After purchasing a DJI Mavic 3 Pro for shooting real estate, the DJI Mini 4K came up for sale for $240 on Amazon Prime Day, about 1/10th the price of the Mavic. What the heck, I said, that's just a little bit more than I usually spend on a trailcam, and trailcams don't fly. Today I had a chance to make a bit of a comparison, although I wasn't able to test out the Mini's video. The item description online only said that it takes an "SD Card" and didn't specify micro. I was 95% sure it needed a micro card and didn't come with one, but in abundance of caution I did not order one. I ended up cannibalizing a 16Gb card from one of my tablets, which got the Mini going well enough to take a few photos, but it is not nearly fast enough to save 4K video. I have a fast 128Gb card on order.
A constraint for small drones is the 0.55 lb. weight limit for recreational fliers to avoid FAA registration, and the Mini bumps right up against that limit. (But I registered the Mini anyway in case I ever need to use it on a job.) The look and feel of the Mavic at 2.1 lbs. is much more robust. There are many things you get for ten times the price, but I will just mention two: Omnidirectional obstacle avoidance, and three very good cameras. The Mini only has downward obstacle avoidance, and one OK camera.
The Mini takes 12Mp stills (4,000x3,000) and can save either JPG or JPG+RAW. In my opinion, the JPGs lack detail and don't look good, but images processed from RAW (actually DNG) are better. I did a manual adjustment on this first image exposure otherwise it would have been too dark, but the gray sky doesn't look too great. On a non-smoky day, perhaps it would look better. The camera is OK, not great, unlike the Mavic main Hasselblad camera which I would categorize as great.
The Mavic comes with a dedicated controller, while the Mini's controller doesn't have a screen and has to be connected to a phone. I actually don't hate this as much as I thought I would, but it would be best not to get any phone calls while flying. The controls are the same on the two controllers as far as I can tell, so skills learned on one should translate to the other.
One interesting thing I noticed from taking the image of the drones in flight today is they seem to be leaning to the left but the gimbal is holding the camera level. It is really noticeable in the image of the Mavic, but also is there in the image of the Mini. We had about a 10 mph wind today, so they leaned into the wind to maintain position. Although they can fly winds at least twice that speed, they do have to fight against it.
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