Walking Equipment and Accessories

DJI Mavic 2 Pro | Review

DJI continue their dominance in the drone market with this hard to fault successor to the Mavic Pro

Why We Chose The DJI Mavic 2 Pro: 31 minute battery life, OcuSync 2.0 flawless connection, Hasselblad camera.

Whether you like them or not, drones are here to stay in the outdoor world. It’s amazing to think back just ten or so years ago, you’d be blown away to imagine that we’d be flying these micro helicopters around as a way to capture the stunning scenery that we find ourselves in.

From the professional to hobbyist, 5kg behemoths to wasp-like sub 400g drones, there’s one company who are at the forefront of drone development – DJI.

The Mavic 2 Pro is almost exactly the same size as the original Mavic Pro. Photo: Chris Johnson

The Mavic 2 Pro, which is part of their consumer market of lightweight, portable drones, is the beefed up version of the original Mavic model and that shows through in every aspect, particularly when you compare it to the dainty Mavic Air.

You’ll first notice the weight when picking this up. Not too heavy, not too light – the perfect weight (907g to be exact) for something you’re about to send up to 500m above you and 5km away.

The lack of weight of the daintier Mavic Air (just 430g) is great when you’re planning a long hike, but you do start to think that it could get plucked out of the sky by a sudden gust of wind. Not with the Mavic 2 Pro though, it’s got a confidence-inspiring weight to it.

“To think we’d be flying these micro helicopters around as a way to capture the stunning scenery that we find ourselves in.”

Whilst the original Mavic Pro weighs in at 730g, you may be questioning why DJI have gone and added weight to what was a perfectly working drone. Surely you’d be looking to trim weight off a successive product? However, it’s good to know the weight has gone into an increase in battery life, giving the Mavic 2 Pro a stated 31-minute flight time, over the 27 minutes of the Mavic Pro.

This model also boasts a greater range, being capable of reaching as far as 8km. That’s thanks to DJI’s updated communication system (OcuSync 2.0) – essentially the thing that let’s the drone send information back and forth between the remote control.

Battery life has been given a boost, with a new flight time of 31 minutes. Photo: Chris Johnson

Obstacle avoidance sensors surround the drone, making it a effort to crash. Photo: Chris Johnson

But what’s a brilliant flight time and range, if you’ve only got a pea-sized 1080p camera to film all the beautiful scenery you’re now able to fly around? Well, the good news is that the Mavic 2 Pro packs a 1” sensor that’s four times the size and thus, four times more effective than the original Mavic Pro sensor.

It’s this sensor combined with the ability to shoot in a 10-bit Dlog profile that enables you to film in a higher dynamic range, so it’s certainly a drone to look at if you’re into tweaking all of your footage in post production in order to bring out the colours in a way that just isn’t possible with a standard drone camera.

Tester’s Verdict

Jordan Tiernan, Outdoors Magic Staff Writer

“I’ve shot extensively on the Mavic Air and original Mavic Pro, so it was great to be able to feel instantly at home with DJI’s app and remote control configuration.

“The picture quality that comes from the Mavic Pro 2 is in a world of its own compared to that of the Mavic Pro and (especially) the Mavic Air.

“Whilst using the Mavic 2 Pro in Norway for the video shoot for this very Outdoor 100 series, I’d upload my footage to my laptop and feel like I was watching something that had been artfully crafted by an Oscar nominated director – instead it was actually the smart little brain in the drone doing all the legwork to make my footage look as smooth and cinematic as possible.

“Okay sorry, ‘cinematic footage’ is an overused cliche. But what I’m trying to get at is that even though the camera is a marvel in itself, it’s the intelligent flight modes that make shooting ‘cinematic footage’ a breeze. Just a few taps within the app allow you to perform a whole host of flight modes where the drone takes control of itself and the gimbal.

DJI’s all new OcuSync 2.0 is to thank for the new and improved range of 8km. Photo: Chris Johnson

“These flight modes include time-lapse, active-tracking, waypoints and a load of pre-programmed ‘Quickshots’. You just simply wouldn’t be able to achieve the levels of accuracy and smoothness that the drone is able to create by using the remote controller.

“DJI’s claim that you can fly the drone up to 8km away is a little on the bold side – you’ve got to be pretty brave to fly your £1,500 kit that far away. We only took the drone up to 3km away from us and that felt more than enough – I must of course add that you should read up on the drone rules of the country you’re flying in before embarking on any long-distance flying.

“Just a few taps within the app allow you to perform a whole host of flight modes where the drone takes control of itself and the gimbal.”

“By around 1km away, the drone is already way out of sight and you’re flying it just from the screen on your phone (with some inevitable latency between what you’re seeing and what’s actually happening in front of your done), so you’ve got to be 100% sure that there aren’t any hidden obstacles in your way. Nonetheless, I was pretty blown away at how far away you could fly without the connection bars even flinching.

If you’re happy to spend a bit of extra time colour grading your footage on your computer, you can truly get some awesome looking footage from this drone (that still packs down as small as the original Mavic Pro). Even when you’re not shooting in the Dlog profile, the images it captures are stunning, and with that in mind, I’d say the fact you can get a drone of this quality for less than £1,400 is impressive in itself.”