DJI Mavic 3 Pro: When It Will Be Possible to Buy a New Pro Copter and What Is Already Known About It

Pho­to: 4drone.ru

Every­one who fol­lows the drone indus­try is con­cerned about two ques­tions: when will the new DJI Mav­ic 3 Pro come out and what will it be like? By answer­ing them, you can also solve such a dilem­ma: is it worth buy­ing the Air 2S right now or is it bet­ter to wait a bit. In gen­er­al, we tell what we know at the moment about the upcom­ing pro-drone from DJI, but let’s start a lit­tle from afar.

Most Popular DJI Lineup

The Mav­ic line is with­out a doubt one of the main rea­sons for DJI’s suc­cess. The orig­i­nal Mav­ic Pro in 2016 was a real block­buster that blew up the drone indus­try and com­plete­ly changed the rules of the game. No won­der, because this quad­copter con­tained an incred­i­ble num­ber of func­tions at that time in its com­pact fold­ing body: 4K video, the abil­i­ty to con­nect VR glass­es, and even the option to con­trol ges­tures (for object track­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy). The name Mav­ic will soon become a house­hold name, and every­thing that comes out after it will be com­pared to this drone. But that was only the begin­ning. And while the very word Mav­ic may dis­ap­pear from the name of upcom­ing prod­ucts, the line that most of us will always iden­ti­fy as Mav­ic will not dis­ap­pear from the mar­ket. Let’s quick­ly fly over the main way­points in the series.

The one that start­ed it all. Pho­to: Sinky / en.wikipedia.org

The first Mav­ic brought a rad­i­cal change in quad­copter form fac­tor. Phan­tom-style design was ubiq­ui­tous at the time, so you can imag­ine how rev­o­lu­tion­ary the fold­able Mav­ic turned out to be: a true engi­neer­ing mas­ter­piece.

In addi­tion to 4K video, the orig­i­nal Mav­ic Pro also worked with the first DJI Gog­gles, bulky but break­through gog­gles.

And most impor­tant­ly, the mod­el was a new look at the rela­tion­ship between form and func­tion­al­i­ty. The Mav­ic Pro proved to be much more portable than the Phan­tom mod­els, fold­ing down to a real­ly small size. In addi­tion, he flew longer and came with a more com­pact (in its own way, even inno­v­a­tive) con­trol pan­el. While this remote looks a bit dat­ed now, it was com­fort­able and did the job per­fect­ly.

The fold­ing remote con­trol, to which a smart­phone or tablet is con­nect­ed, has become one of the fea­tures of the series. Pho­to: Youtube chan­nel DJI Tuto­ri­als

The suc­cess of Mav­ic has led to many new mod­els and the divi­sion of the line into two branch­es — more ama­teur and more pro­fes­sion­al. In the first: Mav­ic Air, Mav­ic Mini, Mav­ic Air 2, Mini 2 and Air 2S (in the last two, the Mav­ic name dis­ap­pears, although the rec­og­niz­able form fac­tor remains).

On the pro side: Mav­ic 2 Pro and Mav­ic 2 Zoom. Both mod­els were released back in August 2018, which means that the time for an update has come. Equipped with a Has­sel­blad cam­era, the Mav­ic 2 Pro quick­ly became the favorite of pro­fes­sion­al video­g­ra­phers who need­ed a com­pact mod­el (com­pared to the large-cal­iber Inspire) with excel­lent image qual­i­ty and vari­able aper­ture. The Mav­ic 2 Zoom has a 2x opti­cal zoom but no vari­able aper­ture.

Both mod­els have become the default option for more advanced drone pilots. And while the ama­teur series has been updat­ed sev­er­al times since then, the pro line is still wait­ing for its new king.

When will the new Mavic 3 Pro be released?

Accord­ing to all fore­casts that could be heard recent­ly, the nov­el­ty should appear this year.

Mav­ic 2 appeared in two ver­sions at once — Pro and Zoom. Who knows, per­haps there will also be sev­er­al third “Mav­ics” at once. Pho­to: dji.com

It’s been almost three years since the Mav­ic 2 Pro hit the shelves, so it’s clear that the com­pa­ny will be bring­ing some sig­nif­i­cant upgrades to the flag­ship mod­el. What — this is per­haps the most inter­est­ing mys­tery from DJI.

What’s Coming to the Mavic 3 Pro

8K and Hasselblad

Accord­ing to a Chi­nese source close to DJI, the Mav­ic 3 Pro (or maybe just the DJI Pro 3) will get 8K video res­o­lu­tion. There is a cer­tain log­ic behind this: the orig­i­nal Mav­ic Pro, released in 2016, shot in 4K, and the new­er Air 2S already shoots in 5.4K. In addi­tion, the 8K for­mat is becom­ing more and more pop­u­lar in video shoot­ing (although its use­ful­ness is debat­able today).

Autel EVO II Pro is the world’s first 8K drone. Pho­to: 3dnews.ru

One of the Mav­ic’s com­peti­tors, the Autel EVO II Pro, shoots in 8K res­o­lu­tion and is equipped with a vari­able aper­ture lens, while the cost of the mod­el is 140 thou­sand rubles. Of course, it does­n’t make sense for DJI to sim­ply repeat this price-per­for­mance ratio. Most like­ly, the com­pa­ny will either offer an even more advanced cam­era, or try to beat the com­peti­tor in terms of the cost of new items.

