DJI has owned the American drone market for a while, and for a dang good reason. DJI makes fantastic drones with some of the most advanced features on the market. With a little practice anyone can fly one and pull off the kind of photos and videos you used to need a film crew and helicopter to get. A week ago GoPro, the action camera king, announced its own drone and stole a bit of DJI’s thunder.
The DJI Mavic Pro is DJI taking its thunder back.
Like the previously announced GoPro Karma, the Mavic Pro is a full-featured aerial photography drone that can be folded up. But where the Karma fits in a backpack, the Mavic Pro is tiny enough to fit in a back pocket, and weighs just 1.65 pounds.
Just because the Mavic Pro is tiny, doesn’t mean it’s crappy, like other small drones. The Mavic Pro has 27 minutes of battery life, a five-camera vision system, GPS, a 4K, 12-megapixel camera on a 3-axis gimbal. On hardware alone, it competes with most of the best consumer drones out there.
The Mavic Pro also builds on the powerful brains that made products like DJI’s most recent Phantom 4 a hit. Using that five-camera vision system, it can spot obstacles and avoid them. (The obstacle avoidance only works at up to 22 mph.) Mavic Pro is capable of all kinds of smart autonomous flight tricks including several different follow modes. Whereas before the Phantom 4 could only follow you from behind, the Mavic Pro can lead you in front, follow you at a profile, and and even do a neat trick where it flies in circles around you while you move.