New DJI Mavic Air 2s - The Pro’s and Con’s from a commercial Perspective

After trying out previous DJI Mavic’s and Phantom 4 Pro’s I recently had to urgently add to my fleet of drones with a new one. After sending my main workhorse (the Phantom 4 Pro v2) away for its annual maintenance, I realised it was not a good idea not having a backup (even during a quiet period).

So after some research and weighing up pro’s and con’s with my husband and work partner, Philip, we decided what was needed was something to complement the bulky yet reliable Phantom with a more lightweight and portable solution, but also that it had the reliability and new camera sensor to allow for 10-bit colour and depth which this drone now affordably could give us. Hence the Mavic Air 2s (this was before the release of the new Mavic unfortunately).

And man can this baby fly! It can shoot up and down like a rocket, has great manoeuvrability, much simpler controls, is beautifully small and compact, super quick to setup, a 1-inch sensor, and it came literally with everything we needed (plus we purchased the ‘Ultimate Combo’ from DJI Store and it has everything!).

The downside (which we knew about) was its set aperture to 2.8. Naturally this is a beautiful setting but when you have a need for different depts of field in a wide landscape it isn’t as sharp as I would have hoped! The other downside I realised (a little too late but had a spare Mavic on loan to save the day) was it hadn’t been released yet for the use of Drone Deploy Mapping! Something I should have checked first and when a client of mine needed a mapping job done, it was a bit concerning for me! Not only do I love and want to do more of these jobs but no one does it here or even truly understands the power of it. I know this is going to be a very valuable tool for many in property and development.

Lastly, a recent shoot on the beach with horses disappointed when I couldn’t utilise the new amazing tracking ability it had because it couldn’t identify ‘people or cars’ - a real limitation in my view! However, flying manually and in sports mode it still did a fantastic job. (I need to do a repeat shoot and put the Phantom 4 through the same tests!)

However, I feel its definitely more geared for the hobby or private drone enthusiast as it is built in with all these cool moves to film oneself doing cool things - ie your very own selphie drone with video :)

It doesn’t mean I still won’t use it a lot, but now that my phantom 4 back, I feel this must be a second to my original workhorse as it can still outperform in every other way - and in my line of work - be it recording property, mapping, filming people or horses on the beach - it is very important!