DJI Mini 2 vs. DJI Mavic Air 2 - Which Is Best For Beginners?

what's going on guys billy here and today we're going to be comparing the dji mini 2 to the dji mavic air 2. this is probably one of the more requested videos i've gotten over the past couple of weeks next to my comparison of the mini 1 and mini 2 and while these drones are definitely in very different classes i think it's worth it to compare these two drones to see how much more you get in the mavic air 2 for that extra 350 dollars so of course the mini 2 is minier than the mavic air 2 but just looking at the drones side by side is where we begin to see some big changes in regards to what we can expect from a bigger drone that isn't restricted by weight to walk you through these differences we'll start with the motors that are larger and more powerful to propel the mavic air 2 to a higher top speed there's also an array of leds on each of these arms just next to the motors for far better visibility when flying in low light scenarios moving to the main portion of the body here the mavic air 2 features forward downward and backward optical avoidance sensors which the mini 2 unfortunately doesn't have the mini 2 does have a set of vision positioning sensors underneath on the belly of the drone and while it can detect the ground when you're landing it can't be deemed as a true set of obstacle avoidance sensors now along with the full array of sensors underneath of the mavic air 2 we also have a single bright led that can be used for landing in low-light scenarios and for spotting the drone in the air of course it can also hold a bigger camera up front that offers superior specs shooting better photos and videos all around along with all of these upgrades the overall build quality far exceeds that of the mini 2. the plastic is of a much higher quality which proves to be more durable this means less bending and bowing in the entire frame so we touched on the weight of both of these drones in the very beginning of this video and it's always really important to discuss how much drone weighs when we talk about the mini 2 because it comes in at under 250 grams which means that depending upon what country you live in and depending on what country you want to fly in you don't have to register with the governing aviation agency in order to fly your drone so with the mini 2 here in the united states the faa doesn't require us as a drone operator to register with them if we're flying a drone that weighs under 250 grams so coming in at 242 grams means there's a lot less headaches when you want to fly this drone you take it out of the box you start flying and you're good whereas with the mavic air 2 you've got to register with the faa now the weight of this drone the mini 2 is kind of an interesting topic because i feel like it's something that holds this drone back if you look inside of the drone it's kind of hard to see in there but there's not a whole lot going on i feel like any time that i'm talking about the mini 2 whether it's here in a youtube video or in person when i'm talking drones the conversation of the lack of obstacle avoidance sensors always comes up and it's not like dji didn't have any room to fit them in fact if you can see from this very poor video that i shot there's a whole lot of room in the front of this drone to fit a set of obstacle void sensors but they just can't because they don't want to go over that weight of 250 grams i think that i can speak for a lot of seasoned drone operators that obstacle voted sensors really aren't necessary when you understand what you're doing but for a beginner drone i think they're very helpful because you don't want to put the drone up in the air for the very first time and then crash it into a wall or into a tree and that's why i'd venture to say that in some scenarios the mavic air 2 is actually the better beginner drone of the bunch because you get a more powerful drone that you can grow further into with much better specs and it's also got obstacle void sensors for those very first couple of flights and for some of the other flights when you may need them down the road so moving on here an important area to touch on when comparing drones is the remote controllers but in this case despite these drones being from two totally separate classes they have the same exact remote with the same design and functionality there is no difference between these two remotes except for the change in the flight mode language a tweak to the rth button graphic and a switch up from the white leds to green leds at the bottom in fact these remotes are fully interchangeable so i can use each of these remotes with either the mini 2 or the mavic air 2. now while we're on this topic of controllers i should mention that because both of these drones run on the ocusync 2 transmission system they should both in theory work with dji smart controller but as recording this video on december 8th only the mavic air 2 is compatible i'm not sure if there are any plans to add compatibility for the mini 2 but for right now the mavic air 2 is the only one of these two drones to make use of this more premium peripheral so to sort of summarize everything we just