Mavic Air 2 - Watch This Before You Buy!

hey what's up YouTube you're watching Ready Set drone and today I want to tell you about one of the drones I've been flying a lot recently the Mavic air 2 so stay tuned so the Mavic air 2 has been out for a little while now and I've had a chance to fly it quite a bit over the last few weeks and months and I have to say it's really a different experience flying this thing than it is flying the Mavic mini as well as the Mavic to the Mavic air 2 is right in that spot between the two as far as its performance and its abilities so I want to go through those things with you so first of all the Mavic air tube benefits from being the most recent release from DJI and what i mean by that is this drone has the most recent tech on it it's built on all of the success they've had with the Mavic mini the original Mavic air the Mavic pro and thematic 2 series it's got the best of all those things in it with a few exceptions where they've let some stuff off because of the price point but ultimately what you're dealing with here is the latest tech in terms of its ability to transmit for a long distance getting a very clear picture its ability to stabilize itself its ability to avoid obstacles and a whole bunch of other things that we'll go through now now one of the things that really sets the Mavic air 2 apart is flight time for an overall flight time of 25 to 30 minutes in most conditions that's pretty incredible and that means a couple of things you don't have to have as many batteries or take as many batteries with you in order to get some really awesome footage meaning that you can take this with two or three batteries and still get an hour to an hour and a half of flight time and that gives you plenty of opportunity to get really great footage whereas with older drones you might have had to have five or six batteries in order to accomplish the same thing now it's also very lightweight and compact not as lightweight and compact as the Mavic mini of course but still compared to a Mavic 2 pro or zoom or a phantom especially it really fits nicely down into a backpack the case they send with the fly more combo pack is really nice because you can fit everything in there including the remote control and it just it's a great little travel buddy if you're going to go somewhere and take it with you the size to feature ratio is really great a lot of features packed into a very small size now as far as the sound of this thing goes it's one of the quietest drones that DJI makes currently the other thing about this little guy is it feels very substantial it doesn't feel quite as lightweight and toy-like as the Mavic mini now I'm not saying the Mavic mini is a toy because it's a decent little drone for what it is but comparatively this feels very solid and it feels like a real drone it feels like the density of the Mavic 2 series or the original Matic Pro which to me makes it feel more like a real tool to take photos and video with at a fairly high level that also gives it the ability to cut through wind and to hold its position and wind a little bit better I've flown it in some pretty windy conditions so far and it's done really well the only thing I've noticed about it in the wind that has been detrimental is that you see a little bit more shake in hiper lapses when it's windy than you do when it's not windy compared to the Mavic 2 pro or the Maverick 2 zoom but overall its ability to handle wind is just fine just like any of the other DJI drones and if you're just shooting regular video footage you don't notice the wind as much because the gimbal does all the stabilization for you it's on the hyperlapse that you notice it a bit now the biggest upgrade to this drone compared to the Mavic mini and the original Mavic air is occu sync 2.0 occu sync is DJ eyes proprietary technology that transmits the signal from the drone back to the receiver and I guess vice versa which gives you very very clear video signal as well as radio transmission over what they say is 10 kilometers now of course you shouldn't be flying in that far away in pretty much any condition for a couple of reasons but ultimately knowing that you're going to have a very good signal even in a very densely packed Wi-Fi area and that's where enhanced Wi-Fi falls down is when there's a lot of interference occu sync to does not fall down at all it does a great job of keeping that transmission signal clear and clean straight back to your phone or as we get further along to the smart controller but it's good to know that you're going to have a good transmission signal be able to see what the drone sees be able to give the drone commands and interact with it even if there's interference or trees or something like that in the way so ah cue sync 2 is a huge upgrade for this and I hope it's something they use on all their drones going forward but ultimately it's one of the big differentiators between this the original Mavic air and the Mavic mini now two other things that are new on the Mavic air 2 are a pass which stands for advanced pilot assistant systems and air sense which is a way for it to recognize when their aircraft in the area manned aircraft in the area and warn you about them let's talk about a pass first now the original Mavic air had a pass and it did a decent job when you were flying forward of seeing things in the way and kind of routing itself around them the new a pass system I have to say is much improved I've tested this on a skateboard riding through trees and I've tested this walking through trees and a bit of a clump of Oaks around my kids school and in both cases it was able to find its way through avoid hitting any of the branches leaves trunks of the trees etc and just really