over the original but I wouldn't say it's a massive leap and it fits in between the Mini and the Mavic 2 series just as the original Air sat between the Spark and the Mavic 1 series. I never used the Air but from what I remember it did have some better video features than the Mavic 1 series (higher bitrate from what I recall) just as the Air 2 offers 4K60 over the Mavic 2 series. I'm not going to say the Mavic 2 series is perfect but I feel it's at a point where there's not much they can add right now to make an upgrade worthwhile, the one feature I've seen mentioned a few times I think would be a good idea would be a modular gimbal that would allow owners to quickly change cameras (such as between the zoom and pro camera on the Mavic 2 series) or to be more easily replaced since it's a part that's likely to be damaged in a crash.

3. I think at the moment the Mavic 2 series justifies itself if you want a better camera in the Pro (which is a substantial upgrade for stills over the AIr 2) or a zoom but if you don't need either then the Air 2 offers a good fall back.

4. It's Sony that manufacture the 1in sensor in the Mavic 2 Pro and they use it in their own RX100 compact series and the RX10 bridge cameras. From memory they're on the third version of the sensor with the original sensor being in the RX100mk1 series, the improved backside illuminated sensor (BSI) in the mk2 and mk3 and the current stacked sensor which started with the mk4 and still in use. The resolution of these sensors has remained at 20MP the entire time (same as the APS-C and full frame Sony series which have also maintained the same resolution bar the R variant), I can't find exactly which sensor the Mavic 2 Pro uses but the Phantom 4 Pro is apparently using the Sony IMX183 sensor which is a BSI sensor similar to the RX100mk2/3 which is what I'd expect. The stacked sensors don't offer much improvement in image quality instead their main advantage is incredible speed with 1000fps slow motion video, high burst rates and an incredible 1/32000 maximum shutter speed. However I don't see any of those as being an advantage for drones although they could likely improve the IQ through the lens design and image processing but I don't think it would be a large change.

8K wouldn't be possible with the 1in sensor size since it isn't high enough resolution while 6K is, I don't think it's any benefit on a set up like on a Mavic drone aside from marketing.

In case this sounds negative it's not at all, I think the Mavic 2 is a great drone and with DJI's strategy of replacing the previous drone (unlike Sony who release small improvements in new models but keep the old models alongside the new ones) at the moment it doesn't seem like they could offer a noticeable improvement. That said I didn't expect the 1in sensor in the Mavic 2 Pro so would be happy to be proved wrong.