touched on in terms of design of both of these drones the mini 2 really does improve upon anything that the mini one offered in terms of hardware right we got some improved motors and we got this little led on the front of the drone but when we compare it to the mavic air 2 it's night and day this is a bigger drone that is much more powerful but where things begin to get really interesting is when we look at the spec category of both of these drones because it brings the mini 2 a lot closer to the mavic air 2 than you'd think on the surface level i mean just to think that this small little drone has occu sync 2 it can fly about six and a half miles and the fact that it can resist winds up to 23.5 miles an hour is pretty crazy to take a deeper dive on the specs of both of these drones i'll put them side by side here along with their respective specifications which does a great job of highlighting what more you can expect from the larger mavic air 2 platform but i think it's even more effective at showing just how close the mini 2 creeps on the mavic air 2 in terms of raw performance capabilities the range is the same the transmission system is the same the flight time is more or less the same and even the top speed is pretty close to what the mavic air 2 offers a big selling point of these higher end drones was always the better image transmission system and typically the beginner level class of drones was kind of given the bottom of the barrel wi-fi transmission system that didn't really give you all that much range and in the area you could fly in you'd have a lot of signal degradation there'd be a lot of input lag and also just you'd have a lot of breakup in the signal so it really wasn't that good of an experience but this go around dji has put their top tier ocusync 2 transmission system into the dji mini 2 their beginner level drone which overall gives you a much better experience flying this drone it's overall more reliable and feels like a more premium experience another thing that really can't be conveyed on a spec sheet is how both of these drones fly now let me just say that the mini 2 has more than impressed me in my time flying it around like i said it's got a really great wind resistance rating so you can fly this in some pretty heavy winds um especially now during this time in the fall it is pretty windy outside but also just cruising around you can get some really good fast-paced footage flying this drone but you can tell that the mavic air 2 overall has more performance under the hood those bigger motors make it feel more agile they make it feel more responsive to the stick input and i'm using the same exact controller flying both of these drones it uses that same style remote controller and i feel like i can just get more punch and more power out of the mavic air too but that's to be expected because it is a larger drone with larger motors so how about that camera much like the specs of the drone itself this is a really close comparison with the biggest differences in favor of the mavic air 2 being the larger sensor the higher megapixel count using the quad bayer sensor the ability to shoot video and higher frame rates the slightly higher bit rate the ability to utilize color profiles some upgraded shooting modes like smartphoto which is a general hdr software that works great during the day and even at night and we also have more gimbal movement with the ability to pitch up and down and yaw to the left and right for a much larger range of motion in all directions you know i don't think that i fully realized just how close the specs of these two cameras were until i put them side by side here on my ipad i mean yes the mavic air 2 does slightly edge out the mini 2 in almost every single category but it's just such a my new difference that i think you'd have to be a true camera snob or camera enthusiast to really understand the full difference between the cameras in both of these drones and i think that once you see the footage and photo comparisons between both of them you're going to be pretty surprised so i figured that we'd start this section of the video off looking at the video with both of these drones shooting 4k at 30 frames per second in the normal color profile so i'm not shooting indecent like with the mavic air 2. i wanted to share these clips straight out of the camera with no colors added and to get that d cinelike video looking good you've just got to add colors in post there's really no way around it so my first impressions looking at these videos is that they are almost indistinguishable from each other yes the sensor is bigger in the mavic air 2 and yes the bit rate is 20 megabits per second higher but the mini 2 camera does a great job hanging in to produce some stunning footage the only glaring difference that i see is the camera in the mini 2 tends to lean towards a cooler white balance and adds a little bit too much magenta whereas the mavic air 2's camera produces a warmer feeling image right out of the camera regardless both videos are incredibly sharp now just to quickly go off topic here i want to quickly share an example with you of some decent like video color graded in post here of course shot