DJI Mini 4 Pro review: The best lightweight drone gains more power and smarts

Final yr, DJI confirmed what was doable in a small drone with the Mini 3 Professional by becoming tons of know-how and a high-quality digital camera right into a sub-250 gram drone. Following that up was by no means going to be simple, however now (after quite a few leaks) it’s unveiled the Mini 4 Professional with a protracted record of latest options.

Except for one enchancment, the digital camera is essentially the identical. Nevertheless, it has new omnidirectional impediment sensors that eradicate the blind spots on the Mini 3 Professional. It additionally comes with a brand new function referred to as ActiveTrack 360 that allows you to program digital camera strikes when monitoring a topic.

Small drones are one of the best ways to trace fast-paced motion, as they’re maneuverable and fewer susceptible to wreck when crashing. With all of the enhancements, the Mini 4 Professional is healthier and safer at that than its predecessor — not less than on paper. Now, let’s discover out if it lives as much as that in the actual world.

Design

The Mini 4 Professional continues to be beneath 250 grams so it may be flown with out a license or registration in lots of areas, but it surely has delicate design adjustments throughout. The 4 forward- and rear-facing sensors at the moment are positioned in order that they will see to the perimeters as effectively, and the physique is a little more streamlined. It has bigger cooling vents, barely smaller rear arms and new touchdown ft on the entrance. The digital camera/gimbal protect is smaller and simpler to placed on, and it has a brand new guard that protects the propellers when it’s saved.

As earlier than, the gimbal tilts up 60 levels and down 90, and the digital camera flips 90 levels to offer you full vertical decision for social media. On the rear is a microSD port, and the Mini 4 Professional has 2GB of inside storage for emergencies.

The Mini 4 Professional comes with certainly one of two controllers, the fundamental RC-N2 that requires a smartphone, and the RC2 with a built-in display. Because it makes use of DJI’s new Ocusync 4 transmission, first launched with the Air 3, it solely works with the brand new controllers and never the older fashions — for now, anyway.

You should buy it with a $55 ND filter set for sunny days, which I’d suggest if you happen to can afford it. DJI additionally presents a wide-angle 18mm equal lens attachment ($40), but it surely has vital barrel distortion and might trigger focus points.

The drone additionally helps DJI’s Lightcut, an enhancing app that allows you to generate fast movies for social media. As DJI says, it permits “one faucet technology of fascinating movies by merging ActiveTrack, MasterShots, and QuickShots footage,” whereas automating sound results and extra. It additionally works wirelessly, so there’s no must obtain footage to your smartphone.

Efficiency

Given its small dimension and maneuverability (and the identical sensor as DJI’s Motion 4), you’ll be able to consider the Mini 4 Professional as a flying motion digital camera. The sunshine weight (and low value in comparison with, say, a Mavic 3 Professional) additionally makes crashes much less consequential.

Most velocity is a decently quick 35 MPH in sport mode, or 26 MPH in common operation. It will probably deal with winds as much as 24 MPH, a powerful determine for a sub 250 gram drone. In operation, it will possibly seem like it’s being buffeted pretty exhausting by the wind, however you wouldn’t understand it from the footage because of DJI’s gimbal and stabilization know-how.

The Mini 3 Professional was successfully blind on the perimeters, however the Mini 4 Professional presents safety throughout just like the Mavic 3 Professional and Air 3 — because of 4 new omnidirectional sensors on prime and two on backside (together with a time-of-flight sensor). It additionally makes use of DJI’s APAS, which presents automated braking and impediment bypass for further safety.

In case you’re spending $760+ on a drone, you could not wish to check the impediment detection limits. That is my job, so working with my drone pilot friend, I had it observe me whereas I walked and biked amongst timber and different potential snags. I did have a number of crashes, however right here’s what I discovered on methods to keep away from them.

The sensors are visible, in order that they don’t work in dim gentle. And dense forest with wonderful branches is a no go — the omni sensors can miss these, however the propellers gained’t. Lastly, the Mini 4 Professional detects obstacles finest when touring ahead, much less so when going sideways, and worst of all when flying backwards.

It did work round well-spaced timber with thick branches and loads of leaves, close to buildings and usually round well-defined obstacles. It was in a position to maneuver round these, select respectable routes and reacquire topics in the event that they disappeared. That helped me seize some good motion footage, although one ought to all the time stay cautious of accidents.

