BEST DRONE FOR 2021? | Mavic 2 Pro vs. Mavic Air 2 vs. Mini 2

welcome back guys in this video we're going to be comparing the newest lineup of dji's drones we're specifically going to be talking about how we use them to shoot real estate and which of them for our purposes shooting real estate is best but we're going to cover all the different features and give you an overall recommendation so first things first the drones we're going to be comparing are the dji mavic pro 2. we actually went with a smart controller on this one if you don't get the smart controller it comes in at sixteen hundred dollars in the middle here we have the dji mavic air 2 which depending on if you get the fly more combo or another kit comes in at a base price of 7.99 but can easily run up over a thousand dollars now right here is the mavic air 2 and then we have the dji mini 2 no longer a lineup in the mavic series technically it's just called the dji mini 2. this drone is the cheapest of them all at 449 and those of you guys that know me know that i'm in this business not to spend money on gear i like to actually make money using the gear i buy and so one of my considerations that's always above everything else is what is the cheapest thing that we can use to get the job done at the quality level we need and so i was really excited when dji announced this drone because in the past they'd launched the mini before they had the just standard dji mavic mini but it didn't have a couple critical features for us the main critical feature is it didn't have raw photos but it also didn't have built-in hdr bracketing now we don't use the actual hdr function but we do use bracketed photos to blend ourselves and so when they announced this drone i was super excited and i initially wanted to do just a review on this but i knew that a lot of people have you know shiny object syndrome and so they're always going to go for one of these more expensive drones even if this was good enough so in this video specifically we're gonna run all these drones through a series of the same tests show you the results and let you make a decision for yourself so enough talking guys let's go out and do some testing all right guys we're out here and it's time for test one which is the standard photo test we're here on the trinity river we're gonna shoot one towards downtown with sun behind it best case scenario for an image but then we're gonna turn the drones around and shoot directly into the sun which is in my opinion where we'll be able to tell the difference between the drones here we go [Music] i think it's so quiet so quiet do you hear that no you don't hear that is the real first of all this is my first time flying this thing it is dead silent like it's 200 feet directly above us and can you hear it at all i can't hear it at all just get like a good zero okay all right done with the mavic pro 2 got photos and video we're gonna do the same thing with every single drone so bringing this guy back and we will get the what do you what should we take next can we we'll take the air too that sounds like fun oh those are big birds this is devastational i'm gonna see if i can switch to the to the air with this and just keep the same controller switching dude that's so nice you can switch well actually that has no purpose for anyone though if you're watching this video you don't need to switch why would you need two drones it just savaged this propeller what the heck why did it do that let's try it in the grass why did it do that this propeller is the opposite propeller just one propeller is incorrect okay got that shot oh it lagged already dude got that shot so i'm going to switch over to video 4k 30. okay switching back into the sun successful okay so glitch out a little bit but i don't know if that was just like it could have happened with the other drones i don't know if there's some signal interference but it froze and the other ones didn't but that is one thing that's supposed to be better about the other ones is definitely the range when you're shooting like a huge property it's really annoying when it constantly freezes it takes way longer to get your shots geez more birds all of our members say this but people in populated areas they come out if they hear a drone and so that's one of the reasons we like the smaller ones over the old phantom but these are all so much quieter we'll see about the air too but the mini 2 and the pro 2 are super quiet i really love that you hear what's your bet does this take off does it take off again it does take off but it's gonna be a little wobbly okay that's kind of i don't know i don't know because the motors are gonna like counter that right so like they might just have to they should so we're about to see go fly oh look at that okay so we're going to photo mode a b three brackets or an auto oh that went up so much faster than the other one well that one up fast like the two pro not the and there's the bird so i'm waiting okay all right switching to video that's it okay coming back see if i can do it almost [Music] we are officially done headed back to the office we're gonna compare all the drones let you guys see the footage without knowing which drone it is so you can decide for yourself honestly it's more of a budget thing it's more if you want the expensive screen or not but we'll compare all those features back at the office see you there we're back here in the office we've finished editing the photos and video and i'm just gonna cut straight to the chase here are the three photos and tell me if you see a bit of difference yeah if you start to zoom in maybe you can see some things but the more i zoomed in and the more i edited the more i realized that i think the way the photos look was a lot more about how i edited that specific photo than it was specifically what i got from the drone so maybe i'd have some issues with sharpness i'd add a little