with the mavic air too so when you add the colors in it really makes the image pop there's more dynamic range to play with it's easy to control the highlights and of course it retains more information in those deep shadows this right here being able to shoot in decent alike in my opinion is the deciding factor that pushes the mavic air 2's camera far past what the mini 2 can deliver but do you think that most people buying a sub 250 gram beginner level drone once against the nitty gritty of color grading probably not this is a key factor as to why the mavic air 2 is geared more towards a professional or a camera enthusiast than the mini 2 is switching gears here and getting into the photos i think that i stand by my same thought process here with the comparison of the video clips in the sense that these photos right out of the camera look very similar i still believe that the mini twos cameras overall a little bit cooler and adds more magenta than i'd like but with the ability to shoot raw photos we can easily make this change when editing in post i know that it's tough to tell the difference on a fixed image through youtube's compression but the mavic air 2's photos were taken in a full 40 megapixels utilizing the quad bayer sensor which as i have mentioned in previous videos essentially divides each pixel into four individual sections thus spitting out an image that is eight thousand by six thousand or 48 megapixels we can see that clarity more definitely when we take an image like this of the philadelphia skyline and zoom way in the side by side showing the same mini 2 image is a clear representation of how much more detail can be captured with the higher megapixel camera even if it is using a quad bear sensor to achieve it i've said it in a lot of my previous videos and i think i'm going to stand by this notion until the end of time i'm a huge sucker for higher resolution cameras being mounted on drones whether it's in the photo or video department because you're going to be shooting subjects that are much further away from you than if you were just shooting with a traditional camera and typically you've got a fixed focal length here so you're going to be hundreds of feet in the air and you want to capture as much detail as possible now if you guys didn't think you got a good understanding of the difference between these two cameras from youtube's compression i'm gonna leave a download link in the description so you guys can download all the images to your computer or to your phone and look at them in their full resolution and not have to deal with youtube's compression to get an understanding of just how different the files look from both of these cameras now i think that when you look at two cameras on two drones that are this close in comparison you've got to realize that the more expensive option is geared towards the veteran flyer or the camera enthusiast because new flyers or new photographers aren't going to need a camera that shoots 48 megapixel photos or captures video at a higher bitrate and a flat color profile i think that what makes the mavic air 2's camera better is the vessel that carries it it's the drone itself that features a more capable gimbal with more range to pitch up and down to compensate for the pitch of whichever way the drone is flying and it's also just overall a more powerful drone than the mini 2. look at the end of the day a comparison video like this between two different drones and two totally separate classes is always going to lean in favor of the more expensive option because of course they're selling it for more they're going to put more technology into that drone but i think that's something that's really interesting that comes from a comparison video like this is is the more expensive option actually worth the money so in this case is the mavic air 2 actually worth 350 or 400 more than the mini 2. at the end of the day that is the option that you're going to have to weigh and the question that you're gonna have to answer because i can't and definitely say that one is better than the other because i think both of these drones kind of meet the needs of two different types of people if you want a drone that's great all around go with the mavic air 2 but if you want to save some money and go with a drone that you don't have to register with your local agency then the mini 2 might be the perfect option for you anyway guys let me know your thoughts are between both of these drones the mini 2 and the mavic air 2 down in the comment section below and as always i'll talk to you later peace [Music]

Channel: Billy Kyle

Views: 31,196

Rating: 4.8961682 out of 5

Keywords: Billy Kyle, Drone, DJI, DJI Mavic, DJI Mavic Mini 2, Mavic Mini 2, Mavic Mini 2 Review, Mini 2 Review, DJI Mini 2 Review, DJI Mini 2 First Flight, Mini 2 Test Footage, DJI Mini 2 4K, DJI Mini 2 Flight, Mini 2 Specs, DJI Mini 2 Specs, Lightweight Drone, Beginner Drone, DJI Mini 2 Unboxing, Mini 2 Tips, DJI Mini 2 Tips, Mavic Mini 2 Tips, Mini 2 Beginner, Mavic Air 2, DJI Mavic Air 2, Mavic Air 2 vs. Mini 2, DJI Mavic Mini Comparison, DJI Mavic Air Comparison

Id: W8LtrSiZiJk

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2020