keep locked on with me as I walked through or skateboarded through these areas now it's trying to go under this tree I seize all those obstacles it's going around him kind of doing the same thing this time I'm facing the camera backwards so you can see what the drones doing it's ultimately going to get better and better this a pass system and for now the one thing that it's missing is side sensors so it could run into something if it was going sideways towards it but if you're traveling behind something like for instance yourself on a skateboard or in a vehicle or something like that and there's big obstacles in the way and there's plenty of light a pass does a great job of helping you avoid those things now let's talk about air sense for a second air sense is a system built into the software of this drone that allows you to know when there's manned aircraft in the area I know that where I often fly with my kids school there are small planes that are thousands of feet in the air and a few miles off in the distance but they're still you can hear them when they go over and every time I've heard one in the past I've always immediately tried to find it drop my drone down even though I'm not very high in the air anyway and just make sure that I have situational awareness to know where that aircraft is so that there's no possibility of it getting anywhere near that aircraft with this new air scent system you get a warning on your screen before you even hear the aircraft and so you can start looking around and as soon as you hear it you know where it is and you know where not to fly what areas to avoid I really appreciate the air scent system for safety and I think overall it's going to help the entire drone ecosystem and community because we're going to be more aware of what's going on in the sky and be able to avoid any sort of incident which is awesome so the remote control for the Mavic air 2 is a pretty significant departure from the traditional Mavic remotes that we've seen in the past it's a bigger footprint it has a antenna that's built into the phone holder which is up here on top and it actually is better designed as far as putting the phone into the holder in my opinion you pull this antenna up it doesn't really it has Springs right there that keep tension on your phone when you put it in your cable is in this area in here so it's always handy it's easier to get out and put in the phone and then this is actually your antenna I like it a lot as far as its ability to hold the phone make it very visible it feels very grippy and good in the hand the switch on the top has your what they're calling normal now normal is what we used to call position mode tripod mode and sport mode very clearly marked you've got you've got your dial for camera tilt the ability to start and stop your camera with this finger up here ability to switch between your camera modes ie video and stills function buttons that you can program overall just really well made and one of my favorite things it charges to be a USBC which I know doesn't sound like that big a deal but USBC is so much nicer I can't wait till everything does this cuz every so often I have a drone or something that uses one of the old USB standards and I have to go find that typed cable USB C is kind of becoming the dominant thing you can you can't put it in upside down goes either way it's faster data and faster charging and all that good stuff so I'd say overall I really like the remote but my hope is that I don't have to use this remote for very long because supposedly with an upcoming firmware update which I don't think has happened yet as of early July 2020 you'll be able to fly this thing with a smart controller and for me that's going to be one of the big game changers with this drone I love the smart controller I love the way it feels in your hand I love the fact that you don't have to tie up your phone with it I love how bright the screen is I love everything about the smart controller one other nice touch on the Mavic air 2 is the LED on the bottom this has of course bottom sensors front sensors and rear sensors it does not have side sensors or top sensors but next to the bottom sensors is this LED now if you remember from the Mavic - if you've seen that drone the Mavic 2 pro in the Mavi - zoom it actually has - those have 2 LED lights on the bottom and really get bright this is a very bright LED and it's great for helping it find itself position when it's going to land also just for being able to see it in the sky at Twilight or sunrise or whatever so if you're flying this thing and you need to put a little extra light out there it's just a matter of pushing a button on your remote which I really like on this so now let's talk a little bit about the camera now the camera mine currently has a ND filter on it so it looks a little dark but the camera looks a lot like a smaller version of the Mavic to pro's camera or a bigger version of the Osmo pocket actually you can say either one it's on a three axis gimbal just like the others this one has a half-inch sensor which is bigger than the Mavic air the Mavic mini and the original Mavic pro as well as I think it's actually bigger than the Mavic to zoom the sensor in it those are all one over two thirds versus half inch which means that you can do some pretty amazing stuff with this it will shoot 4k 60 at its highest resolution and frame rate and it will also do 48 megapixel pictures and DJI includes a pack of 3 ND filters with the fly more combo which is great because then if it is a really bright day and you want to be able to see the clouds putting one of these ND filters on makes a big difference in being able to actually see the clouds instead of just a sort of blown out sky