sharpening or maybe i'd have some issues where there was too much noise that had a little bit of luminance and i can get all these photos with about the same amount of work to look pretty much the same good in a well-lit photo this photo is facing away from the sun so it's well lit and now here are the photos that are backlit meaning the sun is basically at the top of the frame shining into the lens and you can see this is where things start to fall apart a little bit now no matter what camber you're using it doesn't matter if you had 150 000 camera or a 50 camera backlit is never good in this case and this to me is where you can really start to see the difference between the drones but not as big of a difference as you'd think and so um with the photos labeled here now you can see which photo is which and now that you can see which photo is which you could start to see that you know the mini 2 definitely was the worst when it was backlit you can see here that the colors aren't great there's a lot more um kind of like weird lens flarey blurriness especially like around the parking garage the top of the parking garage in the building you can see it's just a lot sharper in the mavic 2 pro and the mavic air 2. now what i would say um and this is kind of the same if you really scrutinize the cr the well-lit images but the mavic 2 pro and the mavic air 2 are very very similar it's actually really hard to tell a difference when i was editing these i actually thought the mavic air 2 photos came in better than the mavic 2 pro photos so in my opinion really not a difference here and definitely not a double the price difference the mavic air 2 is literally half of the price of the two pro so when it comes to photos in our specific way we take photos which is by using three brackets and blending those in photomatix there's not a difference at all and so my recommendation on photos because of photo quality specifically is to go with the mavic air too the mini is a great option i think you can take really good photos you just can notice a difference and so if you can spare that 350 dollars i would definitely go with the air too and the other benefit of the air 2 which we'll talk about here in a second is it has better battery life so moving on to the video shots here is the first correctly lit mavic pro 2 shot here is the correctly lit mavic air 2 shot and here is the correctly lit mini 2 shot [Music] as you can see these shots are pretty similar you can definitely tell that the pro 2 and the air 2 are sharper and the mini 2 does start to get a little less sharp especially on the horizon there if you look at those buildings downtown and so overall i would say again that the air 2 in this case is just the best bet for your money it's not nearly as expensive as the pro two the footage is almost as good but the mini does start to break down it doesn't mean you can't use the mini or it isn't a good drone for real estate i just think the air 2 is where your money is best spent but moving on to the backlit shots you can see that again it's even more pronounced in this case the mini two just just not hold up like the other drones does footage is not as sharp it just looks worse overall and so again i think here is a great thing to show that the air 2 is really the best thing you could spend your money on when it comes to drone for real estate it doesn't waste money like in my opinion the pro 2 does and it does not start to have quality issues that the mini 2 does so the air 2 is definitely the way to go and again you can get great video with any of these drones we just noticed that the mini 2 is a lot softer and for 350 more i think it is well worthwhile to upgrade to the air 2. so all that aside there are some other things that i wanted to talk about that may factor into your decision making number one is if you live in an area with a lot of signal interference or you notice when you're flying your drone a lot of times it glitches and says you know high something activity i forget the exact word for it you may want to consider the mavic 2 pro that's one reason why i may suggest upgrading that it has i think it's like dual band something that basically allows it to switch frequencies if it notices signal interference so you'll get less of that signal interference but also it's claimed to have a five mile range now obviously to maintain legality of flight in the united states you have to keep line of sight with your drone i don't think you're gonna be able to see that drone from anywhere near five miles away but that does show you that how much stronger that signal is and you don't quite get that on the other drones you notice some lagging a lot sooner again that'll depend on exactly where you're flying as far as image and video quality goes you get 4k video with every single one of those three drones and you get raw photos but you'll notice there are quality differences in those and i know specifically on the mavic air 2 you actually get 4k 60 but you can't get that on the mavic 2 pro so i still think the best drone if you want like best quality overall is going to be the mavic 2 pro but they all have pretty similar specs and so you're going to notice that you get pretty good results out of any of those drones as far as battery life goes and that's definitely something important to consider all the drones come in pretty similarly the mavic 2 pro and the mavic mini both come in at 31 minutes of flight time whereas the mavic air 2 actually comes in a little bit higher at 34 minutes another big thing to consider is collision avoidance the mavic air 2 and the mavic pro 2 have collision avoidance the mavic pro 2 obviously has the best with omni-directional sensors meaning wherever you are and wherever that drone is in relation to an object it knows where you are and so the safest drone when it comes to collision avoidance is the mavic 2 pro what i would say is it's