There is no doubt that DJI will add to the new drone all the fea­tures and modes that we saw in the Air 2S, such as Mas­ter Shots (the device per­forms ten dif­fer­ent maneu­vers over an object, mak­ing short record­ings). Although the tar­get audi­ence of the Pro line will most like­ly pre­fer to edit con­tent on their own, the pres­ence of sim­ple cre­ative modes “for fun” is always wel­come.

New frame and obstacle avoidance system

In DJI patents, you can find a dia­gram of an H‑frame drone. Per­haps it is the Mav­ic 3 that will receive a new design with two brack­ets, which most like­ly fold for­ward and inwards.

The new Mav­ic may fold dif­fer­ent­ly. Image: blog.wazza.com.ua

You can also expect that the new prod­uct will receive improved track­ing and obsta­cle avoid­ance sys­tems. In anoth­er image from the web­site of the patent agency (dia­gram below), you can see the sep­a­rate upper (10) and rear (420) obsta­cle avoid­ance sen­sors. For com­par­i­son, in the Mav­ic 2, the top sen­sor is locat­ed on the back, and the rear sen­sors them­selves are paired with the side sen­sors locat­ed near­by.

Esti­mat­ed scheme Mav­ic 3. Image: blog.wazza.com.ua

While this is pure spec­u­la­tion, we would­n’t be sur­prised if DJI fol­lowed in Sky­dio’s foot­steps and imple­ment­ed a full AI-pow­ered 360-degree obsta­cle avoid­ance sys­tem.

OcuSync 3.0

The new drone is expect­ed to have at least Ocu­Sync 3.0 with its low­er laten­cy and high­er res­o­lu­tion, as well as a larg­er range than Ocu­Sync 2.0. But (what DJI is not jok­ing about) it is pos­si­ble that we will see a new gen­er­a­tion of data trans­mis­sion sys­tem. It is also expect­ed that any drone with Ocu­Sync 3.0 will become com­pat­i­ble with the Gog­gles V2 — the ques­tion is when DJI decides to update the firmware.

Gog­gles 2 glass­es look very futur­is­tic. Pho­to: newsledge.com

In any case, a high-qual­i­ty FPV (first-per­son flight) mode can be a great addi­tion to the new Pro, and then com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with Gog­gles V2 looks more than log­i­cal. FPV gog­gles can be use­ful not only for fly­ing a drone, but also for shoot­ing video. So for a quadro­copter “sharp­ened” for pro­fes­sion­al video­g­ra­phers, this is a great option.

Extended run time

When a pho­to of the frame, pre­sum­ably from the new Mav­ic, appeared online, many noticed that instead of the tra­di­tion­al top bat­tery cutout, there was now a large new rear com­part­ment. A larg­er bat­tery could pro­vide longer flight times (some­thing that con­sumer drones are sore­ly lack­ing at the cur­rent stage of devel­op­ment). There is also a detail resem­bling an air intake in the image, which may indi­cate an increase in pro­cess­ing pow­er (and, accord­ing­ly, heat­ing).

Assumed Mav­ic 3 Pro frame with air intake and a hint of a bat­tery mount on the back. Pho­to: dronexl.co

Improved AI

With­out a doubt, DJI is the world mar­ket leader in drones in the con­sumer and com­mer­cial seg­ments, with a share of 70–80%. But the Chi­nese com­pa­ny keeps a close eye on its com­peti­tors, always want­i­ng to stay ahead.

The Amer­i­can brand Sky­dio has made great strides in using AI in its Sky­dio 2 mod­el, which is known for its incred­i­bly accu­rate track­ing sys­tem (it is also planned to be inte­grat­ed into its 3D Scan soft­ware pack­age). Track­ing in areas filled with obsta­cles like tree branch­es has nev­er been DJI’s forte, although the Air 2S’s addi­tion­al obsta­cle avoid­ance sen­sors have improved things some­what.

Some time ago, a schemat­ic (of course, it is not known whether it is gen­uine or not) appeared on the Inter­net, which depicts a Mav­ic-style quad­copter equipped with a set of visu­al sen­sors. It is sim­i­lar in con­fig­u­ra­tion to that of the Sky­dio 2. Par­tial­ly, this infor­ma­tion is con­firmed by the large size of the “seats” for the front sen­sors, which are vis­i­ble in the pho­to of the body of the future Mav­ic 3.

Based on all this, we can assume that we will see some improve­ments in the track­ing and work of the drone AI, but it is not yet clear how deep.

Results: the main thing about DJI Mavic 3 Pro

And a very impor­tant ques­tion: will the “scream­ing muz­zle” remain in the Mav­ic series? Pho­to: photowebexpo.ru

So, the drone will most like­ly be released by the end of Sep­tem­ber. It can be assumed that the nov­el­ty will have:

• 8K video,
• Has­sel­blad Vari­able Aper­ture Cam­era,
• improved obsta­cle avoid­ance sys­tem,
• advanced arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence sys­tem,
• new frame with new fold­ing method,
• longer flight time on a sin­gle charge.

* In prepar­ing the arti­cle, mate­ri­als from dronedj.com (author Scott Sim­mie) and blog.wazza.com.ua were used