Dji Mavic Air 4k Drone for BASE jumping - Review

I recently bought a Dji Mavic Air ready for our BASE jumping trip to Europe.

Second hand on eBay it cost me £700, and it came with 3 batteries and a 'fly more' combo.

This seemed to make sense as buying a new one is £1000+ and it only comes with 1 battery. The batteries are around £60 - £80 each so...

I will be making a little video edit of the trip, but for now here are some reasons why I chose the Mavic Air.

Just look at the size of it! It's absurd, it can fit into your pocket.

I can take this in my hand luggage when flying to Croatia and it takes up barely any space.

Throwing it in your stash bag after a jump will be no big deal ;-)

It folds up really well, nothing is sticking out ready to get snagged. The Mavic Pro I found to be a little bit like that, it folds up but its not as refined, I felt that it something could get snapped.

This Mavic Air comes with a little carry case that reminds me of the old Sega Game Gear case haha.

The Air is smaller than the Mavic Pro, being 16.7 cms long and around 8.1 cms wide, and 4.8 cms tall, it's about 2 and a half cms more compact in both length and height.

For what I intend on using it for, this makes all the difference. I want to be able to have it in my pocket when walking out to or climbing an object.

The remote is slim and can also be put into your pocket along with your phone, which you connect to the remote.

Both the Mavic Pro and Mavic Air have 4k cameras, but if you zoom in on the Mavic Pro footage, the image doesn't hold up. The drone tries to compensate for this lack of detail by digitally over sharpening the image. You also have to tap-to-focus on the screen, or you're liable to get blurry images.

The Mavic Air footage, however, looks brilliant without you really having to do anything. It has a slightly wider angle lens (24mm versus the Pro's 28mm) which is better for capturing sweeping landscapes (like a bridge in a valley full of BASE jumpers). You don't have to tap to focus! Oh yeah, it shoots 4K video at 100Mbps versus the Mavic Pro's 60Mbps, so you get more image data and more overall detail. It seemed to have better dynamic range, as well, though I haven't done a one-to-one comparison.

The Mavic Air also beats the Pro in terms of sensors and smart features. While the Mavic Pro has forward-looking obstacle avoidance, the Air's obstacle-sensing eyes look forward and backward. The anti-collision system generally works really well. I tried crashing the drone into myself going forward and backwards, but it refused to fly too close to me. Instead, it went up and over me, or around me. (Obstacle avoidance doesn't work in Sport Mode. Try it there and you will catch a cold).

It would be lovely if obstacle avoidance was that easy on a BASE jump hahahaha.

The obstacle-sensing tech is kinda important for some of the smart features the drone has, such as active tracking, where it can follow you, or lead you from the front. If you're trusting it to fly itself, like I will be, then you really want to know that it's not going to slam into yours or any one else's canopy when making a BASE jump.

I still wouldn't fly it around anyone I didn't know in a BASE jumping environment, and I would want the same for any random flying one near me.

The friends I am going to Europe with are comfortable with me using the drone around them, one of them has a Mavic Air too, so is familiar with it.

Here it is in the house hovering, avoiding any potential hazards.

Another pretty cool thing this drone does is it can obey hand gestures.

You can tell it to lift off by extending your hand straight toward it with your palm perpendicular to the ground. Move that same flat hand up, down, and side-to-side to change its position. Move your two hands apart, and the drone pulls back for a wider shot. Make a frame with your index fingers and thumbs to have it start shooting video. It's neat in that it makes you feel kind of like a Jedi, but I think the gesture stuff is largely a gimmick. You still need to have the remote control handy to put it into gesture mode, and you also need to keep it within in case something goes wrong. I wouldn't trust it in a BASE jumping environment.

The Mavic Air has a whole suite of camera tricks it can do.

I can get it to follow me, lead me, and even keep me in profile.

Another cool feature is 'Orbit mode' where the drone flies in a circle around you. One really annoying thing with this drone is you have to recalibrate the compass almost every time you turn the drone back on, which requires you to hold the drone and move it around in a series of spirals. If you're trying to get the drone into the air ASAP, you'll have to pause to recalibrate it, and this is very frustrating.

Flying time?

While the Air has a slightly shorter flying time than the Pro (it maxes out at 21 minutes versus the Pro's 27 minutes), it can fly just as fast and just as far. The Air also has better slow-motion capabilities (120 frames per second instead of the Pro's 96fps).

Ultimately until I have jumped with it, I won't be able to give a full review, but as soon as I return I should have some awesome footage to share with my fellow Steemians! I'll be sure to capture the footage in 4k and get some super nice slo mo's ;-)

Cheers!

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