important not to rely on those sensors though and for me that wouldn't be a big deal i flew drones when they didn't have collision sensors i've never crashed one and so i think reliance on those collision sensors can actually cause more crashes but know that you do have full collision sensing with the mavic 2 pro pretty good with the mavic air 2 and none at all with the mavic mini 2. so if you're just beginning as a photographer and frankly even if you're not just beginning i would definitely suggest the mavic air 2 because among a ton of other things you will get that collision sensing even if it isn't as good as the mavic 2 pro now moving on to sound which may not seem like a big consideration but if you've shot real estate for any length of time you know that the louder your drone the more people come out of their house and wonder what you're doing nine times out of ten these people are really friendly and just curious as to what the noise is but sometimes you get that person that thinks you're spying on them so it's nice to have a quiet drone and frankly i am so shocked at how quiet all three drones were when i started flying drones i flew the phantom 3 and phantom 4. those things sound like an absolute beehive and so a lot of people come out the mavic 2 pro when we were low when we were dropping the drone down to get back to us you could hear it but when we stopped in a hover it was dead silent i could not even hear it from about 50 feet away so all of the drones are really quiet but frankly in my mind the mavic 2 pro seemed the most quiet that's kind of anecdotal maybe it was just because it's the biggest and so i thought it would be the loudest but it wasn't but overall all of the drones are very very quiet and as far as wind resistance goes all of the drones are rated about the same obviously the mavic 2 pro is a lot stronger but it has a lot more body that that wind can affect whereas the mini is not as strong but it's much smaller so the wind doesn't affect it as badly so all of those are really good when it comes to wind and when we were doing research for this video and in the past we've had a lot of people say that since the mini is under 250 grams it comes in at 249 that it does not need to be registered with the faa this may be true if you're flying for recreational use but it is not true for commercial use now of course you need to check exact faa regulations but if you were using it for commercial use you still need a part 107 it doesn't matter how small the drone is and you still need to register the drone i don't think that you're going around those part 107 rules by getting a drone that's under 250 grams because you are not it still applies and you still need to have part 107. and before i give you guys my final conclusion i got the drones out here because i wanted to make a couple other points that aren't necessarily in the specs but they still are important at least in my opinion and one of those is just the optics in general and i'm not talking about the optics of the camera i'm talking about how it looks to your clients if you roll up with a drone like this it looks a little bit like a toy does that matter a lot no but it definitely matters somewhat if you pull out something that looks really cheap and you charge them for it and so for that reason i'm a big fan of these two drones they look more like tools they're bigger they're not as big as the phantom 4 but this thing is pretty dang big it looks like a professional tool this is just about there this really looks like something you picked up at walmart despite its really good quality it does a really good job it just looks like a toy and so that's one reason i definitely like the mavic air 2 or mavic 2 pro because they will give you that little boost even if it's not that important kind of the same thing as if you roll up to a shoot and you take video on your iphone 12 pro can you get great video on an iphone 12 yes i have one it takes amazing video but if you roll up with an iphone and you start shooting a house with an iphone video definitely not photos video you could do but what does that look like to the agent they think well he's charging me blank money and he just came in here with his phone i could do the same thing and so it's not to that level with these but optics are an important thing to consider in your business and it's something that may seem small but it can actually really factor into your business results long term how someone views you and how they view your business and how professional you look so to conclude this video i'm sure you know what i'm going to say but overall the winner to me is definitely the mavic air 2. this is what we're going to be outfitting our employees with at my company norman young and i think it is an absolutely amazing drone it's much better than the mavic air first generation it addresses a lot of the issues and it is an overall fantastic drone and it has just the best thing to me is the price point is amazing and it is not really noticeably different from a twice as expensive drone so if you like expensive toys and you like all the features you like the expensive screen you can get with the mavic 2 go for it but from an efficiency standpoint from just a business standpoint in general the mavic air 2 is our recommendation now this doesn't mean you can't use the mavic mini 2. i think it is an absolutely great drone for 449 that is ridiculous that's so cheap so if you're just getting started and you're on a budget you'll be able to make way with the mavic 2 but i would say that long term you're going to want to go with a mavic air too that's all for this video guys and i'll see you in the next one just kidding [Music] [Music]

Channel: Eli Jones

Views: 48,234

Rating: 4.6550951 out of 5

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Length: 14min 25sec (865 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020