now one other thing that this has that I haven't really played with much is it supports the new h.265 codec now if that makes sense to you great if it doesn't all it briefly explained h.264 has been the compression codec for video files particularly on DJI drones for a while and it's a pretty common standard I believe that most of YouTube runs h.264 compressed videos it's makes the videos smaller but still keeps a good quality h.265 is supposed to be an improvement on that where it can compress even more and still keep as much quality I have not played with it much but I imagine that that's where the world is going so that's putting it a little bit of future proofing into this drone which I appreciate but for me ultimately I haven't really saw the need to change from h.264 to h.265 but know that this has it so a couple of other things that are included with this drone are quick shots and tracking this drone as I said before with a pass is able to avoid obstacles very well you combine that with the tracking that it can do and it does a great job of following you and avoiding obstacles as it's doing so so you don't have to worry quite as much about running into something like tree branches as you're being tracked now of course the quick shots are all in here too you've got your asteroid and you've got your droney and you've got your rocket and you've got your helix and all those good good things which are all fantastic things to use we've seen most of that before but this drone does them very well and I feel like they're a nice feature to include in this drone because they're all so easy to do and generally come out with very impressive looking footage and as I said before this drone does do hyper lapses which i think is one of my favourite ways to capture a very cool scenic vista of an entire landscape with clouds going by or cars going by or whatever's happening there has to be action in the shot for it to look really cool if you do it on a day with no clouds and no cars going by it just kind of looks like a weird for a fast shot but if you have stuff moving through the shot people walking by people biking by it makes a very cool shot I did notice as I said before the couple of times I did hyperlapse on windy days that the wind did kind of make the hyperlapse look a little shaky er then I was used to with the Mavic 2 pro and Mavic 2 zoom but I would say on a non windy day it does just fine I've got some examples and you can see that when there's not a lot of wind it is a very smooth shot but sometimes with a little bit of wind it does shake around a little bit but overall for Hyper lapses you're just gonna have to pick a day that works really well a day with some clouds in the sky a day with some action going on on the ground and you can make some really cool cinematic looking pieces for your videos so in terms of drawbacks for this thing I'm gonna just point out two that are pretty minor one is the fact that it doesn't have a one-inch sensor now you're not paying for a one inch sensor at that price right you're paying for a half inch sensor which is better than most drones but if you're a serious videographer photographer you're really going to want a bigger sensor and so going to a MAV ik to pro or a phantom 4 Pro v2 R is going to be an obvious choice because that one inch sensor gets you a lot better performance in low-light and gets you better image quality overall but a half-inch sensor is not bad so I'm going to say that for the level of drone that it is it's it's pretty good it's just not a one inch sensor so that's something to consider if you're gonna buy a drone if you're gonna do professional photography and videography you might look at a bigger sensor and then number two is the app the DJI fly app it's just not quite as robust as DJI go for its dumbed down so to speak so that you can find things easier so that people who aren't as experienced with drones can go in and make adjustments more easily which is good and bad because it takes care of a lot of stuff for you but on the flip side it doesn't give you quite as much control as you might be used to if you've flown other drones before that's really all I have in terms of the downside I am very impressed with it for the price and feel like if you're just starting out and you need a drone you should consider this one or perhaps the mavet mini depending on what you want to do with it if all those things I mentioned to you during this video like tracking and hyperlapse and the bigger sensor and a little more beefy airframe and the light on bottom and such are important then this would be the way to go I'm gonna do a full comparison with the Mavic mini on this so you'll want to check that out because I think it is interesting to see who each one is better for but if you're buying your first drone and you have the budget to spend on this I'd say you won't you don't regret buying this drone as your first drone but if you're upgrading from a Mavic mini or upgrading from a original Mavic air it's definitely worth it or if you don't have a drone at all this is a great starter drone if you like this video I hope you'll consider subscribing to Ready Set drone and please comment below on what you think about the Mavic air 2 thanks for watching and we'll see you next time [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Ready Set Drone

Views: 162,888

Rating: 4.924592 out of 5

Keywords: drone, ready set drone, drone review, fpv, best drone, dji, mavic, mavic air 2, dji mavic air 2, dji mavic air 2 unboxing, dji mavic air 2 range test, best beginner drone, best beginner drone for photography, drone videography

Id: iMaoWO3soNI

Length: 16min 52sec (1012 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 09 2020