Review: DJI Mavic Air

Since the advent of the consumer drone (not so long ago, really), making a purchasing decision around new flying machine has involved weighing a list of compromises. Want high quality images? You're going to have a big drone that's tough to maneuver. Want something portable? Your footage will look like garbage. Want something easy to fly? You're getting a glorified toy that will fall apart in a light breeze.

DJI, the world's leading manufacturer of consumer drones, tried to solve this last year with the Mavic Pro. While that easy-to-fly, foldable drone did check many of the boxes, the camera wasn't stellar. With this year's Mavic Air, however, DJI has finally arrived at a product design with just the right mix of flyability, portability, and image quality. In other words, the DJI Mavic Air is where all drone-shopping quests should begin, and it's also where most of them should end.

The Mavic Air is smaller than the Mavic Pro—at 6.6 inches long, 3.2 inches wide, and 1.9 inches tall, it's about an inch more compact in both length and height. Given the name, it shouldn't surprise you to learn that it also weighs significantly less; just over 15 ounces, versus the Mavic Pro's near-26 ounces. The result is a drone that slips into a jacket pocket and doesn't feel weird to keep there. The remote control, which uses your smartphone as its screen, is svelte, too; complete with joysticks that can be removed and stowed within the remote's body.

But don't let the name fool you. Unlike the MacBook universe where Pro is the top of the line and Air is code for "underpowered," in Mavic Air is the machine with more professional utility. Both drones have cameras that shoot 4K video, 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 oversharpening the image. With the Mavic Pro, you also have to tap-to-focus on the screen, or you're liable to get blurry images. You may not want to do that while you're trying to keep both hands on the wheel, so to speak.

The Mavic Air footage, however, looks great 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. You don't have to tap to focus. And 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 wasn't able to do 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 backward, and 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 lose a nipple.) The obstacle-sensing tech is especially 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, then you really want to know that it's not going to slam into anything.

The Air can also 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.

The Mavic Air has a whole suite of camera tricks it can do, but I had mixed results when trying to use them. While kayaking in the middle of a lake I was able to get it to follow me, lead me, and even keep me in profile, which made for some awesome looking video. Once, despite only being 20 yards away from me, the drone lost radio contact and attempted to land itself at the point where the flight started—which was now in the middle of the water. Luckily it reacquired the signal and I was able to abort the return-to-home function before the Mavic Air drowned itself.

Other smart features like the Orbit mode (which makes the drone fly in a circle around you) refused to engage at all, and I could never figure out why. I also had to recalibrate the compass almost every time I turned the drone back on, which requires you to hold the drone and move it around in a series of spirals. Not a big deal, but if you're chasing a sunset or a humpback whale and are trying to get the drone into the air now, have to pause to recalibrate it can be very frustrating. I'm hoping these bugs will be ironed out in future software updates.

Those caveats aside, I love this drone. I've been reviewing these things for more than five years, and of the dozens I've tested, I found myself pulling this one out far more often than any other. The portability is a win; tossing it into a small hiking bag is no big deal. You'll probably forget it's even there. Now, DJI's Phantom 4 Pro certainly shoots better images—they're incredibly cinematic and clear, thanks to its larger image sensor—but that drone was so big and cumbersome by comparison to the Mavic Air that I rarely brought the larger one on hikes. To paraphrase Chase Jarvis: The best drone is the one that's with you. And I'm more likely to have the Mavic Air with me than any other drone I've used. It already has a suite of accessories available from third-party companies, like the excellent neutral density filters made by PolarPro. Screwing one of those onto the camera lets you slow the shutter speed down and get an even more film-like look.

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). The improved obstacle avoidance makes it a lot safer for beginners to fly it too, though I'm looking forward to the next Mavic to offer obstacle avoidance in all four lateral directions.

Factor in that the Air is still somehow $200 cheaper than the Pro, and the purchasing decision becomes a no-brainer. Honestly, I'd probably recommend the Air even if it were $200 more than the Pro. $800 is still a lot of money, and the price only goes up when you buy one or two spare batteries, which you definitely should. But if you're looking at getting into aerial photography, or if you're a serious backpacker and space and weight are at a premium in your pack, the Mavic Air is definitely the way to go. It's the balance point I've been looking for this whole time.