ActiveTrack 360 provides digital camera strikes to the standard topic monitoring to create dramatic pictures. It appears complicated at first, however the concept is fairly easy. You utilize the so-called steering wheel to “draw” a route on concentric circles, and the drone will observe it, ducking any obstacles it encounters.

You possibly can change parameters together with the inside and outer radius, inside and outer peak, digital camera velocity and floor proximity. That makes it doable to get all kinds of pictures. The tough half was determining which aspect the drone thought of to be ahead and backward — DJI ought to work on this to make issues clearer.

In case you plan fastidiously you will get some beautiful, swooping ActiveTrack pictures. The same old impediment caveats apply, although, and it additionally provides complexity — as a result of you need to work out the place the drone goes to be if you arrive at your finish level. With all that, it’s finest to follow in an open space earlier than attempting it in a fancy surroundings.

In fact, the Mini 4 Professional nonetheless has DJI’s automated modes aimed toward social media customers, like MasterShots, QuickShots and Panorama together with Hyperlapse. It even consists of the Waypoint function from the Mavic 3 Professional, which helps you to pre-program complicated drone strikes and repeat them — a classy function for a small drone.

For the latter function, you launch the drone and choose the Waypoint perform, fly to a spot of curiosity and set the proper digital camera angle. As soon as there, you faucet “+” on the display (or hit the C1 button the RC2 distant) to program a waypoint. Repeat that course of by means of all of your factors of curiosity, and when you’re finished, you’ll be able to play again the sequence. The drone will easily fly to every level the identical manner every time, so you employ it to indicate a scene in the course of the day after which later at night time, as an example.

The Mini 4 Professional makes use of Ocusync 4 transmission first seen on the Air 3 that sends 1080/60p video as much as 20 km, in comparison with 1080/30p over 12 km with Ocusync 3. These distances are decrease right here in Europe due to transmitter energy guidelines.

In use, it gives a noticeable enchancment in connectivity, with fewer dropouts and far larger vary — even when the drone goes behind obstacles. The change could be very noticeable right here in Europe with smoother video and dropouts now very uncommon. It must be even higher within the US, the place you possibly can ship the Mini 4 Professional on a fairly lengthy journey.

The usual 2,590 mAh Clever Flight Battery has a bit extra capability than the Mini 3 Professional’s 2,453 mAh cell, however vary stays the identical at 34 minutes. In real-world flying, we noticed about 25 minutes earlier than listening to the return-to-home warning, so plan accordingly.

When you have a Mini 3 Professional, its cells look like suitable with the brand new drone, in order that’s an excellent factor if you happen to already personal that mannequin. Within the US, you will get the Plus batteries that present as much as 45 minutes of vary, however native guidelines block their use in Europe.

The RC-2 first seen on the Air 3 is DJI’s third display controller after the RC and the RC Professional. It’s considerably higher than the RC, with a brighter display, higher really feel and extra exact controls. The opposite possibility is the non-screen RC-N2 (requiring a smartphone), which is analogous to the RC-N1 mannequin however with O4 compatibility.

Digital camera

The Mini 4 Professional’s digital camera has the identical 1/1.3 twin ISO sensor as its predecessor, utilizing an equivalent 24mm equal lens with a set f/1.7 aperture. That’s a fairly sizable sensor for such a small drone, only a bit smaller than the 1-inch sensor on the Mavic Air 2S.

The distinction is that it now helps 4K slow-mo at as much as 100 fps, or 1080p at 200 fps. The movement is embeded 30fps, but it surely’s nonetheless a pleasant function for wildlife, crashing waves and extra. That’s on prime of 4K at as much as 60fps and 1080p at 120fps. It has a two occasions digital zoom for 4K and 4 occasions at 1080p, with a slight loss in sharpness.

There’s additionally help for DJI’s D-LogM, which boosts dynamic vary and offers you extra flexibility in put up. DJI has a LUT that makes it simple to transform it to common video — however some enhancing is required for finest outcomes. You may also shoot in DJI’s HLG mode, which once more boosts dynamic vary. You possibly can see the outcomes immediately on an HDR TV, however you’ll must do an HLG to REC.709 color-space rework to make use of it with common video. Each help 10-bit 4:2:0 seize for improved constancy and decreased banding.